キャリアニュース2019年４月25～５月4日

“I am going to be on sabbatical at the same time!” I exclaimed to my former Ph.D. adviser. My certainty surprised me. I had recently earned tenure and become eligible for a sabbatical, but I had hesitated to take one. A break from teaching to focus on my research sounded nice in theory, but the truth was that I felt burned out on my science. I had no idea what I would do on a sabbatical, and the thought of losing the structure that teaching provides terrified me. Yet when I saw my former adviser at a conference and she mentioned that she would be spending the next year on sabbatical in a lab whose work I admired, something clicked. Maybe that was what I needed to get my spark back after the grueling, isolating process of getting tenure. ![Figure][1]</img> ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER > “I could be a laboratory tourist and benefit from seeing new perspectives.” When I started in my tenure-track position 6 years earlier, I had all the enthusiasm in the world. I couldn't wait to se

Chris Bolden, a Ph.D. candidate researching drug addiction, was thrilled with the outcome of two Arkansas congressional delegation staff meetings as part of an American Association for the Advancement of Science workshop on the role of science in public policy-making. The capstone meeting with a staffer for Rep. French Hill (R–AR) resulted in an invite to serve on an Arkansas regional advisory board on the state's methamphetamine epidemic, a focus of Bolden's research. At a later meeting with aides to Sen. Tom Cotton (R–AR), Bolden was asked to provide a tour of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences lab where he conducts research. “I said, ‘Yes,’ of course.” “Scientists in this generation want to increase our advocacy beyond the bench, and the best start is to get involved in policy,” said Bolden, one of 173 upper-class undergraduate and graduate science students who participated in intensive activities over 3 days as part of AAAS's Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engine