Biology subjects

Bankston, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Bankston, A..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Trump Administration Impacts on Early Career Scientists and How To Fight Back

Scientific research drives national progress and innovation, and must be protected at all costs. Actions from the Trump administration in early 2025 sent shockwaves across academic research. Federal science budgets were slashed, hundreds of research grants were abruptly frozen or terminated, and politically appointed agency heads overrode peer-reviewed grant decisions. We conducted rapid-response surveys to capture quotes, stories, and data to understand how these seismic shifts were being felt by early career researchers. The majority of survey respondents were PhD students, and early career trainees in varying years of training at a variety of institutions, mainly in the life sciences. Their future in research, funded by major science agencies including NIH, was threatened by funding cuts with varying impacts to their professional endeavors. Survey respondents highlighted concerns with long-term research job prospects and broader systemic issues in academia, leading them to consider leaving the field altogether and/or pursue science in another country. Their opinions highlighted concerns at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels. While universities provided some resources, trainees called upon Congress to protect, stabilize, and restore science funding. They also undertook a number of advocacy actions across the nation. The fight is far from over. Continued support for early career researchers and their careers in research is imperative to continue both in the current environment and into the future, in order to develop a strong workforce and ensure U.S. global competitiveness in science and technology fields.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2023

Development and Outcomes of an International Certificate Program in Science Policy and Advocacy for STEM PhD Students and Postdocs

Scientists must play a significant role in enacting societal change by educating and advising policymakers on relevant policy topics. To fill the identified gap in science policy and advocacy training, during the pandemic years, we piloted and offered the online Science Policy & Advocacy for STEM Scientists Certificate Program starting in 2020. Over three cohorts, the program was focused on practical skills and concepts, networking, and career development opportunities, and providing pathways for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to learn about and in many cases fully transition into science policy and advocacy roles and careers. Program participants were exposed to many important aspects of what it means to be involved in science policy and advocacy, and many chose to enter the field through subsequent opportunities facilitated by the program training. We sought to reduce a number of barriers to program participation, and additionally provided resources for others to develop similar programs at their university. We believe this training model is innovative and can be recapitulated, and sincerely hope to see more universities create similar programs in the US and internationally in order to serve trainees interested in science policy and advocacy and facilitate their building impactful careers in the field for years to come.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2023

Building the Next Generation Workforce: Why We Need Science Policy Training at the Undergraduate Level

Diverse pathways into the science policy workforce are necessary for providing opportunities to students at all levels to engage in the field and to bring their talents to the future of policymaking. Both classroom and experiential training opportunities are essential to achieving this goal. In this publication, we assessed the current landscape of science policy training for undergraduate students in the United States by conducting a keyword search for experiential career training opportunities at varying levels of education. We also reviewed existing science policy publications for undergraduate opportunities, an area that has been largely unexplored to date. From these assessments, we found that most experiential training opportunities are geared towards Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) students in PhDs program or recent PhD graduates, followed by Masters-level students or graduates, and fewer opportunities exist for undergraduate students and Bachelor-degree holders. We then conducted focus group-style interviews with early career scientists involved in science policy, including undergraduate students, to discuss their experiences and ideas for change. Based on our findings, we recommend that universities, organizations, and funding agencies expand upon their existing resources for curriculum, academic advising, training opportunities, and funding, and dedicate resources toward raising awareness and creating additional opportunities in science policy at the undergraduate level. These steps can help create pathways for undergraduate students to enter and contribute to the science policy workforce.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2021

Making Strides in Doctoral-Level Career Outcomes Reporting: Surveying the Landscape of Classification and Visualization Methodologies and Creating a Crosswalk Tool

The recent movement underscoring the importance of career taxonomies has helped usher in a new era of transparency in PhD career outcomes. The convergence of discipline-specific organizational movements, interdisciplinary collaborations, and federal initiatives have all helped to increase PhD career outcomes tracking and reporting. Transparent and publicly available PhD career outcomes are being used by institutions to attract top applicants, as prospective graduate students are factoring these in when deciding on the program and institution in which to enroll for their PhD studies. Given the increasing trend to track PhD career outcomes, the number of institutional efforts and supporting offices for these studies have increased, as has the variety of methods being used to classify and report/visualize outcomes. This report identifies and summarizes currently available PhD career taxonomy tools, resources, and visualization options to help catalyze and empower institutions to develop and publish their own PhD career outcomes. Similar fields between taxonomies were mapped to create a new crosswalk tool. This work serves as an empirical review of the career outcome tracking systems available and highlights organizations, consortia, and funding agencies that are impacting policy change toward greater transparency in PhD career outcomes reporting.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2017

Assessing the Landscape of U.S. Postdoctoral Salaries

PurposePostdocs make up a significant portion of the biomedical workforce. However, data about the postdoctoral position are generally scarce, including salary data. The purpose of this study was to request, obtain and interpret actual salaries, and the associated job titles, for postdocs at U.S. public institutions.\n\nMethodologyFreedom of Information Act Requests were submitted to U.S. public institutions estimated to have at least 300 postdocs according to the National Science Foundations Survey of Graduate Students and Postdocs. Salaries and job titles of postdoctoral employees as of December 1st, 2016 were requested.\n\nFindingsSalaries and job titles for over 13,000 postdocs at 52 public U.S. institutions and 1 private institution around the date of December 1st, 2016 were received, and individual postdoc names were also received for approximately 7,000 postdocs. This study shows evidence of gender-related salary discrepancies, a significant influence of job title description on postdoc salary, and a complex relationship between salaries and the level of institutional NIH funding.\n\nValueThese results provide insights into the ability of institutions to collate actual payroll-type data related to their postdocs, highlighting difficulties faced in tracking, and reporting data on this population. Ultimately, these types of efforts, aimed at increasing transparency, may lead to improved tracking and support for postdocs at all U.S. institutions.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2017

The GSS is an unreliable indicator of biological sciences postdoc population trends

The postdoctoral research position is an essential step on the academic career track, and the biomedical research enterprise has become heavily dependent on postdoctoral scholars to conduct experimental research. Monitoring postdoc population trends is important for crafting and evaluating policies that affect this critical population. The tool most use for understanding the trends of the biological sciences postdoc population is the Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) administered by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. To determine how well institutions tracked their postdocs, we analyzed the yearly changes in the biological sciences postdoc population at institutions surveyed by the GSS from 1980 to 2015. We find examples of large changes in the biological sciences postdoc population at one or a few institutions most years from 1980 to 2015. Most universities could not explain the data presented in the GSS, and for those that provided an explanation, the most common causes were improved institutional policies and more robust tracking of their postdocs. These large changes, unrelated to hiring or layoffs, sometimes masked population trends in the broader biological sciences postdoc population. We propose the adoption of a unified definition and titles for postdocs and the creation of an index to better assess biological sciences postdoc population trends.\n\nAbbreviations

scientific communication and education↗