Students’ Perspective on Scientific Training

Graphic Abstract

How should lab heads train their students and what is the role of degree-granting institutions in this process? Chua, Vandana, and Hsieh discuss the needs of graduate students and ways to cultivate purposeful, personalized mentee training in the lab.

Under intense pressure from institutions to churn out high-impact publications that result in greater funding opportunities, promotions, and accolades in research, lab heads frequently find themselves focusing on fast data production in lieu of thorough and personalized scientific training for their mentees. This can leave senior students with potentially strong publication records but little ability to translate their skills to their subsequent careers in academia or elsewhere. As a result, students may graduate with PhDs that are only beneficial on paper.

Although it is easy to blame lab heads for their misdirected focus, we believe it is the job of academic institutions to adjust promotion expectations and set purposeful criteria for ensuring proper scientific training of students in labs. Many institutions do not maintain explicit graduation criteria that incorporate training benchmarks like skill acquisition, scientific communication, mentorship, or leadership practice. It is the responsibility of degree-granting institutions to set reasonable publishing standards for faculty and regulate the training experience so that their students can optimally benefit from their degrees and be primed for success in their individual careers¹.

To better understand the specific needs of graduate students in their training, we asked several senior students in our program what they consider to be the most important aspects of scientific training.

Chloe Burnside, a 5th year student in the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Chemical Biology (TPCB) says, “Academic training at every level should take a more people-first approach. By learning about the diversity of our trainees and the experiences that lead them to academia, we can provide more tailored mentoring that will individually support and uplift each trainee.”

In a similar light, Alexander Matthew Payne, a 4th year TPCB student says, “I think ‘scientific training’ at the Ph.D. level is complex, because career paths can diverge dramatically after the PhD. So I think the most important thing is actually to help students figure out if they want to continue with a career in science or pursue other options, what these different options entail, and what they need to accomplish in order to pursue them.”

Each trainee is unique, arriving from different backgrounds with individual perspectives and having distinct expectations for their graduate studies². As such, each student’s training should be tailored to their own needs and personal career goals. Institutions should work with faculty to set criteria for assessing each student’s background, scientific needs, and career aspirations. Many students are unaware of the variety of career tracks available for PhD scientists, and institutions are accountable for delivering this type of information to students who graduate from their programs whether that be through workshops, seminars, and/or one-on-one conversations with a professional career advisor.

From there, faculty-student pairs should continually manage training benchmarks based on the student’s development and changes in career aspirations. Although training objectives should be guided by each student’s goals, lab heads are the scientific experts within the pair and should use their knowledge to effectively guide the student to personalized success. Nevertheless, students also have a responsibility to maximize the opportunities provided to them by their advisors.

Fortunately, there are also resources to assist with facilitating these conversations. The Individual Development Plan or IDP was popularized as a career tool in industry and later spread to academia to help trainees define and achieve their career goals³. The IDP is meant to serve as a trainee self-assessment that is subsequently discussed with a mentor or lab head to foster personalized training. At TPCB, each student is required to update their IDP on a yearly basis and discuss it with their advisor, which is documented by student and faculty signatures and submitted to program administration. But it doesn’t stop there. Students are also required to submit their updated IDP to their thesis committees prior to each meeting (occurring annually or semiannually) so that graduation expectations may be tailored to each student’s career goals as well. The IDP is an effective starting point for enabling discussions surrounding trainees’ training needs, and it should become a common practice across institutions.

A people-first approach involves prioritizing the needs of trainees over everything else. Importantly, it requires a committed mentor who adjusts their training based on the needs of each individual student. Institutions must prioritize facilitating these partnerships, vital to the shaping of society’s future scientists and leaders.

What kind of skills do students need to succeed after graduate school? Many students feel there are specific skills beyond the scientific method that are crucial to life after graduation.

Alexander says, “In terms of training as a scientist, which includes both academia and industry, I think that there are many conceptual things that are important, including: how to tell a good scientific story, how to synthesize existing research in order to motivate future directions, how to adjust the key scientific questions as data is collected, how to interpret complex (and seemingly disagreeing) sources of data. Several practical things are also important: how to design good figures, how to organize your work so that it is reproducible, and how to organize your time in order to make progress in all the projects.”

Ilana Kotliar, a 5th year TPCB student adds, “Communication, broadly speaking, is the most important aspect of scientific training. Communicating effectively both formally and informally, through writing, speech, and graphics is crucial to our success as PhD students and beyond.”

There are many skillsets that students may learn along their graduate journey depending on their individual experience. For example, Student A earned the opportunity to design the majority of the data figures for a manuscript, while their co-author, Student B, mainly focused on writing the manuscript text. During this experience, Student A learned how to display complex data effectively and craft a scientific story through data representation. Conversely, Student B learned how to describe data figures, develop a scientific narrative, and proofread text for conciseness and effective sentence structure. Certainly, these two students likely engaged in both wings of their manuscript; however, they overall acquired two separate skillsets.

Which skillset is more useful? We think probably both! But this depends on each student’s training goals. Most importantly, the opportunity to acquire these skills should not be dictated by chance or arbitrary assignment by the lab head, as is often the case. Instead, skillset acquisition should be purposeful and managed according to each student’s scientific training needs.

It is easy to find ourselves demanding a mentor who has it all. We all want mentors who are experts in their scientific niche, but also possess broad knowledge of their field. We want mentors that are kind, forgiving, and patient, yet are assertive, determined, and motivational. We want mentors who are our biggest defenders and our fiercest challengers. We want unconditional support and also tough love.

However, mentors should not be expected to excel at every facet of their role, including personally supplying students with the entire range of training objectives they may need. A good mentor will know who to call on when their student requires direction they cannot provide. Students frequently have multiple mentors who provide the diversity of training a student needs.

Indeed, each student’s thesis committee exists not only to manage their graduation timeline, but also to supply students with a variety of mentors who are intimately familiar with their project’s successes and obstacles. As such, committee members are poised to be excellent, additional mentors for their students. Nevertheless, the role of the thesis committee is often marginalized, and faculty sometimes treat these meetings as a check on their list of yearly to-do’s. Rather, the thesis committee is an underappreciated resource for students who require additional mentoring, and members should try their best to move beyond yearly meetings, whether in the form of several casual check-in conversations during the year or even just an email exchange where the faculty reaches out to see how an experiment is progressing.

Furthermore, few institutions provide mentor training for their lab heads¹. Institutions hire their faculty based on scientific excellence and innovation. This results in many lab heads who are scientifically brilliant but inexperienced in mentorship or managing people. To compensate for this breakdown in the system, institutions have a responsibility to teach their own faculty on how to effectively train mentees in their labs. This should involve continual workshopping led by both management professionals and faculty with a strong history of effective mentoring. Importantly, faculty should be assessed on these skills in a real capacity and given the opportunity to make improvements.

Partnering with a mentor committed to purposeful and tailored scientific training, a graduate student will likely view their PhD studies as the most rigorous, instructive, and stimulating period in their life. A biomedical PhD introduces each student into the vibrant and dynamic world of medical science through the lens of their lab. Indeed, a PhD can be immensely valuable if paired with personalized and purposeful scientific training, administered through lab heads and safeguarded by degree-granting institutions. It is time for institutions to recognize their role in regulating mentee training to ensure each student is prepared for the next step, regardless of what that might be.

Recommended Action Items

For Institutions and Institutional Leadership:

1. Re-evaluate promotion expectations and publishing standards for faculty to safeguard proper scientific training of students in labs.

2. Regulate the student training experience such as setting explicit graduation criteria that incorporate training benchmarks like skill acquisition, scientific communication, and leadership practice. Provide additional resources to boost these skills.

3. Require students to submit updated IDPs to their thesis committees and accordingly, instruct faculty to review them thoroughly and thoughtfully when considering each student’s career progression.

4. Provide mentor training for lab heads. Continually assess faculty on their mentoring skills in a real capacity and give them the opportunity to make improvements. Provide incentives for good mentoring practices.

For Lab Heads and Faculty:

1. Create an open dialogue to understand each trainee’s individual background and goals for their graduate studies.

2. Manage training benchmarks based on each student’s development and changes in career aspirations. Adjust training based on the needs of each individual student.

3. Ensure skill acquisition is not acquired by chance. When overseeing projects, be purposeful in allowing trainees to acquire the skills they need for their future careers.

4. Connect trainees with other faculty mentors or collaborators when your trainee requires a direction you cannot provide.

5. Move beyond yearly meetings as a member of a student’s thesis committee. Do not underestimate how impactful even an email to check in on how an experiment is progressing can be for a student’s development and well-being.

6. Seek out any opportunity to improve your mentorship practices, including asking your mentees for feedback on your mentoring skills. Ask your students how you can best support them.

7. All trainees (in any type of work) want to feel valued. Do your best to provide positive feedback and support them as unique individuals. Ensure your critical assessments are constructive.

For Graduate Students and Trainees:

1. Be open with your mentor about your background and goals for graduate studies. Let them know what types of skills you hope to acquire (e.g. manuscript writing, figure making, quantitative analysis, and/or communication skills).

2. Regularly assess your own training needs and convey them to your mentor over the course of your studies. Update your IDP to facilitate these types of conversations and arrive at each meeting with intended discussion topics.

3. Seek out opportunities to practice different skills even beyond the lab. For example, strengthen your leadership skills by helping coordinate a scientific outreach program or internal symposium.

4. Reach out to other faculty on your thesis committee or beyond for additional mentorship. Try to maintain these relationships.

For more information about best mentorship practices, individualized mentorship, and the role of institutions in this process, refer to The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM¹.

Biographies

Gabriella Chua

Gabriella grew up in San Francisco, California and received her B.S. from Bates College. In 2019, she joined the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Chemical Biology (TPCB) to pursue her studies in the lab of Shixin Liu at The Rockefeller University. In her research, she uses single-molecule and biophysical approaches to investigate questions in chromatin biology. She enjoys writing about science for lay audiences and is passionate about outreach and improving mentorship practices. Gabriella is supported by a F31 predoctoral fellowship from the NIMH.

Contact: gchua@rockefeller.edu

Address: 1230 York Ave, Box 216, New York NY, 10065

Jeya Vandana

Jeya received her B.S. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In 2019, she joined the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Chemical Biology (TPCB) to pursue her studies in the lab of Shuibing Chen at Weill Cornell Medicine. In the Chen lab, she works on chemical screening to identify compounds that promote beta cell maturation or beta cell proliferation and develops genetic strategies to promote beta cell maturation of human embryonic stem cells.

Contact: jjv4001@med.cornell.edu

Address: 1300 York Ave, A829B, New York, NY 10065

David (Chun-Cheng) Hsieh

David moved to the US after receiving his B.S. from National Taiwan University. In 2019, he joined the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Chemical Biology (TPCB) to pursue his studies in the lab of Sean Brady at The Rockefeller University. He is interested in studying the metabolism of gut-resident bacteria.

Contact: chsieh@rockefeller.edu

Address: 1230 York Ave, Box 297, New York NY, 10065