A colleague and close friend recently enumerated the vast number of SFN abstracts authored by neuroscientists at his institution. I’m not so sure that’s something to brag about. Your grandmother and my beagle can submit abstracts if they fill out the forms and pay the fee (actually it’s more complicated than this, but not much). They’re not peer reviewed.

But that brings up a good question: what are the appropriate metrics for success in the field? Peer reviewed papers in high impact journals? Sponsored research awards?

And another question: why can’t the SFN move towards a system for peer review of abstracts? They’d be worth a whole lot more consideration if there was some degree of selectivity.

Jim

How might the process that I’ve described in the last four posts be
improved?

For me, the answer to this question is shaped by my own perspective:
that of a director of a multidisciplinary institute. The process that
I’ve described (a general description that is not specific to any one
institution) is far too discipline-centric. Searches, as a result of
the academic politics involved, tend to hire individuals whose
scholarly interests lie at the point of a pin. An example: a
zebrafish neuroscientist who uses molecular biology to study
neurodevelopment or alternatively, a confocal imager who interested
in the cell biology of mitosis. While these hypothetical targeted
hires are actually very interesting, I would much prefer a more cross-
disciplinary hire: say a signal transduction cell biologist
interested in genes that may have facilitated the development of
language in humans.

How do we get there? For me the key is collaboration between units on
joint hires (faculty lines split between two or more units) and
search committees that reflect the diverse multidisciplinary
interests of those units. There is a problem here however: newly
hired faculty with homes in more than one unit tend to have
difficulty–for example promotion and tenure can be problematical, or
at the very least complicated.

And so perhaps we need to allow units which normally don’t grant
promotion and tenure (institutes for example) to begin to do so.

Just a thought….

Jim

Today we cover the offer itself. First, the usual caveat that the below is a description of the generalized process and is not specific to George Mason University.

Eventually, the search committee reaches consensus on a candidate to offer the tenure-line position to. Even at this point however, there is usually a back and forth up the academic chain of command on three key items: salary, space and set-up dollars. At times there is another component to be resolved: the fraction of the 9 month salary that the new faculty member is expected to support from grants. At some institutions, this last point even morphs into the fraction of the salary guaranteed by tenure.

When all of the above points are agreed to, a letter is composed that includes institutional legal boiler plate and that letter then constitutes the offer. It is typically time-limited and requires a written affirmation of acceptance from the putative new faculty scientist.

After receiving the letter, the individual who was previously a candidate, is now in a new position: negotiator. Very often the initial offer letter precipitates a back-and-forth process of negotiations (usually on the above key points of salary, space and set-up).

It is fascinating that many candidates actually forgo participating in this negotiating process and thus may give up obtaining key components of a package all in the passion of “closing the deal”. In my opinion, it’s during these negotiations that the candidate has the most power to affect the architecture of the eventual deal since a failed search is the bane of all search committees.

My final posting on academic searches will deal with ideas on how to improve the process.

Jim

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I remind readers that the below describes the process for an institution in general and does not specifically refer to the process at George Mason University.

As short-listed candidates are brought in for their job talks, a lot more goes on than just the job talk itself. Typically visits are booked for an entire day and involve individual meetings with departmental faculty members, the search committee as a whole, students and postdocs, the department chairman (or institute director) and now, more commonly, a mock class lecture.

Crucially, the search committee takes feedback from all interested parties into account (in addition to their own discussions). On occasion, intense negative input from faculty members and students not serving on the search committee can knock the leading scientific candidate out of contention.

Thus, the successful short-listed job candidate will need to successfully negotiate all of the above meetings in addition to having a knock-em dead job seminar in order to stay competitive for a position.

Ultimately however, the search committee (for scientific tenure-line jobs) is going to be looking at scientific substance (as measured by publications in high impact journals and grants) as the key criteria (even for junior positions such as assistant professor). A second important factor will be the potential for the candidate to successfully collaborate or at least interact with other members of the faculty. Finally, teaching is given consideration.

Following all of the visits of the short-listed candidates, the search committee convenes and ranks the applicants (typically using some of the above described criteria). Academic politics plays an important role at this crucial juncture since individual members of the search committee may represent a larger agenda or constituency at the discussion. Strange arguments may come into play (e.g.–she is too good for us–we have no chance to attract her to our department, hence lets offer the job to our second ranked applicant since he will definitely accept our offer…or alternatively: let’s offer the job to X because his startup package will be considerably less).

Which brings us to the topic of the offer itself. That will be covered in the next blog posting.

Jim

Once again: the caveat that I am describing a general institution, not necessarily the procedures of George Mason University.

A search committee consists of a group of tenure-line faculty members, one of whom is named chair. The composition of a search is typically the choice of either a department chair or dean, although in the case of decanal searches the provost sets the parameters. Typically, the search committee first reaches some consensus regarding the type of scientist they would like to ideally recruit. This amounts to a profile, although it can be quite general (e.g.–a top neuroscientist funded on an NIH RO1 grant with publications in journals like NEURON and NATURE NEUROSCIENCE).

The search committee’s next task is create an advertisement for the position based on the profile using carefully crafted language that meets the institutional requirements for equity and diversity while at the same time drawing in the best candidates. This content is then vetted by various institutional officials to make sure it complies in general with institutional policies and then the advert is placed–in general journals like SCIENCE, but also in more specialized venues on the internet. The committee may decide to review applications as they come in, or at some designated date.

The labor-intensive component of the search committee’s task occurs during the review of applications. In many cases, this amounts to a triage process, where the goal will be to invite the “A list” folks to campus for an interview and job talk. The “B-list” candidates typically are a fall-back position for the search committee while the “C-list” applicants are “triaged” out of the process.

The above process is often quite difficult because individuals on the committee may well have divergent opinions and/or agendas. For example, an individual member of the search committee may feel strongly that a less-than-stellar candidate make the B-list, simply because they know techniques or methods which might be advantageous to that committee member’s own research agenda.

Nevertheless, consensus is typically reached and a short list of candidates invited to campus. In the next posting, we’ll describe that part of the search.

Jim

This is the first of several posts on the process of academic searches. I’m going to be writing in the general case (that is, not specifically applicable to either the Krasnow Institute or George Mason University) although I’ll try to point out some of the unique aspects of how we fill positions here. I’m also going to limit the purview to academic searches for scientists, since that is what I really know something about.

Searches begin long before advertisements are places in SCIENCE or other venues. As much as a year before the first public sign that an institution is looking to fill a position, the process begins with what we call a faculty line (i.e. the position) either opening up through a vacancy or being newly allocated by the university administration to the unit. There is a tremendous amount of academic politics involved in just this initial stage. For an institution at a steady state period of its development, a vacancy offers the opportunity for budget relief and a newly allocated faculty line is often at the expense of a vacated line in some other academic unit of the university.

Sometimes faculty lines are allocated to units as compensation by the central administration for some other action entirely unrelated to the line itself.

Tenure-track faculty lines are the reserve currency of academic politics. For most universities, such lines are usually backed up by hard dollars–either from tuition, the endowment, or in the case of public institutions, the state government. Thus ultimately faculty lines represent base budget dollars for an academic unit.

For an institute for advanced study, like Krasnow, these faculty lines usually (but not always) reside within a separate unit from the Institute–and that academic unit becomes the primary academic home for the Krasnow Principal Investigator. Thus, our own search process is inherently collaborative.

Next post we’ll write about the search committee.

Jim

So I edit a marine biology journal. And I spend time every summer at
a marine biological laboratory–how does that square with leading an
institute that focuses on cognition? The answer to that question is
actually not as much of a stretch as one might think. Marine models
have been crucial for progress in neurobiology since mid-20th
century. The squid giant axon was the model for understanding the
basis of the action potential. The crustacean stomatogastric ganglion
has been a crucial for understanding the rules that allow for
compensation in neuronal networks. The sea slugs, Aplysia californica
and Hermissenda crassicornis, have helped us to get a handle on the
biophysics and molecular biology that underlie learning and memory.

Ultimately this type of research is based on the reasonable
assumption that the most important building blocks of neuronal
function have been conserved across phylogeny and the realization
that simple systems (such a slugs with brains that have 10,000
neurons instead of 100 billion) are often more amenable to
experimentation.

For me, this world of science first came alive in the late 1970’s
when I learned how to make intracellular recordings from the
photoreceptors of Hermissenda at Woods Hole. Observing the living
light response of a single cell was enough to pull me into a life of
science. At the same time, it introduced me into the world of
molecular signal transduction as I learned about a small, but very
important molecule called cyclic adenosine monophosphate.

But marine biology is a whole lot larger of a field than the
neurobiology that I’ve been writing about. Marine models are critical
for our understanding of such critical cellular processes as
fertilization, cell-cell recognition and mitosis. The molecular
motors that cells use to move needed components around were
discovered at Woods Hole (and a Nobel Prize awarded in consequence).
Lately the incredible species diversity of the Earth’s oceans–
something we knew very little about–was uncovered by the use of
genomics methodologies–also at Woods Hole.

I vividly recall my first graduate course: a semester’s introduction to
invertebrate zoology at Woods Hole in the Fall of 1978. It was during
that course that I learned (and experimented with) the very primitive
innate immune system of the sponge, Microciona prolifera. We would go
out and collect our experimental material from the local coastline
and then stay up late at night measuring the diameter of small sponge
colonies in different kinds of artificial sea water. That was very
different from working on Hermissenda’s neurons, but also enough to
direct me into a life of science.

Jim

Yesterday the Institute put on its fourth annual welcome lunch for
the incoming doctoral students in neuroscience. It was really
gratifying to see all of the new faces (and old) and especially to
see how nicely the program has grown over the years. We all ate
Domino’s Pizza and sipped soft drinks in the Krasnow Great Room. It’s
still too hot to picnic outside.

Jim

Scientific administrators have to fundraise. This hasn’t always been
true–at least not true in the sense that it is today. Thirty years
ago, it was enough for an institute director to hire the right
people, knowing that they would succeed in writing the right grants
which would drive the machine forward: perpetual motion.

The fact is that grant awards alone can’t drive an institute–for a
whole slew of reasons ranging from timing of awards to restrictions
on what grants will actually support.

Hence, the need for administrators to persuade donors (individuals
and foundations) to provide the resources needed to “mind the gaps”.

Ultimately this sort of fundraising requires both the building of a
trust relationship with the donor, but also an implicit argument for
the gift, that is based upon a simple proposition: both the needs of
the donor and the institute will be satisfied. Notice that I put the
needs of the donor first. That is because ultimately the gift (or
award) is a voluntary choice of the donor. In general individuals
(and foundations) only make such voluntary choices when their needs
(which can be all over the map) are met.

There are two other factors at work here: the first has to do with
science credibility above and beyond the existence of a trusting
relationship. Science credibility is measurable by many metrics
(publications, awards, other grant awards etc. ) and in general
donors require some external validation of any argument for a gift.
The second factor has to do with the recognition that ideally, the
needs of the donor become identified closely with the needs of the
institute. This latter takes time.

So time–the time to build that mapping between the needs of the
donor and the institute (we call that relationship cultivation) is
very important. Great fundraising programs aren’t built overnight.

Part of that cultivation process is the making of a case–the case
that the science is both excellent and of use (if not directly for
the donor, that definitely for humanity writ large). The scientific
administrator must communicate his or her passion for the science–
which as far as I can tell can’t be faked. And that only can happen
with superb science.

Thus: a chicken and egg problem.

Which is solved early on in an institute’s life either by seed money
or support from a founding entity such as a university.

Jim