How do you transition from being a graduate student sitting in the audience of a lecture hall to becoming a professor presenting at the lectern? One way is through the PENN-Postdoctoral Opportunities in Research and Teaching (PENN-PORT) program, which combines traditional post-doctoral training with an immersive teaching experience. It is one of 20 programs funded by the NIH under the Institutional Research and Career Development Award initiative. Each institution implements a unique blend of scientific and pedagogical training and STEM outreach. Here, we present the perspective of a current PENN-PORT fellow.
Jason Diaz is an MVP alumnus from Jianxin You’s lab who defended his thesis work on Merkel cell polyomavirus in December 2014. Jason is in his second year of PENN-PORT and is only slightly frazzled at the prospect of teaching an introductory biology course at Delaware County Community College this semester. While the PENN-PORT program begins with a mix of laboratory work and teaching preparation, second year fellows are expected to teach at least one full course in both spring and fall. These assignments take place at partner institutions that serve underrepresented minorities such as community colleges and historically black universities. Following this bout of teaching, the fellows return to research and are well equipped to apply for jobs and grants.
Choosing this path was natural for Jason, who discovered his passion and talent for teaching while tutoring and being a teaching assistant (TA) during his undergraduate studies at Ithaca College. For Jason, graduate school was a means to an end; his goal is to be a college professor in a small liberal arts setting. The PENN-PORT program calls for candidates who are interested in teaching, have a strong research background, and who are dedicated to serving underrepresented minorities. Jason felt well qualified even though he was never a TA at Penn. When applying to PENN-PORT, he leveraged his extensive undergraduate teaching experience, his strong scientific training at Penn and many outreach efforts around the community in his application. Specifically, he volunteered with the Science Education Academy to bring hands-on science to elementary school children in West Philadelphia and was involved in the Philadelphia Science Festival.
For others with similar interests, Jason has a few tidbits of advice. First, he emphasizes that you will only know if you’re meant for teaching until you actually do it. So if you have never been a TA, do it! Even that small taste is enough to determine if teaching is your cup of tea. Second, teaching positions at academic institutes will absolutely require prior experience that can be gained by teaching intensive post-doctoral fellowships like PENN-PORT and visiting assistant professor positions. Jason himself is preparing to apply for tenure-track positions with a contingency plan of a visiting professorship after completing the PENN-PORT program. Notably, visiting professors are given the same benefits and responsibilities as a first-year tenure track professor. Although visiting professors are usually given one year appointments, they can sometimes be streamlined into a formal faculty search pool.
Despite the new responsibilities, Jason regards life as a PENN-PORT fellow to be both similar and infinitely better than as graduate student. He particularly relishes the lack of tension that accumulates on the eve of thesis committee meetings. Just as in graduate school, Jason is free to set his own schedule and must still overcome challenges and be an independent learner. For example, for his post-doctoral research, Jason made the daring move to switch fields into plant biology. One reason for this was pragmatic- his current mentor, Kim Gallagher, confirmed that she would be highly supportive of Jason and the PENN-PORT program requirements and was also deeply involved in teaching undergraduate courses. However, Jason also wanted to become well versed in an area of research that would be easy to transplant to an institution that didn’t necessarily have the same resources as Penn. Continuing his graduate work with human viruses, which require specialized equipment and containment, would have been more difficult.
Still, when asked to recall his favorite memory of Penn, Jason remembers how elated he felt when prominent virologist Beatrice Hahn asked an invested question during his presentation at Virology seminar. In this moment, Jason realized that he was an expert in the topic at hand, and how fruitful and interesting discussions with other scientists could be. He will certainly miss the array of exceptional virologists present at Penn and says that he could not have had such an amazing graduate school experience elsewhere.