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Finding Teaching Experiences During Your Postdoc
Siribhinya (Sinya) Benyajati
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Siribhinya (Sinya) Benyajati, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center. She teaches Renal Physiology to medical, dental, pharmacy, physician assistant and graduate students. She shares her passion for teaching and mentoring with local high school seniors, advises biology students in community colleges and has served as Director of the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience Program and Coordinator for the other three NIH-sponsored undergraduate research programs (INBRE, NARCH, UBEP) at the Oklahoma Health Sciences Center campus.
In 2007, Benyajati received the 24th annual Stanton L. Young Master Teacher Award, one of the largest awards in the nation for medical teaching excellence.
Do Postdoctoral Fellows Need Teaching Experience?
Today graduates and postdoctoral fellows are presented with a range of career options: academic research scientists, scientists in industry, science teachers, science writers, science legal consultants, and science policy professionals. Yet, according to the 2001 National Science Foundation Survey of Doctoral Recipients, approximately 50% of biological and health sciences doctoral recipients are employed in academia. A more recent survey by The Scientist (vol. 21(3), 2007) found that 40% of the 2,555 surveyed postdoctoral fellows are planning on an academic position. Since the vast majority of academic careers require a person to be able to teach, whether in a formal classroom or in some other format, having teaching skills and experience will therefore help most postdoctoral fellows to obtain a job in academia, especially at four-year colleges and liberal arts institutions. In addition, many research universities now acknowledge the importance of university teaching and the value of faculty teaching skills. It was reported that recent graduates from the University of Colorado were offered higher base salaries for faculty jobs because they had specialized classroom training (http://www.nagps.org/files/tatraining.pdf?PHPSESSID=dcb7a205236ab775c3340406ddadb71f). A national survey of newly hired faculty and their chairpersons agreed that graduate programs did not adequately focus on preparation for college teaching (Adams, 2002: What Colleges and Universities Want in New Faculty, http://www.aacu.org/pff/PFFpublications/what_colleges_want/index.cfm), which makes the acquisition of teaching experiences during postdoctoral training even more desirable.
Furthermore, teaching skills (see below) are skills that everyone, regardless of career choice, can use in the workplace (e.g., in seminars, coaching employees, developing audio-visual materials for presentations, and publications).
What Type of Teaching Skills Do Postdoctoral Fellows Need?
Quality teaching not only includes well-structured lectures but also the ability to utilize new instructional methods or pedagogies (e.g., use of technology, active learning, collaborative learning, field-based learning, simulations) and creative techniques that effectively engage diverse students and support learning. Trainees need more than just the experience of teaching classes; they should also develop skills in working with students that include problem solving and advising.
The American Physiological Society and the Association of Chairs of Department of Physiology (APS/ACDP List of Professional Skills for Physiologists and Trainees, 2003: http://www.the-aps.org/education/skills.htm) recommend that trainees should develop the following teaching skills:
- Effective classroom teaching to varied audiences in terms of subject matter
- Effective classroom teaching in terms of pedagogy
- Ability to convey the competence in subject matter and confidence in one’s ability to teach
- Ability to develop course curriculum and individual lessons
- Effective use of common instructional aids, including audiovisual techniques
- Ability to help students understand the general principles and concepts underlying a particular lesson
- Ability to explain both basic and difficult concepts clearly
- Ability to put a specific lesson into larger context (clinical relevance, prior material)
- Ability to ask good questions (testing, study, case histories)
- Ability to provide feedback to students
- Awareness of the strengths and limitations of various means for evaluating teaching performance
- Ability to adjust lesson plan based on information garnered from student questions
- Ability to foster an effective learning environment including showing respect for the student, encouraging their intellectual growth and providing a role model for scholarship and intellectual vigor
How Do Postdoctoral Fellows Find Teaching Experience?
Obtaining teaching experience while completing a postdoctoral appointment can sometimes be difficult. Even postdoctoral fellows who have a strong desire to teach may struggle to find time for both research and teaching activities. Postdoctoral fellows mainly receive teaching opportunities/trainings provided by their institutions, departments, and advisors. Most teaching opportunities are found at academic institutions. However, postdoctoral fellows in industry laboratories can still find teaching opportunities through networking and seeking out mentors at academic institutions in nearby locations.
Mentors as Resources. To obtain a teaching opportunity, the postdoctoral fellow must take a proactive approach, expressing interest and seeking advice from the mentor. Most importantly, the postdoctoral fellow needs to have a mentor/advisor that supports his/her career development and will allow more flexibility in incorporating training opportunities with research. With the approval of the mentor, the postdoctoral fellow can, as a start, arrange to observe a faculty-taught class session in the department and then meet with the instructor to talk about his/her approaches to teaching. The mentor/advisor could also arrange for a supervised teaching session within the department [leading a discussion session, teaching a lab, guest lecturing, teaching a small portion of a course on an adjunct basis (at your own or another institution)], after which the advisor or other faculty could provide constructive feedback about the fellow’s teaching performance (what went well, what could be improved, what was gleaned from the experience). The advisor could also help set up other types of teaching arrangements for the postdoctoral fellow, such as individual tutoring or facilitating review or help sessions for students.
Institutional Resources. Many institutions now provide resources to improve teaching skills by establishing “centers for teaching and learning.” These centers sponsor workshops, seminars, and brown-bag lunch events and provide a library of resources to help graduate students, professional students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty members learn and improve their teaching techniques. Interested postdoctoral fellows should check out the resources at their institutions and take advantage of the help that such a resource center can provide.
A number of institutions offer courses related to education to trainees. These institutions are members of the national Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) Program that provide graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with opportunities to observe and experience faculty responsibilities that include teaching, research, and service (http://www.preparing-faculty.org/). Although the exact curricula of the PFF Programs vary among institutions, the core features are the same. For example, at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, the PFF Program is a one-year interdisciplinary program offered to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows as a two-course sequence. The first two-credit hour course provides a didactic background in instructional methods. Upon completion of the course, fellows will have assembled individual teaching portfolios comprised of teaching philosophy, lesson plans, instructional objectives, instructional media, self-assessment tools, and structured peer evaluation tools. The second two- to three-credit hour course provides discipline-specific teaching experience in university classrooms under the supervision of assigned faculty mentor. Fellows who are interested in gaining skills in teaching and learning should check whether a similar PFF Program is available at their institution. Admission to such program usually requires a letter of permission from the mentor or supervisor.
Funding Resources. There are also government-sponsored, as well as institutional- and private foundation-sponsored, “Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowships” available to help overcome the difficulty postdoctoral fellows encounter with balancing time between research and teaching activities. However, these fellowships are generally available to postdoctoral fellows at specific institutions. With this type of fellowship, the fellow is required to spend a portion of training time learning how to be an educator of the future, similar to that described for the PFF program. Similar to the PFF Program, the commitment and contribution of the mentor is critical in the participation of the fellow in this type of fellowship. Some programs will recommend that a second independent mentor be appointed as the teaching mentor to the postdoctoral fellow. For the postdoctoral fellows who know early on that they want to teach, this type of fellowship is invaluable. Information on postdoctoral teaching fellowships can be found on several databases, such as PostdocJobs (http://www.postdocjobs.com/jobseekers/fellowships.shtml) and GrantsNet (http://www.grantsnet.com/search/srch_menu.cfm).
Other Resources. Other ways to develop and refine teaching skills during postdoctoral training are to utilize excellent teaching resources available both as hardcopies and online resources (see examples below) and attending training conferences.
Tips for Getting Teaching Experience
- Discuss your interest in getting teaching experience with your mentor early, ideally during your interview for the postdoctoral position, so that training opportunities can be accommodated during the postdoctoral training period.
- If the research mentor cannot commit their time to the teaching development, with his/her permission, find an independent teaching mentor who can be involved in the training process.
- Attend classes, workshops, or seminars on teaching that are offered at your institution, particularly courses that offer in-depth preparation for teaching and professional development as a future faculty (PFF Program).
- Explore teaching publications and online resources to learn about teaching techniques and best practices.
- Arrange to observe a faculty-taught class session in your department and discuss with the instructor about his/her approaches to teaching.
- Arrange for a supervised teaching and feedback session with a faculty mentor.
- Teach! Try a variety of teaching experiences (leading lab or discussion sessions, review sessions, lectures, individual tutoring, team teaching).
Comments:
When I was a research postdoc at UCLA, I found that the physiology department in the medical school needed teaching assistants for the medical physiology labs and wanted postdocs who knew about whole animals. I also found that the nursing program there was willing to use adjunct faculty to help teach their students. Thus, I was able to have an adjunct appointment in the School of Nursing to teach part of the physiology course to graduate nurses.
Postdocs could also look into nearby community colleges or 4-year institutions to see if they are looking for instructors on a part-time basis in order to give release time to their faculty members. We have several predominantly undergraduate institutions here in South Dakota with new emphases on research who are looking for postdocs to teach some of their courses.
Barbara Goodman
University of South Dakota
Obviously, with many schools going to an ‘integrated’ curriculum and more small group learning, there is always a need for instructors in that venue. One of the mechanisms that I employed, quite successfully I might add, was to place postdoctoral fellows and senior graduate students in science courses taught at local junior/community colleges (Alabama is filled with two-year colleges). We have also utilized the courses taught by our health professional schools (Nursing, physical therapy, the surgical and physician assistant programs) for these students to get teaching experience. The last comment I will make is to re-emphasize Sinya’s suggestion for students to, in effect, apprentice with an experienced faculty, in essence following them around when they lecture and teach in small groups. There’s nothing like seeing what works and what doesn’t, live. I’ve had my students and postdoctoral trainees do this quite frequently, and I can see the benefits of that experience when they have to make presentations.
Dale Benos
University of Alabama at Birmingham
As a physiologist and an assistant professor at an undergraduate institution, I really appreciate this article. I'd like to add a resource to those already listed in the article.
There are several programs sponsored the IRACDA program through the MORE Division (Minority Opportunities in Research and Education) of the NIGMS for postdoctoral fellowships that incorporate teaching and research experiences. Similar to PFF programs, the IRACDA programs vary, but all include an elements of teaching, pedagogical training, and research. The teaching experience is typically at minority-serving institutions, with goals of increasing the number of biological and biomedical scientists from underrepresented groups. As a former fellow in one of these programs, the SPIRE program at the University of North Carolina, I can strongly recommend this type of program to new physiology postdocs who are interested in academic careers including both teaching and research. A list of the current programs can be found at the following URL: http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Training/CareerDev/PartInstIRACDA.htm
Kristen L.W. Walton
Missouri Western State University
One that I learned about here came from a former postdoc who now chairs the Dept. Chemistry at a local undergrad college. She arranged with her PI/mentor to do research during the day and teach in the evening at community colleges. This required 2 evenings/week after 6 pm. All worked well for her and her PI.
Carole M. Liedtke
Case Western Reserve University
Another approach that was not mentioned in the article that I have seen used to good effect is contacting Community Colleges to inquire about teaching lab courses. Community Colleges seem to be more receptive to post-doctoral instructors for lab courses. Once you prove that you are an effective instructor many times that will open doors to teaching full lecture courses as well.
Christopher J. Madden
Oregon Health & Science University
In my experience, [another idea would be] finding a mentor (or seeking out a faculty member in your discipline) who is planning a sabbatical in the next year or so. Many professors do not have an alternate to teach while they are on sabbatical. If the student contacts the professor early enough, he/she could offer to audit several classes to be prepared to offer a comparable lecture.
Nansie A. McHugh
Huntingdon Life Sciences
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