Abstract
Background: As more early career scientists enter into diverse career pathways, visiting local companies or organizations can support their exploration of these paths. As an efficient way to facilitate this, we developed a collaborative regional site visit program: the Enhancing Local Industry Transitions through Exploration (ELITE) Consortium. Consortium members arrange half-day visits to local industry sites, thus providing companies and trainees the opportunity to meet and identify potential professional and career opportunities. Three different training institutions worked cooperatively in the development and maintenance of the program. The ELITE Consortium was developed with eight phased steps; guidelines and operating procedures were created for each of these steps and are provided along with sample materials for institutions interested in building similar programs. Methods: Prior to fully developing the program, trainee interests were evaluated via questionnaire. During program implementation and thereafter, program directors tracked attendance and collected career outcome data from publicly available sources to identify first job positions after training. Regression analyses and chi-squared analyses were used to examine site visit matches and career outcome data. Results: Analyses suggest a positive impact of site visits on postdoctoral and graduate trainees' career outcomes at companies or institutions that match a similar sector (e.g., for-profit) and type (e.g., biotech, pharmaceutical, contract research organization). Despite a small sample size, evidence suggests an especially positive impact on trainees who organize site visits to companies compared with those who simply participate. Conclusions: The ELITE Consortium was successful in helping trainees explore and identify a multitude of career paths. Trainees attained employment either directly or in related companies and institutions visited by ELITE participants. The joint, three-institution, flexible nature of the ELITE Consortium positively impacts the program's sustainability and reach. The toolkit provided here will help other institutions to replicate and adapt the program with minimal effort.
Highlights
It is widely known that the number of tenure-track positions remains relatively flat while the number of PhD-holders increases (National Institutes of Health [NIH], 2012)—meaning many individuals will enter into other types of careers beyond faculty positions (Stayart et al, 2020)
Building directly upon the Massachusetts and Berkeley industry site visit program models, here we describe a variation on an industry site visit program that is a joint effort between three institutions: the NIEHS’ Office of Fellows’ Career Development (OFCD), the Duke University Office of Postdoctoral Services, and the Training Initiatives in Biomedical & Biological Sciences (TIBBS) at UNC
We describe the preliminary career outcomes of Enhancing L ocal Industry Transitions through Exploration (ELITE) consortium participants in an effort to determine whether the program impacted their career decisions and outcomes
Summary
It is widely known that the number of tenure-track positions remains relatively flat while the number of PhD-holders increases (National Institutes of Health [NIH], 2012)—meaning many individuals will enter into other types of careers beyond faculty positions (Stayart et al, 2020). Preparing students and postdocs for such careers can take on many forms, and one example is through company site visits While this has long been common practice in the professional degree-seeking communities and for undergraduate students (e.g., business, engineering; see Velez & Giner, 2015 and Carbone et al, 2020 for reviews), PhD-level trainees in the scientific research training community ( in STEM and the biosciences) have had limited applications of this learning model until recently. To address this gap in career preparation, experiential learning has recently been applied more broadly in graduate education (Schnoes et al, 2018; Van Wart et al, 2020).
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