As a chemistry major at Clark Atlanta University, Chloe N. Poston had her career path all mapped out. She planned to get a Ph.D. and become a chemistry professor at a historically black college like her alma mater.
But in her third year of graduate school, at Brown University, Ms. Poston’s desire to pursue an academic career began to wane. By the time she earned her Ph.D., in 2012, she knew for sure, she says, that faculty life wasn’t for her.
“I realized that a large part of my work would be tied to securing a very limited amount of funding and not mentoring students or thinking about research problems,” says Ms. Poston. She was also discouraged by how long it generally takes for scientific research to be put to use, she says. “I proactively sought out professional-development opportunities that would expose me to career pathways that were outside of academic research.”
Plenty of graduate students in the sciences may feel this way, but women and underrepresented minorities, who tend to find the academic environment less supportive, seem to feel it more acutely. That means it will probably take more than a robust pipeline of prospective scientists to increase the diversity of STEM disciplines.
A recent study of biomedical Ph.D.’s strongly suggests that’s the case. In a sample of 1,500 scholars, underrepresented minorities and women showed disproportionately low interest in pursuing an academic career at a research university upon completing graduate school. Compared with their white and Asian male counterparts, women from well-represented groups were 36 percent less likely to say they were highly interested in that path. Underrepresented-minority males were 40 percent less likely, and underrepresented-minority females were 54 percent less likely.
That last group was also twice as likely as biomedical Ph.D.’s from all other groups to say they were highly interested in careers outside of research altogether.
The trends, detailed in a paper published in PLOS One in December, have led the authors to now focus on why certain career paths are unappealing to the very scientists needed to diversify academic departments.
Too often, talk of achieving diversity in STEM disciplines centers around the pipeline, says Kenneth D. Gibbs Jr., the paper’s lead author. But filling that pipeline, he says, doesn’t seem to be the main solution.
“There’s the tendency for people to think, Well, everything’s fine, just get more people into the system,” says Mr. Gibbs, a fellow at the National Cancer Institute, where he does research on graduate and postdoctoral training and diversity in the biomedical sciences. “That’s a laudable goal, but it takes the attention away from the structural elements that have a profound impact on career choice.”
Something is disproportionately deterring women and underrepresented minorities in graduate programs from pursuing science careers at research universities, says Kimberly A. Griffin, a co-author of the paper and an associate professor in the department of counseling, higher education, and special education at the University of Maryland at College Park. “This is about scientists who are really skilled and really talented,” she says. “Clearly they can do the work. But why don’t they want to?”
Prospects and Deterrents
An academic career, of course, is not the only mark of success. After a two-year postdoc at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, Ms. Poston became a science-and-technology-policy fellow last fall in a program managed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“We’re very careful in our work,” Ms. Griffin says, “not to say that a faculty pathway is the only pathway or the best pathway.”
She and Mr. Gibbs are now digging into what their research subjects said—and didn’t say—about their graduate-school training, what made various career paths more or less attractive, and signals from advisers and others about their prospects as science Ph.D.’s.
Some working scientists say their knowledge of academic politics made them apprehensive about entering the professoriate. Caleph B. Wilson, who earned a Ph.D. in pathobiology from Pennsylvania State University in 2008, says his own thesis committee was supportive, yet “dealing with committees—that was a bit stressful for me,” says Mr. Wilson, who is African-American. “I look at the tenure process the same way. Basically it boils down to whether your peers feel comfortable with you. People are making decisions that are subjective and they determine your career.”
Mr. Wilson, a research associate staff scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, is interested in staff scientist positions at large research institutions. Such jobs, he says, allow him to avoid grant writing and the stress of the tenure process, while still doing research that could have an immediate impact.
“The ideas are moving rapidly into the clinic,” Mr. Wilson says of his work in immunology at Penn. “Any data that we gain is automatically relevant.”
Still, Mr. Wilson, who mentors undergraduates, grad students, and postdocs on his own time, as well as dispensing advice on HeyDrWilson.com, says he is open to applying for a tenure-track job at a smaller institution with a focus on teaching and sending students on to graduate or professional school.
Mr. Gibbs, the STEM-diversity researcher, himself earned a Ph.D. in immunology from Stanford University in 2010. While at Stanford, he saw the challenges his peers faced trying to land academic jobs. “It gave me pause about my own prospects,” he says. When he finished the degree and his postdoc, Mr. Gibbs decided that an AAAS policy fellowship was a good fit for him to explore his growing interest in the scientific work force.
On the science faculties at research universities, underrepresented-minority professors are few and far between. In most disciplines, a minority student can earn a B.S. or a Ph.D. without being taught by or even having access to an underrepresented-minority professor in that discipline, says the most recent report on the Nelson Diversity Surveys, led by Donna J. Nelson, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma. The surveys track minority representation on the science and engineering faculties of the nation’s top research institutions.
‘More Fulfilling’
Many underrepresented-minority scientists seem to be especially interested in applying their knowledge to public outreach. Monica I. Feliu-Mojer, who earned a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University in 2013, was “very up front about not even wanting to try for a postdoc,” she says. “I realized that I was really passionate about empowering people with science.”
Ms. Feliu-Mojer, who is from Puerto Rico, managed to parlay her longtime volunteer experience as vice director of CiencaPR—a social-media site that connects scientists with ties to Puerto Rico, in part to groom the next generation—into a job promoting science research and education. She now serves as a program manager for iBiology, an organization based at the University of California at San Francisco that works with leading biologists to make open-access educational videos.
Alycia Mosley Austin, who finished a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of California at San Diego in 2010, realized there that science-related committee and service work lined up with her passions for diversity in science, outreach, and graduate-education policy. Today she directs graduate recruitment and diversity initiatives at the University of Rhode Island, where she also serves as executive coordinator of a new graduate program in neuroscience.
“I still love research,” says Ms. Austin. “But the work I do now is more fulfilling than research to me.”
It also means she doesn’t have to hole up in a lab for 70-plus hours a week, as she has seen her peers do, to compete for research grants. Or move around every two years for a new postdoc.
“I just thought, Where is the time to spend with my husband or to have a hobby or spend time with my kids?” says Ms. Austin, the mother of an infant and a toddler. Female mentors with children had warned Ms. Austin as much, she says. “I just didn’t think academic life was worth the sacrifice.”
In her administrative position, she says, she can tackle issues she cares about and see positive outcomes sooner rather than later.
Ms. Poston, the Brown chemist now working as a science and technology policy fellow, focuses on education and scientific communication. She also mentors undergraduates and runs her own blog, The Poston Collective, “on the intersection of science, education, politics, and diversity.”
“I’m very open and honest about my experiences,” says Ms. Poston, “because I want people to know what they’re getting into.”
In asking students about their motivations, why they want to be scientists, she also reflects on her own direction. “I don’t see myself as a failure in the system. I’m still working in the scientific enterprise,” she says. “I still use my degree every day.”
To help all kinds of young scientists see paths to all types of careers, priming the pipeline is key, says Mr. Gibbs, but so is cultivating feelings of inclusion along the way.
“Science suffers,” he says, “if highly talented people don’t find a place for themselves.”
Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.
