Putting young Americans to work

October 5, 2012

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The garage door is up and the cacophonous whine of building equipment is in full throttle. Students, supplies and tools spill out of the classroom and onto the patio. Some are using circular saws to cut plywood, others are grinding away spurs with corded grinders, and a few are even welding, making aquarium racks out of wrought steel. It’s just another day in Chris Morissette’s Environmental Engineering class.

I’ve been teaching at High Tech High North County for only a few weeks now and I’m already gaining an appreciation for the project-based ethos. The students come in to class excited, and many use their free time for extra work or to get trained on new equipment. Each is shown the right way to use the tools and handed the accompanying outfit of safety equipment, then they go to work under close supervision.

The racks they’re fashioning will hold a single ten-gallon aquarium tank. Groups of four will have their own tank, a mini-ecosystem, which they will maintain throughout the year. All in all we will have fifteen aquaria, thanks to funding from SDG&E and the San Diego Foundation, and each will hold live coral from the Pacific and the Caribbean. Our overarching scientific goal is for the students to investigate how human activities—pollution runoff, warming of the oceans, and others—influence coral health. But there is much more to be gained from this project.

My classroom lesson topics thus far have ranged from the biology of corals to the tools of professional aquarists. Just last week we took our sixty students on a field trip to Birch Aquarium. While there I was able to give small tours behind-the-scenes, but it wasn’t to show off the animals. Instead, the students observed the complexity of engineering that goes into keeping the myriad marine systems functioning.

The students learned first-hand about protein skimmers, sumps, calcium reactors, filter socks, chillers, and algae refugia, all tools they will put to use in aquaria at the school. The field trip highlighted the line this project is straddling: science and engineering. The scientific questions are important, but they won’t be answered unless the engineering and maintenance of the systems is impeccable.

One of the only topics agreed upon during the first presidential debate was that America needs to bolster training in hands-on skills in order to put citizens back to work. When this came up I couldn’t help but think of the students in Chris’ class and our underlying motivation for the coral project: establish something for which a wide range of skills—academic and functional—are required, then allow students to pursue the skills with which they most align. And by providing the leeway for exploration, we hope to not just grow the students’ skill sets, but also help them find their passion.

Note: This will be the last Science Minded post on UT-San Diego. I would like to offer a sincere thanks to my editor, Mike Lee, for the great opportunity to blog on the Science and Environment page and wish him all the best in his next endeavor. Science Minded will continue, though, and can be found at http://www.scienceminded.net. Thanks for reading.

Getting from A to B in a science career

June 4, 2012

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I often hear students say that they want to be marine biologists but they don’t know how to make a career of it. Many are concerned with what and how: What jobs can you get? How much do they pay? What type of a degree do you need? How hard is it?

As I highlighted in an earlier post, marine science jobs are diverse. But what I didn’t talk about was how to get from point A to point B—from school to a career. So for this post I’ll discuss the nuts and bolts of jobs in science. I’ll focus first on career options for those with a Ph.D. degree, and will address masters and bachelors-level options in future posts.

University Professor: Nearly all professorships require a Ph.D., and to get such a job you often also need experience as a postdoctoral researcher, or “postdoc”. During a postdoc, which can last for months to years, the primary goal is to expand your scientific skill set.

At the end of one or two postdocs, the hope is to get hired as a professor. Once this happens you can expect a higher salary with robust benefits and the chance to move up in pay and title. As a professor you’re afforded the opportunity to research the topics that interest you and continue to advance your chosen field. One big advantage is that once you get promoted from the junior (assistant) level, you have tenure and thus job security for the rest of your career.

While professorships are sought-after, they aren’t for everyone. Professors can work long hours to maintain a lab, teach, write grant proposals, perform service for their university, and mentor students. Besides, there just aren’t enough professorships for everyone with a Ph.D. Fortunately, there are other options.

Government Scientists: The government employs scientists at both the state and federal level. At agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, natural resources divisions, US Fish and Wildlife, and the National Science Foundation, scientists conduct work that straddles the scientific and policy realms.

While a number of government scientists do a postdoc term first, there are often openings to move directly into a full-time job. As with most government professions, workers receive a set paycheck, as well as health benefits and pension plans.

From what I know about salaries, many Ph.D. level government scientists receive pay that is comparable to that of university professors. Government scientists seem happy in their jobs, enjoying the stability, set work hours, and steady paycheck, in addition to the intellectual stimulation that comes with their position.

Environmental Consultant: When companies want to build something new — be it an office building, parking lot, or manufacturing plant — they must first assess how construction will impact the environment. To make such assessments they need an outside party to take a look, and this is one of the many roles of environmental consultants.

These experts straddle science and industry, and thus their jobs are influenced by the ups and downs of each. Pay can vary and is in large part determined by the ability of their firm to secure work. My sense from environmental consultant colleagues is that some are better paid than professors and government scientists, and like the latter they enjoy the set work hours of their job. But compared to those professions, environmental consultants have much less freedom to study the scientific questions that interest them.

Biotech: San Diego is a center of biotech research, where scientists develop new medicines and useful materials by tapping into the biology of the natural world. Some Scripps Ph.D. students move on to biotech companies immediately after graduation and many report back that they are happy and very well paid. My sense is that biotech jobs offer much more freedom for scientific discovery than do consulting, but research topics and paycheck size still remains driven by the overall success of the company.

Above are examples of just a few career tracks for those with a Ph.D. degree and I hope I’ve done a fair job of describing some of the pros and cons of each. Remember of course these are just my observations and I imagine those working day-to-day in each area might have a slightly different take on things.

In a couple weeks I’ll put my own spin on it—weighing the pros and cons of a few of my own options as I look toward graduation—and in later posts I’ll detail job options for masters and bachelors degree-level scientists.

Internships launch careers

May 21, 2012

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This past week my parents and I attended my younger brother’s college graduation in Chicago. While we were very proud of him for finishing his degree in film production, we were also celebrating the fact that he’d already taken the next step.

Kevin took part in an internship for school credit during his final semester, doing film and print media for a Chicago-based hospitality company. He worked hard throughout, I’m told, going above and beyond, and impressing his would-be employers with the skills he amassed during his years in college. So when it came time for the internship to end they brought him on full time. The ink was barely dry on his new contract by the time my family arrived for graduation.

During the ceremony, the valedictorian of my brother’s class told his fellow students that each one of them is the “protagonist of their own film,” drawing on the process of screenwriting for an analogy. He likened their collegiate years to the life that a screenwriter must invent for their protagonist before writing a script—establishing their personal histories, as well as their wants and desires, strengths and weaknesses. Then, he went on, at the end of college is where the movie begins.

While I liked the speech a lot, I disagreed with him on this final point. I don’t think it’s enough to worry only about getting good grades, college is also a time to build your hands-on skills and personal contacts. Through a job, internship or volunteer position you can get your foot in the door and show a would-be employers that you not only have book smarts, but that you’re also a hard worker.

In the context of science, research experience in college or even high school is critical for getting into graduate school or going directly into a job. So here are a few of the many ways to gain experience:

Natural resource management: Walking beaches to monitor the nests of rare birds, tagging wild animals and removing invasive species are just a few of the great outdoor activities of a natural resource manager. My best friend spent his college summers getting paid to do just that on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Massachusetts and New Jersey, and the expertise he built landed him a job with the state of Vermont after graduation. Click here and here for two natural resource management job boards.

Internship programs: A number of programs connect undergrads with scientists at universities, and many of them even pay students for their time. One such program is funded by the national government and is called Research Experienced for Undergraduates. Click here to see the wide range of disciplines and find a site near you.

Working in a lab for school credit of as a volunteer: Labs at universities and private institutions are always looking for volunteers to help with research. Often these opportunities aren’t advertised widely, so if you come across an interesting research topic or hear about a lab doing exciting work then look them up on the internet. A short email introduction can often lead to volunteer position, and be sure to try a few possibilities until one sticks.

Volunteering at aquarium or zoo: Zoos and aquariums rely heavily on volunteers for everything from taking care of animals to educating visitors. Volunteers can be a wide range of ages and both high school and college students are welcome. My girlfriend used to work at an aquarium and told me that they often hired their best volunteers when paid positions opened up. Click here to find out how to apply to be a volunteer at Birch Aquarium here in San Diego.

This list offers just a few suggestions for avenues to look down for hands-on research and outreach experience. Each one offers the chance to impress potential employers, all the while giving you a first-hand look at a potential career.

Careers span the waterfront

April 30, 2012

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Last week I wrote about feeling ostracized as a marine biologist who can’t scuba dive. People left me great comments, including the point that many marine scientists are in the same boat, so to speak: they don’t dive for work either.

This is absolutely true. As a tropical coral biologist, it’s unusual that I don’t dive, but in many other fields of marine science diving is unnecessary. This got me thinking about the fact that ocean-related jobs are incredibly diverse. Here are a few of my favorites:

Submarine drivers: They go to some of the deepest places of the ocean and find critters that nobody knew existed, and most do it without ever getting wet. James Cameron, the director of Avatar and Titanic, recently announced that he’s using a groundbreaking submarine to explore the deepest place on earth, the Mariana Trench, while driving the sub himself. Meanwhile, back on the boat, deep-sea biologists, including an SIO professor will be excitedly waiting to see what he brings back from the depths.

Engineers: Submarines, remote sensing buoy systems, remotely operated underwater vehicles and ocean-scanning satellites—engineers make them all. Thanks to their work, we are constantly going deeper and farther, discovering more about the ocean’s unknowns.

Fisheries observers: Want to improve your sea legs? Fisheries observers live aboard fishing boats and ensure that the animals being harvested are big enough and not in numbers exceeding legal catch limits. Their work is critical for managing ocean harvesting in order to ensure that we don’t drive species to extinction.

Aquarist: The survival of animals that live in public aquariums worldwide depends on professional aquarists. These people know more about what makes marine critters happy than anyone else, and I know this from experience. Working alongside aquarists at Birch Aquarium, I’ve learned an incredible amount about corals over the past few years.

Oceanographer: Open-ocean ecosystems, deep-sea communities, hydrothermal vents, oxygen minimum zones, garbage patches, currents, winds, and global seawater circulation—oceanographers do it all (not surprising given their title).

Rehabilitator: Animals such as dolphins, turtles, and birds can be stranded on beaches when they are injured or become disoriented. Rehabilitators give them help they need to get back to the ocean, nurturing them back to health while not robbing them of the instincts they need to survive on their own.

Boat captain: Cool job. Enough said.

Natural products chemist: The ocean is the source of a vast number of medically useful chemical compounds that people rely on every day. Chemists search out these compounds, characterizing their structure and understanding their function. Then they figure out how to make the compounds synthetically, removing the need to harvest them from the ocean all the while improving our health.

This is just the tip of a metaphorical iceberg. I’ve left out many jobs, but I hope in highlighting a few you get a sense of the diversity of ocean-related professions. As you can see, while many marine scientists dive for work, most don’t and still have interesting, fun and important jobs.

How I became a marine biologist

April 30, 2012

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One of the most common questions students ask me is how I became a marine biologist. This week I focus on five lessons drawn from my own experiences.

1) Do what’s fun. If what you are doing is not fun, find something you like more.

I had a number of surgeries as a teenager, and my understanding of what patients feel lead me to believe that I’d make a good doctor. So, in high school I shadowed a brain surgery team and during college I worked as a research assistant studying multiple sclerosis. While I liked that the research benefited people, I felt confined by the lab and hospital. Eventually I realized that medicine just wasn’t for me.

As a high school or college student, many of you have the time and freedom to intern or volunteer in different work settings that seem interesting. By doing so you’ll learn what you like, as well as what you don’t. That’s valuable information to gain early when your life has some flexibility.

2) Keep an open mind.

After growing tired of medical research, I read a few books on the natural sciences. What I learned got me excited about the water cycle, leading me to email a geology professor at my school who specialized in a related topic. He had a different idea.

“Do you know about the algae bloom problem in Lake Champlain?” He asked me in our first meeting. I sure did.

I spent summers going to that very lake in northern Vermont. A few times each year I watched as large swaths of the water’s surface turned green, like split pea soup. Later I learned that the culprit was cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, which can be toxic. Seeing an opportunity to get out of the lab while investigating a problem that hit close to home, I decided to help the professor.

As it turned out, taking algae, water and sediment samples from boats got me excited about aquatic research and I haven’t looked back. My time on the lake gave me real experience in science far beyond what I could learn from books. If I’d stuck to my guns—wanting to study the water cycle—I would have missed this fun opportunity that ultimately put me on the path to where I am today.

3) Work to become a better writer.

Unlike many, I enjoy writing. This led me to a job reporting medical discoveries in a newsletter for a cancer research institute. It was a nice change from penning lab reports for school and I enjoyed it so much that I went on to take creative writing classes in college.

Written communication is critical to being successful at most jobs, in particular those in the sciences. We have to produce research articles, and while the form is somewhat rigid, one must have strong writing abilities in order to do it well. I’m forever working to improve my scientific writing and the tools I learned in my English classes are a big help.

4) Learn new skills.

For example: statistics. This sounds boring, I know, but it’s fundamental. Stats provide the grounds on which we as scientists can say what we say, as nearly all hypotheses are formally tested using these tools. I didn’t learn enough about how to use stats during college and I’ve had to catch up. The more you learn early on, the better off you’ll be.

5) Be persistent.

No matter what I was doing, I worked hard at it. If I got to the end of a project and realized that it wasn’t for me I moved on, and if I liked it I kept going.

To get these opportunities I had to be persistent. I checked websites, sent emails and knocked on doors, much like my friend Aly. After I made contact, I provided resumes and writing samples, which I followed up with emails and calls. While you don’t want to pester a potential employer, follow-up shows that you’re serious about the job, whether it’s as a research assistant, an intern or full-time employee.

In the end, I found that grad schools professors liked my diverse resume and I saw that grades alone wouldn’t have gotten me to the next level. A range of experiences can be key to building your resume and make you a strong candidate for an advanced degree or job in any field of science.

 

Whale protection gets personal

April 30, 2012

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“I saw Voyage of the Mimi and said to myself, ‘Yep, that’s it. That’s what I want to do,’” Aly Fleming told me recently.

She was in second grade when she made the decision to become a marine biologist after watching the television series that chronicled scientists tracking whales off the coast of Massachusetts. “I was enamored with the animals and the lifestyle.”

While many of her classmates likely said the same thing back then, Aly stuck with it. She enrolled in a marine research program for high schoolers on a sailboat off of Cape Cod, volunteered as a whale-watching guide for the New England Aquarium, and used data collected over many years of whale watches for an independent research project in college.

Wanting to see more of the world, she volunteered for a bottlenose dolphin research project in New Zealand while working as a nanny to pay her way. Throughout, her opportunities didn’t appear out of thin air, she had to go looking for them on email lists, websites, and by knocking on teachers’ doors. In the end it was all worth it. Twenty years after first seeing Mimi, Aly was accepted as a Ph.D. student in San Diego to study whale populations.

Aly and I started grad school at SIO in 2007 and quickly bonded over our east coast roots—hers in Massachusetts and mine in Vermont. In addition to our normal coursework, we took classes in marine policy and history as students in the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, which is housed within SIO. Both of us were drawn to the center because through its classes and discussion groups we learned how scientific findings get put into action, which in turn helped us understand how we can help protect and restore marine life.

Thanks in part to this interdisciplinary training, Aly’s studies took an unexpected detour that brought her back to where it all began. She was asked to write a scientific report on humpback whales—the very same species she saw on Mimi and later in person in the waters off of Massachusetts.

Her task was to compile all the available data on how many of the species exist on the planet today, a tough job given that the oceans are massive and the animals travel great distances while hidden below the sea.

The findings of her report—collected from interviews of researchers and reading pages and pages of scientific papers—would inform a panel of experts who would make a recommendation to the government to answer a single question: should humpback whales still be considered an endangered species?

“I was nervous about it in the beginning,” Aly told me. “I was afraid that what I found could lead to reducing their level of protection.” Her life’s work was devoted to protecting whales and she felt an emotional tie to them, but as a scientist her report would be based on the available science, and the science alone.

Being ‘endangered’ means that a species is near extinction, and being officially listed as such means that the government must pursue a plan to help the species recover. Stopping whaling has allowed humpback whales to rebound from precariously low numbers during the 1960s.

Still, it remains unclear whether the number alive today is comparable to how many there were before whaling began, and Aly knew this would make it difficult to assess just how well the species has recovered.

In the ensuing months she read thousands of pages of scientific papers and traveled the country to talk with researchers. Her final 206-page document, which she wrote with a collaborator, Dr. Jennifer Jackson, was passed on to the experts who deliberated and made a recommendation to the government.

Despite her early reservations, Aly saw a silver lining emerge: being removed from the endangered species list isn’t necessarily a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact. If the humpback whale truly is no longer on the brink of extinction then we as people have successfully allowed them to bounce back, at least to a certain extent.

“The endangered species list shouldn’t be a designation of doom where species are listed until they disappear,” she says. “If we want it to be a tool to help animals survive then we have to be able to say when we’ve succeeded for one species, which will then let us work harder for other species that are in worse shape.”

As we learned a few years ago in our marine policy class, even if humpback whales are taken off the list there are still laws in place to protect them, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which bars people from harassing, killing or getting too close to any marine mammal.

In the end, Aly hopes that the best decision will be made, not only for the protection of the whales, but also for many other organisms that face the threat of extinction every day.

So, what is the government’s decision? Well, it hasn’t been made yet. But we will all know soon enough as they will decide within the next year, so stay tuned.

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