© The American Physiological Society - Trainee Advisory Committee

In its second year, the Trainee Advisory Committee (TAC) has formed subcommittees and began making progress on our projects, and completing initial projects. The Committee’s discussions remain focused by the charge from the APS Council. The Committee met twice during its second year, once during a two-day fall meeting in Bethesda and again at the 2005 Experimental Biology meeting. The fall meeting proved instrumental in getting the Committee’s projects well underway.

The TAC conducted a Trainee Survey with the help of the APS staff. Each TAC member sent email messages to their respective Section listservs asking trainees and new investigators to participate in the survey via a link to an online survey site. The survey included ranking the importance of several issues (e.g., balancing work and family, mentoring, grantsmanship, and teaching) and a few short answer questions. Responses from both APS member and non-member graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and new investigators were requested (along with status identification) to allow assessment of needs from many perspectives.

A total of 224 people completed the survey. Graduate students composed 38% of the respondents, postdoctoral fellows 33%, and new investigators 20%. These results are already focusing many of the Committee’s efforts (email newsletter, trainee web page, EB workshop, etc.) and are being shared with the Education, Careers in Physiology, Women in Physiology, and Porter Physiology Development Committees as well as with the APS Membership and Marketing Departments. The survey was viewed as being very successful for the Committee in verifying the main issues faced by trainees and holds promise for future feedback and suggestions from the APS trainees.

The TAC discussed the upcoming symposium slot and selected the topic, “Transition from Postdoc to New Investigator,” for its first EB session. Specific speakers and session format is being finalized. The TAC will work with the Women in Physiology and Career Opportunities in Physiology Committees, as both those Committees would like to plan complimentary sessions. Representatives from all three committees will work to make sure the three sessions do not overlap in content.

Email Newsletter: The TAC decided to use the previously established trainee listserv, which was initially populated with all student members, as the vehicle for the trainee email newsletter. Messages are sent out on a monthly basis by APS Education Office staff and include relevant APS and other news, notice of award opportunities, and postdoctoral position openings. Hamblin and Stocker work with APS staff to develop the content, ensure the newsletter comes out on a monthly basis, and provide content relevant to the Committee charge. This spring, Hamblin and Stocker also developed a special e-newsletter issue containing a list of all relevant EB/IUPS career sessions for trainees. Each Committee member distributed the special list via their section listservs as well as the trainee listserv. The list was very well received as indicated by comments and emails from trainees as well as regular APS members.

Web Page: The Committee is working on developing the TAC page to include links to relevant materials on the APS web site as well as elsewhere. Announcements of the new material can be sent out via the trainee listserv. One of the questions the committee hopes to address at its fall meeting is whether there should be a larger trainee website behind the members-only firewall and how the APS website can provide support for undergraduates who are involved in physiology research to promote their continued work in physiology.

Last fall the TAC discussed which APS Committees should have trainee representatives. That request was sent to the Committee on Committees, which then passed it along to the appropriate committees for a vote at their EB committee meeting. As a result, the Committee hopes to catalyze additional trainee input to APS activities coordinated by a number of committees.

Most of the TAC members have been asked by their sections to write short articles on the Committee’s activities for their section newsletter; many have already done so, providing reports on TAC activities and suggestions to trainees on making the most of meetings, etc. All TAC members were encouraged to write articles to increase the visibility of the Committee and of trainees. As each member writes a brief article, they post it to the Committee listserv and share with others on the Committee. Then the other Committee members can include that article and either expand on it or focus on another aspect of the Committee’s activities, allowing for more material to be in each section’s newsletter.

Because all of the TAC members are appointed by their respective section, each section was asked to begin identifying how it plans to name a successor to its TAC member. Most of the sections developed a method for selecting their TAC representative during their Steering Committee meetings at EB. In addition, some sections chose to extend the term of their current representative to allow for one-third of the TAC members to rotate off each year, rather than half as is currently scheduled to happen.

The Cardiovascular Section and TAC representative Hamblin have initiated a CV Trainee committee to promote interaction and involvement of trainees in their Section. This seems an informative additional model to increase trainee participation within APS Sections and aid in selecting a future sectional TAC Representative.

Committee Chair Caroline Sussman remains involved in the NPA on its Diversity Committee and another Committee member (Golder) has joined the NPA International Issues Committee. Both report on activities from the NPA to keep the Committee up to date. APS has also become a sponsoring society member.

The TAC held a 1.5-day fall meeting last year. This meeting allowed Committee members to accomplish much more than they would have been able to do in a conference call. The meeting allowed the Committee to develop a recommendation for Council on student membership dues (which was subsequently approved by Council), finalize the trainee survey, begin planning for a symposium at EB 2006, discuss the trainee newsletter and web site, receive a detailed report on the NPA, and have a general discussion of issues facing trainees today. The TAC would like to hold another fall meeting in 2005 to continue its work on a number of important fronts.

Type of trainee	Started survey		Finished survey		%Finishing
	%	#	%	#
Graduate Students (Masters, PhD)	33%	109	38%	86	79%
Professional Student (MD, MD/PhD, DVM)	5%	18	3%	6	33%
Postdoctoral Fellow	26%	85	33%	73	86%
New Investigator (includes Other: new professor, Jr. faculty, Assoc. professor)	18%	61	20%	44	72%
Established Investigator (includes Instructor, professor, mentor, PI, faculty mbr, retired professor)	12%	38	7%	15	39%
Other (No response or not able to categorize)	6%	19	0%	0	0%
Total	100%	330	100%	224	68

The survey was targeted at graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and new investigators. The large majority of both those who started (77%) and completed (91%) the survey were in one of these three categories. Therefore, the survey attracted responses primarily from the intended target group.

Of the new investigators responding, equal numbers were in tenure-track and non-tenure track positions. However, it should be noted that more than a quarter of the new investigators responding to the survey did not indicate whether or not they were in tenure-track positions.

Type of Trainee	n	Members								Non- Members		No Response
		Total		Regular		Student		No response		Non- Members		No Response
		%	#	% total	#	% total	#	% total	#	%	#	%	#
Graduate Student	109	49%	53	0%	0	85%	45	15%	8	49%	53	2%	3
Postdoctoral Fellow	85	66%	56	68%	38	27%	15	5%	3	33%	28	1%	1
New Investigator	61	92%	56	79%	44	2%	1	20%	11	7%	4	1%	1

Half of the graduate students, two-thirds of the postdocs, but almost all the professional students, new investigators, and established investigators responding were APS members.

Section	Graduate Student		Postdoc. Fellow		New Investigator			% of Member in Section
Section	%	#	%	#		%	#
Cardiovasc	38%	21	27%	15		18%	10	17%
Cell & Molecular	48%	11	30%	7		22%	5	9%
CNS	0%	0	53%	8		27%	4	6%
Comp & Evol	50%	3	33%	2		17%	1	3%
Endocrinol & Metab.	40%	2	20%	1		0%	0	6%
Environ. & Exercise	27%	4	27%	4		20%	3	6%
GI & Liver	25%	3	25%	3		25%	3	4%
NCAR	25%	4	44%	7		31%	5	3%
Renal	23%	6	46%	12		19%	5	5%
Respiration	33%	4	42%	5		25%	3	7%
Teaching	0%	0	0%	0		100%	5	2%
Water & Electrolyte	0%	0	50%	3		33%	2	2%
None	63%	15	29%	7		4%	1	30%
Not sure	76%	13	6%	1		6%	1	0%

Many of those respondents indicating they were not APS members still answered this question and selected a sectional affiliation. Most of the sections have reasonable representation in the respondents overall. No CNS, Teaching, or Water & Electrolyte Section graduate students responded. There were no postdoctoral fellows responding from the Teaching Section

Question	Mean Rating
Question	Graduate Student	Postdoctoral Fellow	New Investigator
Mentoring (what to expect as a mentee)	4.1	3.6	3.1
Mentoring (what to expect as a mentor)	3.9	4.0	4.1
Teaching guidance (how to prepare for a teaching career)	4.3	4.1	3.8
Research ethics (developing your understanding)	3.9	3.6	3.4
Research environment (including laboratory safety)	3.7	3.5	3.4
Lab and personnel management	4.2	4.3	4.1

When asked about professional skills they were most interested in learning about, the top two choices for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and new investigators were lab and personnel management and teaching guidance (how to prepare for a teaching career). Being a mentor was also a highly-rated choice.

Question	Mean Rating
Question	Graduate Student	Postdoctoral Fellow	New Investigator
Authorship policies	4.2	4.0	3.7
Award opportunities	4.7	4.6	4.3
Meetings	4.5	4.2	3.8
Grant opportunities	4.8	4.8	4.6
Grant reviewing	4.5	4.4	4.4
Travel funding	4.6	4.6	4.2

When asked about the professional activities that they would like to learn more about, for all three groups (graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and new investigators), grant opportunities was the number one topic. Award opportunities were also highly rated by all three groups. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows also expressed interest in travel funding information while new investigators were interested in learning more about grant reviewing.

2005 Trainee Advisory Committee Report