Below are the vignettes presented by Boston University’s Martha Werler at the SER meeting. Dr Werler kindly agreed to share them with readers of The Epidemiology Monitor. Genders have been randomly allocated for confidentiality reasons, and given the labels that Dr Werler believes reflect their paths – at least from her perspective.

Vignette # 1 - The Content-Area Driven: 

Some people are lucky to know exactly what they want at an early stage.  This individual was interested in studying a particular group of diseases, let’s just say cardiovascular diseases. During the pre-doctoral period, he did laboratory work and then wanted to  learn how to study risk factors for those outcomes. He applied to epi doctoral program and conducted his thesis research on cardiovascular disease.

In the post-doctoral period, he continued working in that laboratory with the same boss with a promotion to Research Instructor.  During that time, he published his thesis papers, several additional papers, applied for grants, and attended workshops on faculty development and promotion.  After a couple of years, he surprised his boss by presenting his CV, showing his accomplishments as Research Instructor, and that he met the criteria for Research Assistant Professor.  His boss agreed and put him forward for promotion, which was successful.

Vignette #2 - The Opportunistic One:

Her first job after obtaining a master degree in epidemiology was working as an analyst in a genetics laboratory.  She realized she could take classes while she worked and took advantage of that opportunity.  After taking the more advanced epidemiology classes, she decided she might as well get a doctorate while she was at it, applied and entered the doctoral program.  She took as many different biostatistics methods classes as she could.   Before finishing her thesis, she had to relocate for family reasons.  She took a job at a large urban hospital as a research analyst and finished her thesis from afar.

In the post-doctoral period she continued as a research analyst while simultaneously publishing her thesis papers and several additional papers.  She also recognized that some of the clinicians she worked with could use help not only with analyses but study design and methods – her job expanded to these activities as well.  When a new public health program was established at a local university, she jumped at the opportunity with the encouragement of her current colleagues.  She was hired to help shape the epidemiology program from the ground up as an assistant professor. 

Vignette # 3 - The Diverted:

His first job after a master degree in epidemiology was as a project coordinator at a children’s hospital under a much admired and very successful PhD epidemiologist.   He was enamored with the idea conducting independent research and teaching and entered the doctoral program.  Coursework, working with professors doing research, TAing, and the dissertation process furthered his excitement about academia.

After graduation, he did a post-doc at a busy tertiary hospital, only to discover that the glorified job he had aspired to wasn’t all that appealing anymore.  He decided to give the private sector a try and hasn’t looked back since.  He finds that all of his epidemiology skills are put to use in this work and is quite fulfilled.  He says he has forfeited teaching in this current job, but hopes to be able to do some of that on the side in the future.

Vignette # 4 - The Teacher: 

This individual fell in love with epidemiology before getting her masters degree.  It was the methodology and its public health relevance that appealed to her.  She wanted a career in academic epidemiology and entered our program. While she took courses she wanted a career in academic epidemiology and entered our program. While she took courses she worked in group that was exploring and applying some newer epi methods, attracted not by the research questions so much as the methods.  She excelled in the program – completed her coursework and put together an interesting thesis. 

Then she had two babies while in the program – this seems to be a common pattern in our program.  Her progress understandably slowed, but she found that teaching epidemiology was something she could do with small children.  She started teaching epidemiology at a local medical school.  It took her a bit longer to graduate but she did and continued teaching, taking on more and more classes and publishing her thesis papers.  When a full-time faculty position opened up where she had been teaching, she was an obvious candidate and landed the job. 

Final Comments

Werler asked the graduates what advice they would offer.  They all pointed to taking a breadth of methods courses and gaining as much research experience as possible to gain as many concrete skills as possible.  Even when concentrating on a narrow content area within epidemiology– like the individual who works today in the lab where he started post-masters degree – knowing many different statistical techniques and having conducted different types of epidemiologic studies is helpful. 

Choosing classes with this in mind is one recommendation.  Another is to include different epidemiology designs and statistical methods in your theses.  At BU the thesis is in the form of three separate studies, so it is easier to achieve this variety.  But even if your thesis project is one large project, you could build into different sub-studies and analyses to beef up these concrete skills, according to Werler.

All of the graduates kept their eyes open for different kinds of job opportunities and have landed, at least for now, where they didn’t quite expect when starting out. 
 

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