98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

WK 50

Getting though the Postdoctoral Phase to an Academic Job

Postdoctoral positions have now become nearly prerequisite of academic careers in ecology, yet remain one of the most nebulous career stages. Postdocs face a suite of concerns (e.g., time management, balancing projects, mentoring, job applications and negotiations), while often falling through the cracks on issues such as funding (e.g., no longer receiving student discounts, yet not having their own grants to help defray conference and publication costs). Furthermore, the short-term nature and variety of formats of postdoctoral appointments make it difficult to establish unified support schemes and can lead to the feeling of a postdoc “holding pattern”. This workshop will focus on developing solutions to issues that arise in the transition from graduate school to professorship via the postdoc stage. It will start with short presentations by ~3 panelists with extensive experience with postdoc issues. The bulk of time (45min) will be spent in smaller group brainstorm sessions, guided by specific topics solicited beforehand (e.g., via Ecolog). Each group discussion will be moderated to focus on identifying concrete strategies to improve support for postdocs within ESA, and to avoid the airing of grievances that can dominate discussions of postdoc employment. The workshop will close with a compilation of the ideas developed by each group. The findings of the workshop will be written up and publicly distributed (e.g., in the ESA Bulletin). Additional outcomes may include the creation of an ESA postdoctoral group, and workshops/sessions at future ESA meetings that specifically target those needs raised in this workshop.