Nontraditional Career Paths Research Articles

An exploratory study on career models and mechanisms of career advancement of Emirati women managers

PurposeThis study uses a Kaleidoscope Career (KC) approach to explore how UAE women managers experience their careers, the advancement in management and the career models they encounter.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs an interpretative phenomenological approach to analyse in-depth face-to-face interviews with 22 Emirati women in middle and senior management positions across various industries in both the public and private sectors.FindingsThis research is significant in uncovering career advancement mechanisms and three career models: “my life is not elsewhere,” “seizing opportunities” and “wholehearted dedication to the country.” These models highlight women managers' pivotal role in UAE's economic development.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is confined to a convenience sample of women managers from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. While not fully representative of all local women, the findings on career advancement mechanisms and Emirati women managers' non-traditional career paths hold theoretical significance. The results challenge the uncritical adoption of Western career models, highlighting the need to consider alternative career models and advancement mechanisms.Practical implicationsThis research expands the authors' knowledge of career advancement mechanisms and models experienced by Emirati women, offering insights for enhancing gender equality in Arab world managerial roles.Originality/valueThese findings open new research avenues to explore Emirati women's careers beyond the largest Emirates and assess their broader economic and societal contributions.

Nurse and firefighter.

The first female Chief of the Toledo Fire and Rescue Department is also an RN. Medical calls exceed firefighting calls to fire and rescue departments nationwide. This article highlights her nursing and firefighting career to inspire other nurses toward this and other nontraditional career paths.

Measuring the immediate impact when first year pharmacy students are introduced to diverse career pathways

Background and PurposeTo assess if exposure to diverse pharmacy career pathways influences the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) student's career plans within the first month of an academic curriculum. Educational Activity and SettingFirst year PharmD students were enrolled in a four-week course with a focus on introduction to core practice areas of pharmacy: community, hospital, and managed care. Guidance was provided with resources and a pharmacist panel to aid in both self-learning and direct sharing about diverse areas of pharmacy practice extending beyond the core course practice areas. A survey was given at the beginning and at the end of the course to measure the influence of course activities on first year students' aspirations for varied pharmacy careers. All students completed the survey but needed to opt into the research for data to be collected. Chi-square, Fisher's Exact Test, and descriptive statistics were used in data analysis. FindingsIn this study of 508 first year pharmacy students, we found that 50.8% reported a change in their pharmacy career plans at the end of the course. Student interest in non-traditional career paths increased from 38.2% at the beginning of the course to 47.6% at the end of the course. As a result, students reported that they would select different electives (P < .001), pursue different pharmacy organizations (P = .0003), and explore new internship opportunities (P < .001). Overall, 98% found the course introduced them to pharmacy career paths they were previously unaware existed. SummaryEarly exposure to diverse pharmacy career pathways influences students' career plans.

Habitus and practice: social reproduction and trajectory in outdoor education and higher education

ABSTRACT This research aims to address the paucity of research exploring the impact of formative experiences shaping the trajectory of young people entering higher education outdoor education programmes. Ten participants (n=10) were recruited from a college outdoor education programme this consisted of 6 male (n=6) age range 18–26 and 4 Females (n=4) age range, 18–27. The research followed a constructivist emergent approach. Semi-structured schedule guided the interviews but was open to emerging issues and involved a reflexive process where habitus became a tool around which to organise the research and the analysis. Two main themes emerged from the analysis: ‘Gender, identity and formative experience’ and ‘Capital and access to the cultural field’. For ‘Gender, identity and formative experience’ there were sub themes: ‘Masculinity, identity and place’; ‘Femininity, identity and social space’; Challenging the gendered orthodoxy’ and Women managing their identities’. ‘Capital and access to the social field’ deals with access to the cultural field of higher education and outdoor education. For the young men early experiences in the family establishes the masculine orthodoxy and cultural capital valued by the cultural field. Women provide a complex and contradictory accounts of their identity construction. Challenging the gendered orthodoxy often comes with a cost to their feminine capital and status. ‘Capital and access to the social field’ deals with access to the cultural field of higher education and outdoor education. Students from non-traditional backgrounds develop strategies based on their previous experiences to negotiate their learning identities. Students from traditional backgrounds are responsive to emerging opportunities where families provide optimal conditions for their seamless transition to higher education. Women have made gains in non-traditional career paths such as outdoor education but they are still subject to structural, institutional and gendered power relations shaping their career trajectories.

Gender imbalance in the genetic counseling profession: An Australasian perspective.

Gender imbalance exists in the genetic counseling profession, with approximately 95% of genetic counselors identifying as female. Genetic counseling programs in Australia have increased the proportion of male student enrolments in recent years, although this is yet to have an impact on gender balance in the profession more broadly. While significant resources have been allocated to improving female representation in traditionally male professions, there has not been a reciprocal movement of men into traditionally female professions. The lower status awarded to traditionally female roles creates a disincentive for men to choose non-traditional career paths. Although genetic counselors have expertise in both genetics and counseling, the profession is viewed as a predominantly helping profession and therefore 'women's work'. Men who work in traditionally female roles report role strain and stereotyping, which affect experiences at work and challenge personal identities. Male advantage is also documented, especially with respect to salary. There remains a lack of understanding of the effect of gender imbalance on aspects of patient care, genetic counselor training and education, and genetic counseling research.

P77 Evaluation of “Deciding on a Nontraditional Career Path: Networking Nutrition Students with Professionals”

<h3>Objective</h3> To evaluate the effectiveness of a seminar featuring a variety of nontraditional career opportunities available for nutrition majors. <h3>Use of Theory or Research</h3> Social Learning Theory suggests that individuals learn from observing others (models). Alumni can be models for students. <h3>Target Audience</h3> Undergraduate and graduate nutrition majors. <h3>Program Description</h3> Since many students are only exposed to traditional careers in hospital, community and food service settings as part of curriculum, nutrition faculty sought to expand students' perceptions of the nutrition field by highlighting nontraditional careers. Four alumni representing nontraditional careers in government, higher education, international work and business/website design were chosen to speak at a virtual panel. Each alumnus described their education/training, career path, lessons learned and words of wisdom. Prior to the program, a pre-event slideshow featured an additional 27 nutrition alumni in nontraditional careers including public relations, food policy, media, medicine, management and more. <h3>Evaluation Methods</h3> An IRB-approved survey was sent to participants via email immediately following the seminar. Before distribution, face validity and content were confirmed. <h3>Results</h3> Of the 203 seminar participants, 84% (n = 171) were students and 51% (n = 88) of the students completed the post-seminar survey. Of those responding, 87% (n = 77) were female, 78% (n = 69) were White and 91% (n = 80) were in a nutrition major. Of the 80 nutrition majors who finished the survey, 99% (n = 79) indicated they learned about new careers through the seminar and 96% (n = 77) stated they learned of resources to pursue a nontraditional career. Almost all, 95% (n = 76) responded their knowledge regarding the benefits of networking improved and 96% (n = 77) believed their knowledge of the role of nutrition professionals in nontraditional careers increased. <h3>Conclusion</h3> A seminar featuring alumni can be an effective way for faculty to expose students to nontraditional career options, the importance of networking and resources to navigate their future careers.

Journey From Veterinary Medicine to Medical Writing

Being a veterinarian and medical writer is a unique, if somewhat unexpected, combination of professional skills. I say unexpected because many people view veterinarians as being only in private practice, treating everything from dogs to pot-bellied pigs. The overwhelming majority of veterinarians are in private practice, so it’s not surprising that “veterinarian” and “writer” uncommonly appear in the same sentence. When I was veterinary school, nontraditional career paths for veterinarians beyond academia or the public sector were not widely discussed. I didn’t learn about medical writing until several months after I earned my veterinary degree. Fast forward to today, with 8 years of medical writing and 4 years of freelance medical writing under my belt. Although my path to and within medical writing has been circuitous, I am fortunate that I have been able to combine my veterinary training and love of writing into a rewarding career. What I’ve learned about myself and the medical writing profession can help other veterinarians who are contemplating making the professional leap into medical writing.

Stepping down to step forward.

It was nearly 20 years ago, but I remember the day clearly. I sat down and wrote a letter resigning from my faculty position in Turkey. “I have been subjected to injustices,” I wrote in Turkish. “I want to resign from my duty as of 17 September 2001.” I had spent the preceding 5 years fighting for the pay raise that I was owed when I was promoted to associate professor. University administrators argued that I hadn't completed my military service, and the dispute eventually went to court. I was fed up, so my wife and I decided to make a new beginning—on the other side of the world. > “I'm glad that I took a risk to rebuild my career from scratch in another country.” After completing my Ph.D. in the United Kingdom, I had returned to my home country—Turkey—to fulfill the conditions of a scholarship that I received to study abroad. As the first person in my family to attend a university, I was looking forward to serving as an educator and academic leader in the place where I was raised; I wanted to make a difference. Within a few months, I was appointed to a tenure-track faculty position, and I began to teach courses and ramp up my research lab. My career seemed to be sailing along until the salary dispute. I no longer felt valued by my university, which made it hard to stay motivated. But I carried on with my research, at one point attending a conference in Colombia. There I met a professor from an Australian university who shared many of my research interests, and we stayed in touch. Over the next few years, we swapped occasional emails. Then one day, he wrote to offer me a postdoc position in his lab. The rank was well below my position; at that point, I was 6 months away from being eligible to apply for a promotion to full professor. But the position in Australia offered me a chance to get out of my work situation in Turkey, which was making me profoundly unhappy, so I took it seriously. My wife liked the idea of moving to Australia. We had one small child at the time—with plans to have another—and she thought we'd have better opportunities to raise our family there. So, with her encouragement, I took a leave of absence from my faculty position to do a reconnaissance trip to Australia. Before I left, I typed out a resignation letter, signed a printed copy, and gave it to my wife for safekeeping. After a month, it was clear to me that we'd enjoy living in Australia and that it was the right career move for me. My wife agreed. So she put my letter in the mail; our decision was final. When I look back now, I realize what a daring decision that was—for both of us. My wife couldn't speak a word of English and, as a trained lawyer, couldn't practice her profession in Australia, which has a very different legal system. It was hard for us to say goodbye to our relatives in Turkey. Our finances also tightened. The cross-continent move was expensive, and my postdoc salary was our only source of income in Australia. But we never looked back with regret. My wife quickly became proficient in English and eventually went back to school part-time to study accounting. And I've been much happier professionally. I left my legal disputes behind and got a chance to work with supportive colleagues on a research project that I was excited about. My postdoc adviser also entrusted me with co-supervising some of his Ph.D. students, which made me feel as though my expertise was valued. When I quit my faculty position in Turkey, I was hopeful that I could work my way back up the academic ladder. And, indeed, that's what happened: After 2.5 years, I secured a tenure-track job at another university in Australia, which is where I am now. I hope that others can gain inspiration from my nontraditional career path. It was devastating when my professional life appeared to crumble. But that challenge set me on a new path, one that has led to a productive and enjoyable career. I'm glad I took a risk to rebuild my career from scratch in another country—and that my wife was excited to make a change along with me. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”

In Pursuit of Careers in the Professoriate or Beyond the Professoriate: What Matters to Doctoral Students When Making a Career Choice?

Aim/Purpose: This qualitative study was conducted to illuminate the under-researched aspect of doctoral students’ career decision-making by examining their internal cognitive processes based on the Cognitive Information Processing (CIP) theory. Specifically, this study compared doctoral students’ career decision-making from two career groups, those pursuing the professoriate versus those pursuing careers beyond the professoriate. Background: Due to PhD workforce supply-demand imbalances in academic job markets and to a growing interest in careers outside academia around the world, an increasing number of doctoral recipients have pursued careers beyond the professoriate, which are considered non-traditional career paths in doctoral education. While a growing number of studies have investigated these changing trends, it remains limited to fully capture more introspective domains of the career choice processes. Given that the career decision-making experience is highly individualized, it is critical to explore doctorate students’ own narratives about career decision-making. Methodology: Individual structured interviews were conducted with 30 doctoral students from a public research-oriented university in the United States. Employing Directed Content Analysis, two researchers developed the initial coding categories based on the guiding theory, CIP theory, and deductively analyzed the data to identify emerging major themes. Contribution: Findings from the study highlight the core factors that influence doctoral students’ career choices across fields, which allows developing centralized career resources and support systems at the institutional level. Specifically, findings pointed to different approaches for doctoral students to (re-)assess their career choice while providing implications for institutions, academic departments, and individual stakeholders such as faculty advisor and doctoral students, to develop systematic career support in this changing academic job market. Findings: Data analysis uncovered three core factors impacting doctoral students’ career decision making, which are (1) roles of the first-hand experience in career confirmation/shift; (2) dissimilar career readiness status by group; and (3) impact of personal career values. Recommendations for Practitioners: Both institutions and academic departments could reassess the culture and value of career development and refine co-curricular activities to offer adequate professional development opportunities in doctoral training to develop career support systems aligned with students’ diversified career needs and interests. As time and first-hand experiences are identified as critical factors facilitating their career progress, doctoral students may want to proactively seek diverse opportunities to gain first-hand experience in and outside campus. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers could continue similar research in other universities and countries where similar concerns exist. These studies would help fully clarify common influential factors on career choices of doctoral students across fields. Impact on Society: Considering the realities of doctoral students’ diversified career interests and career outcomes, institutes of higher education should make intentional efforts to broaden the definition of “successful” PhD career outcomes, which ultimately helps break the prevailing myth that doctoral students or recipients who pursue careers beyond the professoriate, called nontraditional or alternative career paths, are considered as failures or incompetent. Future Research: Future research should consider examining diverse doctoral student populations such as early-stage doctoral students to discover additional factors influencing their career decision-making. The authors also recommend cross-cultural studies in other countries where similar career concerns exist, such as the U.K. and the Netherlands, to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how doctoral students’ career decisions are made.

Reconceptualizing What and How Women Negotiate for Career Advancement

We propose a conceptual framework for expanding the scope of future research on the role of gender in career negotiations. Extant research on gender in career negotiations emphasizes women’s disadvantages relative to men in compensation negotiations. We present an inductive study of what and how women negotiate for career advancement and the attainment of leadership positions in organizations, drawing on data from diverse samples of negotiation accounts by senior executive, mid-level, and early career professionals from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and six world regions. Integrating insights from six studies, we propose a more comprehensive perspective on what men and women negotiate for career advancement, including their role development and work–family conflicts, as well as compensation. We also identify three distinct negotiating strategies—asking, bending, and shaping—that vary in the extent to which the negotiator conforms to, deviates from, or attempts to redefine organizational norms. Our analyses suggest that the choice of negotiating strategy has implications for men’s and women’s career progression, particularly for women’s navigation of nontraditional career paths and men’s and women’s leadership claiming. We suggest new directions for research on the role of negotiation in career advancement and in promoting and mitigating gender inequality in organizations.

Teaching Innovation and Creativity, or Teaching to the Test?

In a statement published in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education in 2012, Svensson and colleagues called for a number of changes to our academy. One of those changes was to “prepare students to be innovative and create nontraditional career paths.”[1][1] According to Merriam Webster

Preparing tomorrow’s behavioral medicine scientists and practitioners: a survey of future directions for education and training

Behavioral medicine training is due for an overhaul given the rapid evolution of the field, including a tight funding climate, changing job prospects, and new research and industry collaborations. The purpose of the present study was to collect responses from trainee and practicing members of a multidisciplinary professional society about their perceptions of behavioral medicine training and their suggestions for changes to training for future behavioral medicine scientists and practitioners. A total of 162 faculty and 110 students (total n=272) completed a web-based survey on strengths of their current training programs and ideas for changes. Using a mixed-methods approach, the survey findings are used to highlight seven key areas for improved preparation of the next generation of behavioral medicine scientists and practitioners, which are grant writing, interdisciplinary teamwork, advanced statistics and methods, evolving research program, publishable products from coursework, evolution and use of theory, and non-traditional career paths.

Nontraditional Careers for Doctoral-Level Practitioners.

The doctoral degree has traditionally been considered the path to teaching and research careers. The degree also provides a strong set of skills that can be applied in leadership roles in public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Numerous career options exist for public health education professionals with doctoral degrees outside of the teaching and research fields. This commentary discusses nontraditional career paths for professionals with doctoral degrees in public health. Three public health professionals describe why they chose to pursue a doctoral degree and how they applied their respective degrees to their work outside of the traditional academic and research areas.

Relationship between anticipatory socialization experiences and first-year veterinary students' career interests.

The purpose of this project was to explore first-year veterinary students' anticipatory socialization-life, education, and social experiences that assist in preparation for professional occupations-and determine what relationship exists between those experiences and career interests. Seventy-three first-year veterinary students enrolled in the Careers in Veterinary Medicine course completed the Veterinary Careers survey. Results show that students' anticipatory vocational socialization experiences are significantly related to their stated career interests. The career interests with the highest percentage of students expressing "a great deal of interest" included specialty private practice (37%), research and teaching in an academic setting (33%), and international veterinary medicine (31%). The career interests with the highest percentage of students expressing "no interest at all" included the military (50%), equine private practice (42%), and the pharmaceutical industry (41%). Less than half of the students (42%) stated that they reconsidered their career path after the first semester of veterinary school, but the majority (87%) developed a better understanding of how to pursue a nontraditional career path should they choose to do so.

The long and winding road: grades, psychological disengagement and motivation among female students in (non-)traditional career paths

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the links between grades, psychological disengagement mechanisms (discounting evaluative feedback and devaluing school), and motivation among female students in traditional and non-traditional career paths. We predicted that the association between grades and discounting is affected by the importance of the academic subject (mathematics or language arts) in one’s chosen career path. For example, we expected that poor grades in mathematics are more strongly connected with discounting among students in non-traditional career paths as compared to those in traditional ones. Moreover, we postulated that the relation between psychological disengagement mechanisms and motivation is modulated by the type of motivation (autonomous/non-autonomous) and one’s career path. As such, a stronger connection between discounting and non-autonomous motivation was hypothesized among students engaged in non-traditional fields as compared to those in traditional ones. This study was conducted among 236 female high school students projecting a career in either traditional or non-traditional domains. Results of multi-sample path analysis provide evidence that the assessment of the indirect course from grades to motivation via psychological disengagement must consider grades in specific academic subjects, one’s chosen career path and the source of motivation.

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership.

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership.

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership.

Call for Papers: Suicide Prevention, Nontraditional Career Paths, and Lessons of Leadership.