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Careers in Science and Engineering
A Student Planning Guide to Grad School and Beyond
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING
INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C.
1996
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National Academy Press
2101 Constitution Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20418
NOTICE: This volume was produced as part of a project approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. It is a result of work done by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) as augmented, which has authorized its release to the public. This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by COSEPUP and the Report Review Committee.
Financial Support: The development of this guide was supported by the Arthur L. Day Fund of the National Academy of Sciences. Support for the dissemination of this guide was provided by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Shell Oil Company Foundation, Glaxo Wellcome Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Philips Research, and the following disciplinary societies: American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Mathematical Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, American Sociological Association, American Association of Medical Colleges, American Psychological Association, American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, American Society for Cell Biology, American Astronomical Society, National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Science and Engineering, American Geological Institute, Sigma Xi, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the American Society for Microbiology, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, and the American Physical Society.
Internet Access: This report is available on the National Academy of Sciences' Internet host. It may be accessed via World Wide Web at www.nas.edu, via Gopher at gopher.nas.edu, or via FTP at ftp.nas.edu.
Copyright 1996 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. This document may be reproduced solely for educational purposes without the written permission of the National Academy of Sciences.
Cover illustration by Leigh Coriale.
Printed in the United States of America
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND PUBLIC POLICY
PHILLIP A. GRIFFITHS (Chair), Director,
Institute for Advanced Study
BRUCE M. ALBERTS,* President,
National Academy of Sciences
WILLIAM F. BRINKMAN, Vice President,
Physical Sciences Research, AT&T Bell Laboratories
DAVID R. CHALLONER, Vice President of Health Affairs,
University of Florida
ELLIS B. COWLING, University Distinguished Professor At-Large,
North Carolina State University
GERALD P. DINNEEN, Retired Vice President,
Science and Technology, Honeywell, Inc.
ALEXANDER H. FLAX, Consultant,
Potomac, Maryland
RALPH E. GOMORY, President,
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
M.R.C. GREENWOOD, Dean,
Graduate Studies, and
Vice Provost,
Academic Outreach, University of California, Davis
RUBY P. HEARN, Vice President,
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
MARIAN KOSHLAND, Professor of Immunology,
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley
THOMAS D. LARSON, Consultant,
Lemont, Pennsylvania
HAROLD LIEBOWITZ,* President,
National Academy of Engineering
DANIEL L. McFADDEN, Director,
Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
MARY J. OSBORN, Head,
Department of Microbiology, University of Connecticut Health Center
KENNETH I. SHINE,* President,
Institute of Medicine
MORRIS TANENBAUM, Vice President,
National Academy of Engineering
WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lucy Flower University Professor of Sociology and Public Policy,
University of Chicago
LAWRENCE E. McCRAY, Executive Director
*
Ex officio member.
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PROJECT GUIDANCE GROUP
ARDEN L. BEMENT (Chair), Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor of Engineering,
Purdue University
DAVID R. CHALLONER, Vice President for Health Affairs,
University of Florida
ELLIS B. COWLING, University Distinguished Professor At-Large,
North Carolina State University
GERALD P. DINNEEN, Retired Vice President,
Science and Technology, Honeywell, Inc.
PHILLIP A. GRIFFITHS, Director,
Institute for Advanced Study
RUBY P. HEARN, Vice President,
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
PHILLIP A. SHARP, Head,
Department of Biology, Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Principal Project Staff
DEBORAH D. STINE, Associate Director for Special Projects
TAMAE M. WONG, Senior Program Officer
ALAN ANDERSON, Consultant-Writer
NORMAN GROSSBLATT, Editor
PATRICK P. SEVCIK, Project Assistant
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The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Under the authority of the charter granted to it by Congress in 1863, the Academy has a working mandate that calls on it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts is president of the NAS.
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) was established in 1964, under the charter of the NAS, as a parallel organization of distinguished engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of members, sharing with the NAS its responsibilities for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Harold Liebowitz is president of the NAE.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) was established in 1970 by the NAS to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the NAS in its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, on its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the IOM.
The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) is a joint committee of the NAS, the NAE, and the IOM. It includes current and former members of the councils of all three bodies.
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Preface
This guide is intended to help upper-division undergraduate and graduate students in science, engineering, and mathematics to make career and educational choices.
Although it is understandable that students, particularly at the graduate level, identify with their faculty mentors and often aspire to academic research careers, education in science and engineering can be extremely valuable for a wide variety of career opportunities. Some of those careers involve direct participation in science or engineering—for example, as a chemist or engineer in industry or as a professional who performs research and development. Many others involve using a science and engineering background. For example, one might teach about science and engineering in schools or through the media or provide advice or develop policies on matters relevant to science or engineering. Each of these activities is a legitimate and valuable use of a science or engineering background.
We need not focus on the doing of science and engineering as the only appropriate sequel to advanced study. To do so implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) has the effect of de-
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valuing other career goals and excluding potentially important experiences from our education programs. The report Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers (1995), by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and Institute of Medicine (IOM), demonstrates that students need flexible career preparation and urges a re-evaluation of graduate education so that it will prepare students better for productive careers. Discussions during the preparation and dissemination of that report indicated the need for a guide designed specifically to help students to plan their educational and professional careers. This guide is a result of those discussions. It seeks to assist students in taking a much broader view of the potential applications of their science and engineering education.
It is supplemented by the Internet Career Planning Center For Beginning Scientists and Engineers, which can be reached via the Academies' homepage at http://www2.nas.edu/cpc. At this online career-planning center, students will find up-to-date guidance and information, including a bulletin board where they can ask questions and seek advice about their education or career, a one-on-one mentoring program, lists of specific employment opportunities, education and career analysis focused on students' questions, and sources of more discipline- and occupation-specific information. An online version of this guide can also be obtained at the center.
Which Sections Are For You?
Different parts of this student guide will help students at different stages of their career and education. You might
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want to skip through the guide to sections that are most relevant to you.
Secondary-school students and undecided undergraduates can use the guide to help them to understand careers in science and engineering and to find practical tips on how to proceed.
Undergraduate students currently studying science and engineering can use this guide to decide what careers they are interested in pursuing (Chapter 2), evaluate their skills and attributes (Chapter 3), and determine whether they need additional graduate education or a professional education. If they decide to pursue graduate education in science or engineering, Chapter 4 will help them to select a graduate school and major.
Beginning graduate students will have made many of the educational choices described in Chapter 4, but the material on advisors, research topics, achieving breadth, and ensuring progress should be of interest.
Chapters 2, 3, and 5 will also be of use for more-experienced students. Like those who are approaching the end of their undergraduate education, students approaching the end of their graduate studies will want to evaluate their careers and their personal skills and attributes as they decide what to do during the next stage of their lives. Some students will be interested in pursuing a career immediately; others will want additional graduate or professional education or post-doctoral appointments.
Students who have already chosen their careers might still find this guide valuable. The guide emphasizes personal flexibility and broad education. It also provides sources of information that students can use in evaluating the potential job market in a chosen area. A sizable fraction of even
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the most dedicated students will not necessarily find a career in their chosen occupation and should be prepared to look elsewhere.
The guide also seeks to be helpful to those who administer graduate programs and to faculty members and others who advise students. Graduate students need more and better information about careers, and faculty advisers can play an important role in supplying it.
Although this guide is brief and informal, it is designed to be useful throughout your career. The information in it should be relevant to students interested not only in research careers, but in other science-oriented careers as well.
Where Do the Information and Guidance Come From?
The content of this guide was shaped by information gathered from focus groups and surveys of students and postdoctoral appointees. The surveys revealed students' desire for additional help in answering such questions as the following:
Should I go to graduate school, and where?
Where can I get advice about different disciplines?
What type of experience should I obtain beyond my formal classwork?
What classes should I take outside my major?
Should I stop at the master's level or pursue a PhD?
What should be the relationship between me and my research adviser?
How my career goals affect my choice of thesis topic?
What nonresearch skills do I need, and how do I attain them?
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Is a postdoctoral experience desirable for me?
How much salary will I make when I graduate? Is it worth the investment in time and opportunity cost?
Students also expressed a need for career guidance information on
Identifying careers.
Educational requirements for various careers.
Off-campus and postgraduate research and education (extramural programs).
Skills and attributes that could improve employment options.
Addressing issues like these is fundamental to a satisfying professional career. In these pages, we encourage students to seek help from peers, friends, advisers, and many other sources in planning a career in science and engineering. It is true that you, the student, are finally responsible for shaping your own career, but your success is largely a product of the abundance and accuracy of career information and the guidance of those familiar with the world beyond graduate school.
Preparation of this guide, a companion publication to COSEPUP's other student guide, On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research (1995), was overseen by a guidance group consisting of Arden Bement (chair), David Challoner, Ellis Cowling, Ralph Gomory, M.R.C. Greenwood, Phillip Griffiths, Ruby Hearn, Gerald Dinneen, and Phillip Sharp. The group was aided by early reviews of its guide by an external advisory group consisting of graduate students and professors, members of science and engineering disciplinary societies and organizations, and focus groups of gradu-
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In addition, the committee thanks the students of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, the University of California, Irvine, and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who participated in focus-group sessions and students at Yale University and Florida State University who commented on early drafts. All provided invaluable suggestions on earlier drafts of the guide.
Special thanks also go to the individuals who agreed to be profiled in this report: Carol Balfe, Mary Carol Day, Bill Edge, Mark Ferrari, Diana Garcia-Prichard, Russell Greig, Steve Hays, Janice Hicks, Patricia Hoben, Toby Horn, Resha Putzrath, Rochelle Seide, and Shankar Vedantam.
Finally, the committee thanks its able staff: Deborah Stine, who managed the project, developed background for Chapter 4, and ran the focus groups on the guide; Alan Anderson, science writer, whose help in drafting this guide was invaluable; Tamae Maeda Wong, who developed the background text for Chapter 2 and the profiles; Norman Grossblatt, who edited the report; and Patrick Sevcik, who provided administrative support.
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A Note on Using this Guide
One theme of this guide is that those studying science and engineering need more information about planning careers than is readily available to them. You need to know more about resources, about what your predecessors have done, and about how to match your own skills and personality to a given career.
In addition to the regular text, this guide offers a variety of learning tools: a series of brief profiles of scientists and engineers, some hypothetical scenarios that illustrate challenges that you might encounter in making decisions about your educational or professional life, and end-of-chapter action points that should be reviewed periodically as you move through the guide.
In the profiles, you might notice that we do not emphasize ''traditional" careers—those of scientists and engineers who follow the trajectory of their early work in research positions at universities, industrial laboratories, or government laboratories. One example of a traditional track is the scientist who joins and remains with a single university as
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an instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor. In fact, only a minority of scientists and engineers follow such paths. Most of the profiles are designed to illustrate the many ways in which scientists and engineers seize new opportunities that shift their careers onto new and unexpected paths. Few of the professionals who are profiled knew during graduate school what they would be doing today. They share a degree of flexibility, breadth, and social skills that allowed them to take advantage of new opportunities.
The scenarios present common dilemmas encountered by graduate students at different stages of their careers. Each dilemma is followed by questions that can serve as the basis of informal discussion or individual pondering. Further discussion of each issue is offered in Appendix A.
Those tools, and the guide itself, are designed for use in many different settings, including
Undergraduate or graduate courses in science and engineering.
University or other career-counseling offices.
Job fairs and conventions.
Student discussion or support groups.
Professional-society meetings.
University orientation sessions.
Faculty adviser-student meetings.
Information interviews.
A useful format in any of these situations is a panel discussion involving several researchers who are at different stages of their careers—for example, an undergraduate, a graduate student, a postdoctoral fellow, a junior faculty member, and a senior faculty member. In addition, repre-
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sentatives of industry, business, or government can add perspective for students who might have little understanding of nonacademic careers.
Most important, we hope to stimulate discussion of a topic that receives insufficient attention. It is our hope that all those who teach, advise, and employ scientists and engineers will become more aware of their responsibilities in guiding students. When young scientists and engineers make good choices about their careers, they contribute more to a society increasingly dependent on their education and skills.
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Contents
1
What Are Your Career Goals?
1
Action Points
7
2
How Can You Meet Your Career Goals?
9
Envisioning a Career
9
Planning a Career
10
How Careers in Science and Engineering Are Changing
11
The Case of the PhD
13
Evaluating Possible Careers
16
Tempo and Environment
17
Relating Your Education to Your Occupation
18
Personal Values and Your Occupation
21
Evaluating an Occupation
21
Evaluating Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses
25
Action Points
28
3
What Survival Skills And Personal Attributes Do You Need To Succeed?
29
What Are Skills and Attributes?
29
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Communication Skills
35
Teaching Skills
38
Mentoring Skills
41
Team Skills
42
Leadership Skills
43
Action Points
45
4
What Education Do You Need To Reach Your Career Goals?
47
The Undergraduate Years
47
Decisions About Graduate School
49
Deciding Whether To Attend Graduate School
49
Deciding When To Attend Graduate School
53
Deciding Where To Attend Graduate School
58
Graduate School
62
Choosing a Degree
66
Choosing an Adviser
69
The Adviser-Student Relationship
73
Choosing a Research Topic
75
Achieving Breadth
77
Ensuring Steady Progress
81
Postdoctoral Study
82
Some Tips for Foreign Students
85
After School, What Next?
86
Action Points
88
5
How Do You Get The Job That Is Right For You?
91
Finding a Job
91
Interviewing for a Job
97
Finding a Job is Hard Work
100
Career Changes
103
Action Points
106
6
The Responsibility Is Yours
109
Action Points
111
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Bibliography
113
Appendix A
Discussion Of Scenarios
123
Appendix B
Skills And Attributes That Contribute To Success In Science Or Engineering
131
Scenarios
Approaching a Career
2
Evaluating Yourself
22
Communication Skills
36
Team Skills
43
Deciding Whether to Attend Graduate School
50
Choosing a Degree
67
The Adviser-Student Relationship
74
Choosing a Research Topic
76
Finding a Job
92
Career Changes
104
Profiles
How does a Geneticist/Molecular Biologist Get to be a Patent Lawyer?
3
How does a Chemical Engineer Get to be a Building Designer?
19
How does a Mathematics Major Get to be an Actuary?
23
How does a Chemistry Major Get to be a Professor?
31
How does a Physicist Get to be a Financial Researcher?
39
How does an Electronics Engineer Get to be a Science Journalist?
51
How does a Molecular Biologist Get to be a Science Policy Adviser?
55
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How does a High School Chemistry Teacher Get to be a Research Chemist and then an Educational Consultant?
63
How does a Nuclear Engineer Get to be a Therapeutic Radiation Physicist?
71
How does a Nurse Get to be a Research Manager?
79
How does a Research Biologist Get to be a High School Teacher?
95
How does a Physicist Get to do Toxicology and Risk Assessment?
101
How does an Experimental Psychologist Get to be a Human Factors Specialist?
105
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