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012: How to help veterans succeed in science, and why it’s important to all of us.

If you believe the newspaper headlines, you’ll be ready to dismiss Jake as another statistic. After all, the odds of a soldier returning from war and getting an undergrad degree are not good, which makes his dream of earning a PhD sound like a pipe-dream. But don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

soldier
The skills that help a soldier survive on the battlefield can be distractions in the classroom.

The Cost of Coming Home

While the men and women fighting overseas will periodically make the evening news, few of us pause to consider what happens to the veterans who return home. After World War II, the GI Bill helped pay for many of those vets to go back to college, training them for civilian jobs and leveraging their unique skills to bolster economic growth. But our societal appetite for war has waxed and waned with each conflict, and with it, our support for the troops returning home.

Instead of handshakes and expressions of gratitude, many vets return to uncomfortable questions and awkward stares.

So what happens when a soldier like Jake leaves the danger, camaraderie, and daily structure of an active war zone and sits down in English 101 with a group of teenagers scrolling Facebook on their laptops? Short answer: he doesn’t fit.

Science for Soldiers

Enter John Schupp, a chemistry professor who wanted to change the patterns that lead to high veteran drop-out rates. By applying a scientific approach, Schupp experimented his way to a system that could help veterans not only fit, but excel.

In this week’s episode, we unpack Jake’s questions about how he will get back to school and achieve his goals in biomedical science, and Dr. Schupp will be our guide. He tells us how to make science training accessible to all veterans, but also, why it should matter to every one of us.

Jake wrote:

I am a disabled military vet who was going to school under the GI bill.  However over the course of my time in college I suffered a mental breakdown that lead to my GPA plummeting and my leaving the small liberal arts college I was studying at. This has left me uncertain as to what my future will be but the one thing I know for certain is that I want to finish my undergrad and get my PhD.  Now I’m probably getting ahead of myself.  I have several things that I am concerned preclude that for even being an option for me.

1) I am concerned that I am too old I’m currently 27 years old
2) I am concerned that I may have burned my bridges having dropped out
3) Though I’ve received help from the VA for the issues I was dealing with at the time, I’m concerned that I’ll have a recurrence of those problems.

Any advice for getting back on track would be greatly appreciated.

You say vee-EN-na, I say vie-AY-na

Also in this episode, we sample Devil’s Backbone Vienna Lager. This tasty brew from the Blueridge Mountains of Virginia really takes Josh back to his roots.

References

Dr. Schupp shared a treasure-trove of information that you may find valuable. You can reach him at  schuppjd@tiffin.edu

Full interview with Dr. Schupp

A business plan universities can use to develop their own program to support student veterans

A presentation on veteran suicide and income inequality throughout US history

For vets pursuing a PhD, there are a number of exclusive funding sources available:

011: The 8.5 fixes that will save biomedical science

Biomedical science is broken.  Funding is unpredictable, training programs drag on indefinitely, and some of our best scientists are drawn to careers outside of the university or drowned in paperwork if they stay.  Can anything be done to support research staff and boost lab productivity?

9182-a-swiss-army-knife-isolated-on-a-white-background-pv
Two of the fixes are the bottle opener and the cork-screw. A little bit of ethanol makes everything better!

Saving Science

These topics are regularly debated in the literature, but a recent meta-analysis by Pickett et al. in PNAS works to find the consensus among a dizzying number of suggestions.  Their paper, Toward a sustainable biomedical research enterprise: Finding consensus and implementing recommendations, could be re-titled “8 Ways to Save Science.”  And while these 8 ideas may appear across the literature, they’re not without controversy.

This week on the show, we unpack the 8 recommendations and debate their merits.  Should all graduate school programs be limited to 5 years?  Should the federal government increase overall funding?  Should post-docs receive higher pay?

To summarize, the 8 recommendations are:

  1. Make funding predictable from year-to-year
  2. Increase the total amount of money the federal government hands out
  3. Reduce regulations
  4. Pay post-docs more
  5. Shorten graduate school to 5 years
  6. Train students and post-docs for “alternative” careers other than faculty PI
  7. Change how trainees are funded
  8. Increase opportunities for staff scientists

Josh throws in a bonus recommendation that didn’t quite make the top 8: increase diversity in the biomedical enterprise.

Did you applaud every item on this list, or did the authors miss the mark?  Leave your comments below and let us know what you’d add or remove to make biomedical science a more sustainable enterprise.

Also in this episode, we pay tribute to all the Oregonians who don’t listen to our podcast by drinking Dead Guy Ale from Rogue.  It’s an Oregon beer and we’re pandering for listeners in that great state, so tell a friend!

References:

States in order by quality of their beer offerings.

Newt Gingrich (NYT April 2015): “Double the NIH budget”

PIs spend 42% of their time on administrivia

Stanford recently bumped starting postdoc pay to $50K

NIH recently started a funding mechanism called “Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST)”.

010: Are you too old to go back to school?

Congratulations!  You just decided that you want to be a scientist, and spend your career doing research in a biomedical lab.  That would be great news, except that you’re past thirty and you have no training.  As the excitement fades and reality hits, you ask: “Am I too old to go back to school?”

You’re never too old to science

You're never too old to go back to school! Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donhomer/5840513827
Dr. Thigpen’s research on anti-aging therapies were effective, but difficult to control. This photo shows the last time he was seen in public before reverting to a zygote.

This week, we face some tough questions about what to do when your career path didn’t take you straight to your dreams.  You may come from another career or had a family first, but now you’re convinced you want to join the ranks of scientific society.  It’s going to be a long road: biomedical scientists reach their first real jobs at a median age of 37.  Should you even bother if you’re just getting started at 35?

We put these tough questions to Robin Chamberland, Assistant Professor and Director of Clinical Microbiology at St. Louis University Hospital.  Dr. Chamberland went back to school in her 30s, and successfully navigated her way to a faculty position at a top-tier university.  We ask whether she faced discrimination or other challenges because of her age or family commitments, and she shares some insights for others on the same path.

Whiskey is the water of life

whiskey sours
There’s so much fruit, the Drosophila declared our birthdays a National Holiday!

While we’re pondering these existential questions of life and meaning, we’re also celebrating our birthdays!  We sample some tasty homemade Whiskey Sours with a generous helping of fruit.  Listen closely for the secret ingredient…

And this year, we ask for one present each: we’d love for you to share the Hello PhD podcast with one friend, and to leave a rating or review on iTunes.  Both of those simple gifts help to broaden the conversation and make Hello PhD a podcast for scientists and the people who love them.  Thank you!

References:

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett

NIH Report on Biomedical Training

009: Research and Prelims and Quals, Oh My!

It’s year two, and you’re just hitting your stride in the lab.  You’ve finally got classes behind you, so now it’s time to drop the books and make some magic at the bench, right!  Nope, now it’s time for prelims!

Will Work for Fish

dolphin by Niklas Morberg
It’s a metaphor, people. Dolphins rarely earn PhDs in captivity.

That perennial favorite of graduate training rears its ugly head in this week’s show.  Whether your department calls them prelims, quals, or something else, you know it as the dreaded “test” between you and your PhD candidacy.  Our question came from Katiria, who wrote:

Hello Joshua and Daniel,

Great Podcast! It is really fun to listen to it during the tedious bench work.  

I will be taking my prelim at some point this semester, and I was wondering how can I increase productivity. I want to have data, but I need to read a lot. At the same time, I need to focus in the parts of the projects that are producing. It seems overwhelming at times. How did you do it?

Katiria

We take a few minutes to consider the somewhat dubious value of the modern preliminary exam, and think about some better options for testing a student’s readiness.  But in the end, we give Katiria the advice she probably didn’t expect but definitely needs.

Tell us about your prelims!  Are they designed to “weed out” students, or is it a garden party?  Do you write a grant on your own project, or simply fill out a multiple choice questionnaire covering the first two years of classes?  We love a good horror story, so pass those along, too!

Galileo Finger-o (Magnifico-o-o-o-o)

Also this week, Josh finds deep scientific meaning in Galileo’s time under house arrest, and uncovers the final resting place of a couple of his fingers and teeth.  It’s that kind of hard-hitting scientific journalism you can only get from Hello PhD and/or Wikipedia (which is where we got it.)

galileo's final salute
This really redefines the phrase “Give ’em the finger!”

On the ethanol front, we sample Wetherburn’s Tavern Bristol Ale from Williamsburg, VA.  It’s a malty, hoppy voyage through history and back, with very little sense of direction.  

 

008: Fight for Your Right to #GradInsurance

Imagine waking up on a Friday morning, grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down to check your email.  What’s this?  A note from your employer stating that your healthcare coverage will expire in 13 hours and it’s up to you to find insurance.  Have a great day!  Hope you weren’t feeling pregnant!

#Mizzou #GradInsurance

gradinsurance

That scenario played out in real life for graduate students at the University of Missouri last week, when an email from the Associate Vice Chancellor stated that their health insurance subsidy would be cancelled immediately to comply with new rules in the Affordable Care Act (lovingly known as “Obamacare”).

The students took to Twitter, using #GradInsurance to raise awareness of their situation and pushing hard on the administration to explain, and reverse, their decision.  In this week’s show, we unfold the timeline, and talk to Rachel Zamzow (@RachelZamzow) a neuroscience graduate student affected by the change.  It’s a powerful story of students standing up for themselves and making a difference on campus.

Beer ghosts want #gradinsurance too!
Is this the ghost of Tank 7, or just a tissue that I drew a face on? Find out this fall on the new TV series “Ghosts I Think I Saw But I Was Drinking So Maybe I Imagined It.” Brought to you by The History Channel.

Don’t Cross the Streams!

Also in this episode, we talk about the explosive history of laparoscopic surgery, and we inadvertently attract poltergeists to the studio by drinking Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale from Boulevard Brewing.  We managed to capture photographic evidence of the specter before exorcising the sound board. Spooky!

ghost

Resources

The initial announcement of cancelled insurance
The Twitter fire that ensued
The students’ formal statement of demands
The reversal
Audio of Chancellor Loftin credit Geoff West of The Missourian
University of Missouri’s Graduate Professional Council