UW News

October 9, 2003

Ph.D. career series changes name; first speaker Oct. 15

Several departments and other units around campus have joined together to provide support for the Bioscience Careers Seminar Series, formerly known as “What Can You Do with a Ph.D.?”

The series was originally organized by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to provide a look at careers outside the traditional academic arena. A 1997 report by the National Science Foundation found that only a third of Ph.D. graduates in biological sciences had tenured or tenure-track positions in academia. This series, which began in October 2000, has brought in speakers from many different science-related fields.

The first seminar for this academic year will be at 5 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 15, in room T-747 of the Health Sciences Center. The speaker is Dr. Ronald Hitzeman, president and CEO of Genotypes, Inc., of Pacifica, Calif., who earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Michigan. The seminar is open to everyone.

“I strongly support this innovative seminar series to help our biological science students,” said Dr. Albert Berger, associate dean for research and graduate education in the School of Medicine. “The number of tenure-track faculty positions for Ph.D.s in the biological and health sciences is not keeping pace with the number of graduates produced every year. This student-run seminar series provides creative and novel views important in their career planning. The School of Medicine is fully supportive of this out-of-the-box type of student activity.”

Sponsoring units include the Cellular/Molecular Biology Training Grant Program, Genome Sciences, Microbiology, Office of the Provost, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Biological Structure, Immunology, Physiology and Biophysics, Neurobiology and Behavior, Pathology, College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of Research and Graduate Education.

For more information on the series, see the Web site at http://courses.washington.edu/phd/about/index.html