BPCNewsletter, Spring 2016 4
too. She explained the vicious “career development cycle” and highlighted that one must be cognizant of their own desires and goals in life, pursue what they are passionate about, explore possibilities and make informed decisions.
Themes – Building Leadership, Growing Skillsets
This year’s meeting put specific emphasis on different skill sets necessary for our postdoctoral population. It is common knowledge that funding is tight, and it is extremely challenging to get an academic or a non-academic job after a postdoc. As such, postdocs must make every effort to expand their skill set from lab to beyond. This was reflected well through the different plenary talks. The first plenary session covered “Fostering Leadership During Your Postdoc Years and Beyond.” Patrik Brundin highlighted “bleak career opportunities, poor job security, decreased access to funding” for postdocs. Elizabeth Travis further added the need for leadership training for our postdocs. She said, “postdocs need a job, and group leaders want a high performing postdoc.” She went on to discuss characteristics of a leader, what leadership training entails, and developing your own leadership style. Finally, Jabbar Bennett gave an engaging talk on how to employ personal strategies for success .
Paula Chambers discusses the "branching pipeline" in her keynote address at the 2016 National Postdoctoral Association Meeting.
(Image Credit: Amita Bansal)
Penn and CHOP's three postdoc representatives at the 2016 National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) Meeting: L-R Doreen Becker, Amita Bansal, and Zenobia Cofer.
Left: The Penn postdoc team leads a workshop on developing orientation programs for international postdoctoral researchers in the U.S. The ideas generated from this workshop will be compiled as a guide for creating orientation programs that will be made available to the postdoc community. Right: A plenary session on "Fostering Leaadership During Your Postdoc Years and Beyond." (Image Credits: Amita Bansal and Doreen Becker)