It’s official — UVM has a Postdoctoral Association (PDA). Depending on where you’re located on campus, you may or may not encounter postdocs on a daily basis. Maybe you’re not even sure what a postdoc is. Never fear, the UVM PDA is here!
A Postdoc Associate or Fellow is a position held after (post-) finishing a PhD-level degree (-doc). By definition, postdocs are doing full-time research in their field of choice, receiving additional training before moving on to a more permanent gig. For those familiar with medical training, it’s the residency program of academic research.
While UVM has a smaller postdoctoral community (approximately 80 postdocs) than some of our scholarly neighbors (Boston, cough), postdocs are a huge driving force in the pace of research on campus. Having three to five or more years of training in graduate school and no class commitments, postdocs put their time in at the bench or in the field, mentor graduate and undergraduate students in their research expertise, and even bring in money for the university by heading up their own research grants.
The nature of the position, however, can be quite isolating. Because you’re not in regular classes, you’re not connecting with other members of your community. (Postdocs are not students at all, but employees of the university.) The position is transient by design, so you can receive that additional nugget of training and be on your way to a more permanent academic or non-academic position. That makes it hard to get to know other people around campus who don’t work on your floor or in your building, not to mention if you’re off-campus doing field research most of the day. To top it all off, you encounter people all the time who are wondering what you’re actually doing and what a postdoc actually is (your parents, for starters).
This was the position UVM postdocs were in until last year. Present but scattered, sharing similar experiences and questions, but having no clear lines in place to connect them with a broader postdoc community. Luckily, UVM has some fantastic leaders who recognized and cared about this issue. Vice President for Research Richard Galbraith and Dean of the Graduate College Cindy Forehand, as well as Chris Berger, Director of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Training, were all instrumental in orchestrating the first gatherings of postdocs on campus, providing a sustaining membership for all UVM postdocs through the National Postdoctoral Association, and planting the ideas that would grow into the founding of UVM’s own, first PDA.
A group of committed postdocs formed a steering committee and began meeting regularly, instantly recognizing the need for an organized community. Initial meeting topics ranged from understanding Human Resource classifications of postdocs and their implications (“Wait, you guys get dental insurance?”) to sharing lab resources and expertise in just the first few meetings. It was a little overwhelming, but the first steps had been taken.
Over the last year, the steering committee for this as-yet-unofficial postdoctoral association worked to build a common node to connect postdocs campus-wide. We started with taking ownership of the UVM postdoc webpage (www.uvm.edu/postdocs) and email account (postdocs@uvm.edu), as well as getting the postdoc listserv up and running. We even made a Twitter handle (@uvmpostdocs).
The steering committee also organized events to bring the postdoc community together, including a summer BBQ, trivia night, holiday party, and ski outing. We hosted a career development symposium during National Postdoc Appreciation Week with topics ranging from communicating your research to exploring non-traditional career tracks. Most recently, a Recycled Poster Session was held on April 26th to highlight the broad research the postdoctoral community is doing at UVM.
None of this would have been possible without the tireless efforts of the Faculty Affairs Development Coordinator, Erin Montgomery. Erin has been an advocate for the PDA from the beginning and has gone to great lengths to get the group off the ground, not to mention answering a lot of questions for the steering committee.
All of this effort has paid off. Earlier this year the Provost officially recognized the UVM Postdoctoral Association. The first annual meeting for the PDA is being planned, where the first formal elections for the Association will take place. The UVM PDA has also expanded its membership definition to include all with a doctoral degree (Ph.D., M.D., J.D., Ed.D., Pharm.D.) who are conducting research under a UVM faculty member, whether they consider themselves a “postdoc” or not. The Postdoctoral Association wishes to serve and support anyone who falls into these categories, especially if they don’t feel connected to other communities. We are here for you.
And most importantly, a community has started to form around this association.
When the steering committee planned our first event a year ago — an off-campus BBQ — we didn’t know if anyone would come. But we did it anyway. And do you know how many people came? Half of the postdoc community came to an after-hours, off-campus event thrown by people most of them did not know.
There is a clear need, a craving, for a postdoc community at UVM. We may be small and scattered around, but with the Postdoc Association, you need not feel isolated. Welcome to the UVM PDA! We look forward to hearing from you.