Study careers beyond academia, grad students told

Those with plenty of education facing tight job market
Study careers beyond academia, grad students told


By Jennifer L. Johnson
Published Friday, December 04, 2009


University of Georgia graduate students with science degrees were told to put their futures under the microscope Thursday and consider jobs they may not have thought about in their nearly two decades of formal education.

At the second annual Science Career Symposium, sponsored by the new UGA student organization Graduate Students and Postdocs in Science, about 180 science students learned what careers they may find outside academia - in government, the private sector, education and policy, and science writing and licensing.

Leaders of the student organization realized last year that they needed help finding jobs in a tough market. The second symposium speakers, including representatives from the National Institutes on Health, UGA's College of Veterinary Medicine, Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Science magazine, told them to stay flexible and value team work.Speakers were selected based on their experience in fields students were interested in learning more about, said executive chairwoman Keriyan Smith.

Viswanathan Rathinam wanted to learn about prospective jobs in the private sector, and liked the idea that he could shake hands with the speakers and ask them questions.

"I'm here because I'm an unemployed scientist and I want to work in a lab," said Rathinam, who completed his postdoctoral research in chemistry. "I'm very hopeful about the possibilities of finding a job today."

Rathinam wanted to speak to Peter Simpson, a microbiologist in charge of quality control at The Coca-Cola Company.

"I've applied (to Coca-Cola) about 20 times and never received a response," Rathinam said. "Hopefully today, I can get some more information about finding work."

Students who have spent years buried by books and practically chained to lab equipment while pursuing their degrees might take some comfort in the fact that all that hard work has opened plenty of doors for them - maybe even ones they didn't realize were there.

When Anita Kishore was doing her postdoctoral research, she read books about alternative careers in science, but didn't realize that she'd find herself in the business-saturated world of consulting.

"When I was at UGA, I wanted to understand how you go from studying a concept like membrane-associating proteins like I did to creating a drug," Kishore said. "Consultants start with a hypothesis and do rigorous analytical research to get to a conclusion, which - frankly - is a lot like scientific research."

Postdoctoral researchers don't normally spend more than a few years consulting before moving on to other work, but Kishore said the experience was a good stepping stone to better jobs.

"The great news is that there are jobs out there, but these are not jobs that you can get straight after your Ph.D. - they consider the consultation work like a finishing school," Kishore said. "I'm kind of lazy when it comes to finding a job, but now these people come find me."

This is good news for students, since the most traditional science career - teaching - is suffering from a weak economy, according to Donna Perkins-Balding, an assistant professor at Macon State College. Still, teaching jobs are there, too.

"It doesn't look very good right now, but in the past few years that I've been a professor, there have been 12 job openings at Macon State," Perkins-Balding said. "It's still viable."

UGA alumna Peter Simpson, who has been with The Coca-Cola Company for 13 years in various research and development positions, encouraged students to get practical experience.

"If you guys are looking at going into industry and you have an opportunity to get out into the field or go into a production environment, you really should do that," Simpson said. "It's a very different experience and will help you relate science concepts to laymen and the general public, which is very important."

Don't underestimate the value of graduate-level courses, he advised.

"You can take what you've learned here and really apply it quite well," Simpson said.