Strategic Career Planning for the Academic Statistical Scientist: Another Kind of Survival Analysis

• Activity Number: 502
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 1, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Committee on Applied Statisticians
• Author(s): Shari Messinger*+ and Motomi Mori and Ralph O'Brien, PhD and James Grady, DrPH and Shari Messinger
• Companies: University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Oregon Health and Science University and Case Western Reserve University and University of Connecticut Health Center and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
• Keywords: academia ; career development ; applied statistician ; promotion and tenure

Abstract

Many MS and PhD biostatisticians are recruited by academic institutions to be primarily involved in consulting and collaborating. They become instrumental in enhancing the ability of various research teams to write successful grant proposals and produce excellent publications that will have high impact in science and/or on public policy. Yet while such statistical scientists are greatly valued by their collaborators and institutions, all of them, even the very best, face the same question: What about my career development? The effective leader of a biostatistics unit in academia faces the same question but from a different perspective: Given the limited resources that I have today, how do I best promote such career development so that my whole unit thrives? This panel and discussion will focus on how collaborating biostatisticians can survive and thrive in academia today. The panel members cover two perspectives, that of the individual biostatistician and that of the leader of the biostatistics unit. Issues to be addressed include expectations of both the institution and the individual, documentation of collaborative success, and criteria for promotion and tenure.