A professor of the practice leads students through the choices they face, and how to succeed once they decide on their career paths
“People come into a course like this at different points in their personal journey, and my attitude is, you may be ready to do all, some, or none of this right now,” says Frank David. “Do whatever is right for you to get out of it as much as you can.” Photo: Anna Miller
When Frank David finished his MD/PhD program, residency, and postdoctoral fellowship, he realized that his dream job combining a research career with a side of patient care was not, in fact, what he wanted to do. After six months of introspection and informational interviewing, he came up with a career that did fit: consulting in the biopharma industry.
Now David is a professor of the practice in the Department of Biology, and is putting his hard-won knowledge to work for biology master’s students and juniors and seniors, teaching the course Career Skills for Biologists. He’s offered it for the last three semesters, and hears from students how valuable they find it. “I’ve had several students say that it jumpstarted their whole exploratory path, kicked them into gear, got them on the right path,” he says.
It came about as faculty realized that some upper-level undergrads and master’s students were looking for a practical course to help them with “what I call the existential angst problem,” says David. “What do I do with my life? How do people get jobs? How can I be successful outside the university?”
The curriculum addresses those questions directly. “We spend a lot of time in the first four weeks talking about what students want to do, what they can do, and what someone will pay them for—and understanding where those three come together,” says David.
Part of that existential process at the beginning is figuring out what a student’s relationship is to biology and how that fits with the other parts of their lives. That kind of discussion is what makes it “qualitatively different from the experience you would have in a mixed group led by someone who was not a biologist,” he says.
Down to the Practical Details
The second section of the class, a one-credit course that is pass-fail, is very practically oriented: How to gather information and get ready to apply for jobs. That involves things like creating LinkedIn profiles, resumes, and cover letters—and workshopping them in class. David also provides one-on-one feedback for those who want it.
“In terms of the career skills piece, I had to learn all of those things too,” he says. “That part of the course is really what I wish someone had told me before my first day in the private sector.”
“We spend a lot of time in the first four weeks talking about what students want to do, what they can do, and what someone will pay them for—and understanding where those three come together.”
The third section of the class addresses how to be successful in a career, including things like negotiating for a job, time management, and effective communication in the workplace, like how to write clear work emails.
David notes that while the Career Center at Tufts offers many of these kinds of services, his class is very customized to biology and biologists.
“I think a lot of people sort of feel like they studied biology and therefore they need to do something with the thing they studied,” he says. “And the point that I make is that no one asks the history majors why they’re not going to go be historians. There are a lot of people in the world who major in something and then go and do something else.”
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That’s not meant to dissuade anyone from becoming a biologist, of course, but David makes the point that many different avenues are available to biology majors, such as health policy and advocacy, climate science, and communications.
Of course, many are going into careers specific to biology students. If someone wants a lab-related job, but their bench experiences are a little bit thin, David makes suggestions for talking about projects they did in hands-on classes, for example, elevating those things so they become relevant to a lab job.
That’s useful, since his master’s students are equally divided between aiming for a Ph.D or medical degree, working in the biotech or pharma industries, and being completely up in the air about what they want to do.
What Working in Industry Really Looks Like
The ones looking to go into industry, for example, “have very little understanding of what that actually means,” says David, who also runs the biotech consulting firm Pharmagellan. “They don’t really know what those jobs are”—and he explains the variety of possibilities beyond research discovery, such as manufacturing, quality control, safety, clinical operations, and project management, in addition to roles on the business side.
The course includes master’s level students, and David is quick to suggest they take the class sooner in their program rather than later. “You need to start thinking about this the first day you come in,” he says. “You should not be waiting until your fourth semester and then saying, ‘Oh, I wonder what I’m going to do after I graduate.’ ”
“In terms of the career skills piece, I had to learn all of those things too. That part of the course is really what I wish someone had told me before my first day in the private sector.”
Initially, David didn’t give homework, but students asked him for it, and he assigns it now. “It keeps them accountable and it gives me a way to give them some direct feedback. I say, list a bunch of careers that you’re thinking about and tell me why you’re thinking about them,” he says. In response, he passes on ideas, LinkedIn profiles of people that he knows who have similar career paths, and sometimes makes contacts for them.
“People come into a course like this at different points in their personal journey, and my attitude is, you may be ready to do all, some, or none of this right now. Do whatever is right for you to get out of it as much as you can,” he says.
“My hope is that for the parts that you’re not ready for yet, when you are ready for it, I hope this will have been a good resource for you and that it’ll help you whenever—maybe six months from now you’ll say, ‘OK, now I’m ready to focus on some of these questions or issues or tasks.’ ”
