Career Development
The Good, Bad and Ugly on Developing Scientific Presentations by Dale Benos
Dr. Dale Benos gave a seminar today on how to develop a good scientific presentations, speaking to an audience of over 150 people from across campus. A big Clint Eastwood fan, Benos used clips and references from some of Eastwood’s best movies to show the participants how to improve their presentation skills.
The Good: The outcome of good presentation according to Benos is stimulate further self-directed learning among the participants. The best thing your presentation can do is to motivate someone to go out and learn more on their own about your topic. A good presenter will be able to this while being enthusiastic, confident, and sincere.
The Bad: Benos recommends using simple, clear wording during a presentation and limit the use of jargon. If you know your topic well, you can describe it without complex words or techinical concepts. Someone who understands your topic well will not be offended, and someone who doesn’t know your topic well will be grateful. Also try not to be offensive, arrogant, or argumentative with audience members when giving a presentation. This will just offend people and ruin the impact of your presentation.
The Ugly: Be careful how you design your PowerPoint slides. Think about colors, fonts, and graphics when creating your slides. Benos suggests keeping your slides simple. If you add a lot of content on your slide, it will be distracting and will encourage your audience to ask questions about things you are not prepared to answer or are distracting to your talk. Remember to that some people are color- blind so never use red font.
To see the Dr. Benos’ PowerPoint Slides from the presentation, visit the CCTS website: http://www.ccts.uab.edu/pages/pres_dev.aspx
Fall 2009 course on Intellectual Property Management
Confused about Intellectual Property Management? The UAB School of Business is offering a course on Intellectual Property Management from inception to commercialization. The course will be offered Fall 2009 on Wednesday evenings from 7:15 – 9:45 pm at the Innovation Depot in downtown Birmingham. Click here for a description of the course. For more information contact, Christy Manning at (205) 934-8815 or cmanning@uab.edu.
Define the word “advantage”
–noun
1. any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means specially favorable to success, interest, or any desired end: the advantage of a good education.
2. benefit; gain; profit: It will be to his advantage to learn Chinese before going to China.
3. superiority or ascendancy (often fol. by over or of): His height gave him an advantage over his opponent.
4. a position of superiority (often fol. by over or of): their advantage in experienced players.
5. Tennis. the first point scored after deuce.
Unfortunately, we can’t help with your tennis game. However, peruse some K award program announcements (and many other RFA or program announcements from the NIH) and note the importance of pointing out the existence of a Clinical and Translational Science Award (known here at UAB as the Center for Clinical and Translational Science or CCTS for short). For example, the following bullet points came from the latest K23 program announcement (which you can access quickly on the NIH website – see The Career Award Wizard post for information on the K kiosk):
• Describe the resources and facilities that will be available to the candidate, including any resources that are within a General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) or Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA).
• Candidates who will be using the resources within a General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) or Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) during the course of the award are requested to include a letter of agreement from either the GCRC or CTSA program director or the principal investigator as part of the application.
So the take-home message of this post: It may be an advantage to your NIH award application to note your access to the CCTS and to include a letter from the CCTS fearless leader, Dr. Lisa Guay-Woodford. Contact Melissa McBrayer for more information on how to proceed with a letter-writing request.
Traveling the Road of Career Development: The Candidate Background
“Background? I just want to have my research funded…why do I need to tell the reviewer about my background?”
The answer to this first and foremost is…because it is in the instructions. (Which, of course, you have read thoroughly if you’ve listened to anything I’ve said in presentations or other blog entries). After that…this is your opportunity to speak directly to the reviewer in order to make the case as to why you will benefit from funding. Some things to keep in mind:
The background provides a personal narrative of your professional career. Writing in first person is helpful. Use your current NIH biosketch as a guide to your educational and research “story”.
Explain why you made key education and career choices (e.g. training programs, research projects, etc.) If there is a theme to your professional path, point it out. Likewise, if you have had a change in direction, explain why.
Provide examples to the reviewer of what you have done with the opportunities you’ve had to engage in research. For research projects, this can include an overview of your role and the evidence of productivity. For example, if your research project in A led to a new question to pursue in project B, point that out. Always describe the productivity that resulted from your work (such as publications and presentations).
Describe any additional formal research training that you may have had as an MSPH or certificate program such as the CTS Training Program.
A “hand-shake” paragraph can be helpful. This is a paragraph that says “my name is Melissa and this is what I want to be when I am an established researcher”. For example:
“I am a recently appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences. I seek to complement my postdoctoral fellowship training experience by gaining in-depth knowledge of the daily operations of research investigations and by learning more of the laboratory aspects of metabolic, genetic, and endocrine testing. My overarching goal is to perform original research in pediatric obesity, specifically associated with perturbations in insulin dynamics during the pubertal transition.”
So now you are ready to start that Candidate Background section…but as they say in the informercials: “But wait! There’s more! ” And there is more to the Career Development Plan – like your goals and objectives and the actual training plan. Check back to see the next installment!
The Career Award Wizard
No – it isn’t Harry telling you what to do. The Career Award Wizard is designed by Muggles at the NIH to help you determine which Career Award (K) might be best for you. It isn’t perfect (what is?) but it can help point you in the right direction. Think of it as a kind of sorting hat.
Go to the site, answer the questions, see what comes up. It may be that the Wizard results will lead you to seek out other resources – like the K Kiosk or F Kiosk. Each site has helpful links about extramural funding as well as links to all of the Program Announcements. After you have identified a program that looks like it might work and you’ve read the corresponding program announcement, contact the Program Official at the most likely funding Institute or Center. Confirming your selection may save you a lot of time and effort and is an important contact to make before you begin the hard work of developing your application. Contact me while you are at it. I can help with the career development plan for your application as well as aid you with accessing resources of the CCTS.
Melissa McBrayer
