[Neuropostdocs] Summary of last meeting

[Christian Beaulé]

Good day everyone,

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who attended yesterday's 
meeting. A lot was discussed and several exciting projects for the 
NSPPA (NeuroScience Program Postdoctoral Association) were put forward.

Here is a summary of the projects. Sorry for the lengthy e-mail, but as 
I said, a lot was discussed.

1- April 19th NSP seminar: The NSPPA-invited speaker for this spring, 
Dr. Larry Young (Emory) was unable to visit us. His presentation will 
be postponed to next fall. All the other speakers that were on the list 
I had were also unable to come to fill this spot. It was agreed that 
the postdocs would use this now vacant seminar session to present their 
work in a "datablitz" format. Due to time constraints, only ONE postdoc 
from EACH lab will present a 4 min (approx) presentation on their work 
(+ 1 min question period). According to my e-mail list, and to the 
number of people who I am aware are physically here, we should have 11 
labs (M. Gillette; H. Hing; G. Robinson; P. Newmark; P. Gold; D. 
Clayton; M. Nelson; B. Greenough; A. Feng; S. Shantz; Gratton/Fabiani) 
and thus 11 postdocs giving a presentation. If there is more than one 
postdoc per lab, I trust that you will be able to reach a peaceful 
agreement on who will be the lucky one giving the presentation. This 
should take just over one hour.

This is a unique opportunity to make the postdocs visible and 
implicated in the NSP program. This will become increasingly important 
for some of the upcoming projects (see point 4 below).

I will need confirmation of your participation by APRIL 5th.

2- Workshop: "How to Apply for a Job": This is an idea that has been 
around for quite some time but that needed to be set in motion. The 
NSPPA will invite 5 guests to give a workshop on what is involved with 
the job application process. We will have a panel consisting of 
recently-hired junior faculty, one senior faculty, and one person from 
the industry. The "juniors" will be able to provide insights on their 
recent job hunting process. One of these will be a woman. As you are 
aware, women are severely underrepresented in academic faculty and 
hearing a woman's perspective would be extremely valuable. The senior 
faculty will be able to provide insights on what universities have been 
looking for in their job candidates as well as information on some of 
the administrative regulations. The person from the industry will 
provide answers to those who consider a job outside of academia.

Guests: TBA
Date: TBA, will be sometimes in the spring, summer, or fall, depending 
on the guests' availability.
For Who?: All SNP postdocs and graduate students.

What I need from you is a list of question/topics that you would like 
the panel to address. E-mail me what you want to know so that we can 
make a handout and make sure that no stone is left unturned. The sooner 
the better.

3- Inscription of the NSPPA as a Registered Student Organization (RSO): 
In an attempt to increase the visibility of the NSP postdocs, it was 
agreed that we would officially register the NSPPA (hence the name) 
within the Illini Union as a RSO. This will give the NSPPA an official 
status and will be helpful for upcoming events. In addition, there is 
funding available through the RSO to organize activities and we would 
be able to tap into this source of funds. Finally, a RSO requires a 
president and a treasurer in order to be allowed to apply for funds. 
Those present at the meeting agreed to the following:

President: Christian Beaulé
Treasurer: Adrienne Moran Lauter

I will keep you updated.

4- Travel Fellowships: You all received the recent e-mail communication 
that I had with Paul Gold and Gene Robinson regarding the possibility 
of offering travel fellowships for the postdocs. This is a project that 
will require A LOT of commitment. The primary obstacle is that postdocs 
are the ultimate "forgotten, between the cracks, in the gray area" of 
the university community. As such, there is no money directly available 
for postdocs unless WE change it. There are a lot of possible funding 
avenues, both internal and external to the university. In all cases, it 
will require a highly organized plan of action if we want to be able to 
lobby to the higher officials and make them realize the importance of 
the postdoc community and the need for travel fellowship and/or other 
types of opportunities for postdocs. This is why we decided, as a first 
step, to register the NSPPA as a RSO. This will add a bit of 
credibility to our cause.

There is money in the university that could be diverted to the NSPPA. 
Again, it will require organized lobbying and proof of commitment from 
our part to convince officials that our request is not only reasonable, 
but warranted. There is also the possibility to write departmental 
grants, be included in the budgets associated with future training 
grants. We can ask vendors and private companies to sponsor travel 
grants. We can also organize fundraising events in order to gather some 
funds that could be distributed to the postdocs as travel fellowships.

This is very preliminary and a lot of research and planning needs to be 
done before we can efficiently attempt to negotiate for funds. If any 
of you have great ideas for sources of funding, please say so. The more 
organized we will be, the greater our chances. This can be done. Other 
universities were able to do it, we can do it as well. Again, I cannot 
emphasize enough that this will require commitments form ALL the 
postdocs in the NSP. If you are relying of others to do this for you, 
it will not happen. Do I need to mention that postdocs are mostly 
unrecognized by university decision makers? I guess not.

5 and last point- NSP website: Where are the NSP postdocs on the NSP 
website you ask? What impression do the visitors of the NSP website 
have in realizing that none of the labs have postdocs? Sure there are 
graduate students, but the strength of a program is also through its 
postdocs, don't you think? Lets make an addition to the NSP website. 
Lets add the names of the NSP postdocs, the institution (and country) 
where they received their Ph.D. and the name of their current advisor. 
We could also keep it updated when postdocs leave for academic 
positions to "keep track" of where we end up. This is a very simple 
thing to do and will increase our visibility. Sam Beshers has already 
been contated on this topic. I will ask him what kind of information he 
needs for the website and keep you updated.

That's it for now. Remember to:
	Confirm your participation to the April 19th NSPPA Datablitz by April 
5th (and prepare your presentation).
	Send me the questions and topics that you would like to be covered 
during the "how to apply for a job" workshop.
	Think of avenues of funding.

I thank you in advance for your active participation.

Christian