Tenure track Years 1 – 3 Basic scientists

Primary emphasis: Establishing a reputation as an independent investigator

“The most important order of business is getting the lab or research program up and running.”

~ Virginia Man-yee Lee, Ph.D., Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Mentors should encourage their mentees to round out the work they did during their fellowships so that they can begin to establish their reputations as independent investigators. Most new faculty on the tenure track arrive at Penn with a research plan in mind, and the sooner they can set this plan in motion the better.

Setting the science in motion

“During your first year, hiring the best lab personnel should take precedence over purchasing the most cutting-edge equipment.”

~ Amita Seghal-Field, Ph.D., Professor, Neuroscience

The first order of business should be getting the experimental systems up and running. Knowing how to handle the nitty-gritty, from ordering equipment to hiring postdocs and technicians to recruiting graduate students can make or break a new faculty member’s ability to get up to speed quickly. Mentors can provide this kind of practical information. Departmental business administrators (BAs) are an excellent resource too.

In selecting staff for the lab, many faculty prefer graduate students, for graduate students can contribute to shaping the science. They have chosen science as a career and have a vested interest in learning to integrate the literature, design experiments, and interpret the data. Moreover, as entrance into Biomedical Graduate Studies continues to become more competitive, our pool of grad students has become increasingly impressive – but it is a relatively small pool.

Given the competition for grad students, mentors should alert their mentees to specific ways in which they can make themselves visible to grad students.
[See below.]

All this being said, faculty should not overlook the merits of hiring experienced laboratory technicians. Unlike professional lab techs, grad students are with an investigator for only a short period of time. Moreover, they are balancing their career needs with those of their mentor. This means that grad students require more time off a project to attend conferences and courses, and to go to job interviews. By way of contrast, professional lab techs are devoted to the needs of the research group. Any time away from their core work relates to advancing the lab. Perhaps most important, once they master relevant lab techniques, they can teach those techniques to new grad students.

Directing the science

Once new faculty have set their science in motion, they may be tempted to retreat to their offices to focus on grant-writing, leaving lab projects to hum along on their own. However, mentors should encourage faculty to meet with lab members regularly and to monitor the lab’s work closely so that they can keep pushing it to the next phase, troubleshooting as needed, helping to interpret results, and designing the next set of experiments. Ultimately, time spent this way will more than pay itself back.

Mentors should help their mentees to strike a balance between focusing their experiments in order to tell an anticipated story and, at the same time, following unexpected leads that the data suggest along the way. Often it is the most unexpected twists and turns that occur in an experiment that yield the most exciting discoveries.

Funding the science

Some departments are able to provide start-up funds, but the expectation is that faculty on the tenure track secure their own funding early on. The School of Medicine Committee on Appointments and Promotions recognizes that it takes time to generate enough preliminary data to apply for an R01. Therefore, when tenure-track faculty come up for reappointment at year three, COAP will view other competitive, peer-reviewed grants favorably, including VA merit awards, grants from the Department of Defense, and foundation grants. Even so, faculty would do well to apply for a joint R01, as co-PI at this point in their careers. That way, they will have been able to demonstrate productivity when they are ready to apply for their second R01 as PI.

Mentors should make sure that their mentees receive feedback on their grants before submitting them. If mentors do not have the background to provide an in-depth critique of the science, they should find other faculty who do. Then they should contact those faculty themselves, for their mentees may feel reluctant to approach their senior colleagues on their own. Finally, even if mentors are not conversant in mentees’ specific area of biomedical expertise, most likely they can provide feedback on the abstract and specific aims.

Extensive resources on grant-writing are available on the Advance Faculty Professional Development Program web site. (See box to the right.) A few words about issues specific to less established investigators follow after the box.

Writing scientific papers

Typically, faculty need their first year to ramp their research enterprise up to speed. By the end of the second year, they should have generated enough data to start writing papers – and mentors should encourage them to get going.

Sometimes new faculty wait for a groundbreaking story to emerge from their data, but incremental advances in their area of expertise are worth writing up too. Mentors should point out that any papers their mentees publish, whether or not they are groundbreaking, will signal productivity to COAP when candidates come up for reappointment.

Making strategic decisions

The promotions clock ticks quickly on the tenure track, so faculty need to make every decision on how they allocate their time with an eye to both short-and long-term goals. They are likely to be inundated with various invitations, and mentors can help them assess invitations based on their long-term goals.(See box below)