Finding a job in academic ophthalmology
By Michael Boland, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Wilmer Eye Institute
The Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine
Assistant Professor
Wilmer Eye Institute
The Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine
Every time I am asked to provide advice about some transition I have made, whether it has been applying to medical school, applying to MD/PhD programs, applying to residency, and now applying for my first academic position, I provide a somewhat paradoxic disclaimer: Always be skeptical of people giving you absolute advice. What I mean by that is that I have never found that there is one and only one way to stand out when applying for a position of any kind. I say that as someone who has been able to review applicants at various points during my own training. Sure, your good grades, good test scores, and good recommendations help but it is the intangible things applicants include that make them stand out from the others in the pile. The key is to find those things about yourself that make you interesting and then to communicate them effectively. This leads to my other general observation about applying for positions and that is that the process includes a significant amount of randomness. By that I mean your success is highly dependent on who reads your material. In most cases, you unfortunately have no control over who that person is. The good news is that when it comes time to apply for your first job, you finally do have some control.
I also try to provide some of my own background to anyone whom I give advice (solicited or not). I do this because I believe you should filter any advice you receive based on who is giving it. (If you think about it, there are people whose advice you will accept unconditionally and some you will ignore entirely!) In my case, I started out my academic life as an engineer and made a decision in my junior year of college to go to medical school. Because I was interested in research, I entered a combined MD/PhD program. Eight years later, I emerged with an MD, a PhD in bioengineering and a plan to pursue ophthalmology as my clinical specialty. I completed my intern year in transitional medicine and then spent the next three years in ophthalmology residency. At the end of my second year of residency, I made the decision to pursue a career in academic ophthalmology in which I would spend the majority of my time on research. So now you know something about my background and hopefully can make some judgments about my comments on finding my first job as an academic clinician-scientist.
The first step in my job-finding process was to solicit advice from faculty I respected. As always, some of the advice was helpful and some of it was not. One of the good pieces of advice was to write down what I wanted to do for the first five years of my career. I found this useful for two reasons. First of all, it helped to solidify my goals in my own mind and it resulted in a document that I could send to potential employers. The career plan was also helpful in deciding which departments would be a good match to my interests. In my case, departments that had no reputation for research or had no interest in mentoring junior clinician-scientists were not on the list. Senior faculty were also helpful in that they had insight into some of the candidate departments. As an aside, I believe the internet has made this process much easier than it used to be. I was able to find all the institutions that had ophthalmology departments with a strong research focus and also had departments of medical informatics (my research interest). At this point, I had a list of departments to which I would apply, a career plan for them to review, and a cover letter customized to each institution's strengths. One of the important things to remember is that it is not like residency or fellowship in which there are N spots per year waiting to be filled. Each faculty job is addressed on an as-needed basis. If you are not the right person applying at the right time, there is not much you can do.
Although most departments had addresses listed on the web (my first contact was via US mail), it was still necessary to make some phone calls for the less web-enabled among them (perhaps a bad sign!). It was exciting to start hearing positive responses back from some of the departments to which I had applied. It was also disheartening to get the expected negative responses as well! In terms of timing, the responses seemed to come in phases. There was the early phase that came back within days or weeks of my submission. There were then the mid phase responses that took many weeks to months and then there was the category of non-responders.
I will further describe the types of responses by lumping them into three categories. The first category, which seemed to be over-represented in the early phase responses, was the “we have a job that no one wants but if you do it you can develop research on the side” offer. I can't say for sure, but I am guessing this is the way many of the current senior faculty at major institutions got started – filling a clinical need as a means of supporting one's research efforts. Unfortunately, I think this approach has limited, if any value today. It is just too difficult to generate enough clinical revenue to support dedicated research time. Needless to say, I declined to bite on these early offers and hoped for something better. In the mean time, I received a number of the second category of responses -- “thank you but we do not have anything appropriate available at this time”. I think this one is self explanatory. Finally, I will mention the category that was most interesting, the “we are interested in your career plan and we have a means of supporting you while you build a research effort”. Such a position is obviously the holy grail of wannabe assistant professors everywhere.
Based on my limited experience, there are two ways a department can help support you as you move toward independence. The first of these is via internal funding. Again because of declining clinical revenues, this method is less common than in the “olden days”. On the other hand, it represents a real commitment from the department and is an indication of their interest in you. The second type of support is some sort of government (NIH) funding. The NIH has realized that the jump from trainee to junior faculty is a big one that has no safety net. That being the case, they have expanded their K awards as a means of supporting new investigators. Basically, the awards pay for the majority of your salary if you spend that time on research and career development. The goal is to have you build enough of a research effort that you can obtain a “real” NIH grant within a few years. The K awards come in different flavors. Most are awarded to the individual but some are given to an institution to distribute as they see fit. Some fund clinical research, some fund basic science. Regardless of your interest, review the portion of the NIH web site devoted to K awards:
I also try to provide some of my own background to anyone whom I give advice (solicited or not). I do this because I believe you should filter any advice you receive based on who is giving it. (If you think about it, there are people whose advice you will accept unconditionally and some you will ignore entirely!) In my case, I started out my academic life as an engineer and made a decision in my junior year of college to go to medical school. Because I was interested in research, I entered a combined MD/PhD program. Eight years later, I emerged with an MD, a PhD in bioengineering and a plan to pursue ophthalmology as my clinical specialty. I completed my intern year in transitional medicine and then spent the next three years in ophthalmology residency. At the end of my second year of residency, I made the decision to pursue a career in academic ophthalmology in which I would spend the majority of my time on research. So now you know something about my background and hopefully can make some judgments about my comments on finding my first job as an academic clinician-scientist.
The first step in my job-finding process was to solicit advice from faculty I respected. As always, some of the advice was helpful and some of it was not. One of the good pieces of advice was to write down what I wanted to do for the first five years of my career. I found this useful for two reasons. First of all, it helped to solidify my goals in my own mind and it resulted in a document that I could send to potential employers. The career plan was also helpful in deciding which departments would be a good match to my interests. In my case, departments that had no reputation for research or had no interest in mentoring junior clinician-scientists were not on the list. Senior faculty were also helpful in that they had insight into some of the candidate departments. As an aside, I believe the internet has made this process much easier than it used to be. I was able to find all the institutions that had ophthalmology departments with a strong research focus and also had departments of medical informatics (my research interest). At this point, I had a list of departments to which I would apply, a career plan for them to review, and a cover letter customized to each institution's strengths. One of the important things to remember is that it is not like residency or fellowship in which there are N spots per year waiting to be filled. Each faculty job is addressed on an as-needed basis. If you are not the right person applying at the right time, there is not much you can do.
Although most departments had addresses listed on the web (my first contact was via US mail), it was still necessary to make some phone calls for the less web-enabled among them (perhaps a bad sign!). It was exciting to start hearing positive responses back from some of the departments to which I had applied. It was also disheartening to get the expected negative responses as well! In terms of timing, the responses seemed to come in phases. There was the early phase that came back within days or weeks of my submission. There were then the mid phase responses that took many weeks to months and then there was the category of non-responders.
I will further describe the types of responses by lumping them into three categories. The first category, which seemed to be over-represented in the early phase responses, was the “we have a job that no one wants but if you do it you can develop research on the side” offer. I can't say for sure, but I am guessing this is the way many of the current senior faculty at major institutions got started – filling a clinical need as a means of supporting one's research efforts. Unfortunately, I think this approach has limited, if any value today. It is just too difficult to generate enough clinical revenue to support dedicated research time. Needless to say, I declined to bite on these early offers and hoped for something better. In the mean time, I received a number of the second category of responses -- “thank you but we do not have anything appropriate available at this time”. I think this one is self explanatory. Finally, I will mention the category that was most interesting, the “we are interested in your career plan and we have a means of supporting you while you build a research effort”. Such a position is obviously the holy grail of wannabe assistant professors everywhere.
Based on my limited experience, there are two ways a department can help support you as you move toward independence. The first of these is via internal funding. Again because of declining clinical revenues, this method is less common than in the “olden days”. On the other hand, it represents a real commitment from the department and is an indication of their interest in you. The second type of support is some sort of government (NIH) funding. The NIH has realized that the jump from trainee to junior faculty is a big one that has no safety net. That being the case, they have expanded their K awards as a means of supporting new investigators. Basically, the awards pay for the majority of your salary if you spend that time on research and career development. The goal is to have you build enough of a research effort that you can obtain a “real” NIH grant within a few years. The K awards come in different flavors. Most are awarded to the individual but some are given to an institution to distribute as they see fit. Some fund clinical research, some fund basic science. Regardless of your interest, review the portion of the NIH web site devoted to K awards:
(http://grants1.nih.gov/training/careerdevelopmentawards.htm).
After all was said and done, I was fortunate enough to be offered a position on a departmental K award. As part of the process, I found senior mentors who have been invaluable in helping shape my research plans and in providing advice on surviving as a junior faculty. Surviving your first academic job is enough of a topic for another day (plus I technically haven't survived it yet!) but I can say that it is critical to find mentors who can help you succeed.
Everything above is obviously one person's version of the truth. As I said before, you need to weigh the advice you receive in terms of who is giving it and in terms of your own goals, strengths, and weaknesses. That being said, make sure you get advice from as many people as possible, particularly those you respect and those whose advice seems best tailored to you. In any case, good luck!
After all was said and done, I was fortunate enough to be offered a position on a departmental K award. As part of the process, I found senior mentors who have been invaluable in helping shape my research plans and in providing advice on surviving as a junior faculty. Surviving your first academic job is enough of a topic for another day (plus I technically haven't survived it yet!) but I can say that it is critical to find mentors who can help you succeed.
Everything above is obviously one person's version of the truth. As I said before, you need to weigh the advice you receive in terms of who is giving it and in terms of your own goals, strengths, and weaknesses. That being said, make sure you get advice from as many people as possible, particularly those you respect and those whose advice seems best tailored to you. In any case, good luck!
Table 1: One Approach to Your First Faculty Job
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posted by MedRounds Publications at 5:35 PM
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