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                                                                                                    Drug Discovery and
                                                                                                    Development: A Complex
                                 Mastering the Job Market                                           Team Sport
                                 Beryl Lieff Benderly                                               7 March 2008
                                 United States
                                 7 March 2008                                                       Scientist Lawyers: Test
                                                                                                    Tubes to Briefs
                                                                                                    22 February 2008
                                 For most young scientists on the Ph.D./postdoc track,
                                 deciding which of several lucrative job offers to accept isn't     Women in Science:
                                 an issue that comes up all that often. But for many in one of      Nurturing Women
                                 the professional science master's (PSM) programs now               Scientists
                                 proliferating around the country, it is literally a $64,000        8 February 2008
                                 question. "They get multiple offers," often at salaries around
                                 that figure, says Christine Sjolander, associate vice president    More
                                 for enrollment management and director of career services at
                                  Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in
                                  Claremont, California. PSM alumni "are so in demand that         CAREER TOOLS AND
   Professional science           we're actually trying to boost our enrollment because we         RESOURCES
  master's degrees, like          can't keep up."
       the Master of                                                                               Current Employers
          Business               "In the last 2 years, all of our students who've wanted jobs
                                 find [them] within 3 months of finishing," she continues.          Learn more about the
  Administration degree          Nationwide, nearly three-fourths of new PSM graduates go           employers advertising
    on which they are            to work right after graduation, frequently at salaries reaching    positions on our site.
       modeled, are              into the 60s, according to a survey of the classes of 2004 to
   designed as terminal          2006 by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). Many of            Science Careers Forum
  credentials for people         the remainder are already employed while working on their
                                                                                                    Post a question, get an
                                 degrees, and some opt to pursue further full-time graduate
     seeking science-            study. Five years out, Sjolander says, graduates "have in          answer on our online
  based careers outside          almost all cases been promoted at least once or twice. Many
                                                                                                    community
        of academe.              have changed opportunities. They are really in demand."
                                                                                                   Graduate Programs

Unlike traditional graduate training, which prepares students to be independent researchers         Browse our database of
despite the continuing dearth of actual openings, PSM programs offer "another way to stay in        program profiles
science" by preparing students for the wide range of opportunities currently available in
industry, government, and the nonprofit sector, explains Eleanor Babco, co-director of CGS's       How-To Guides
PSM Initiative. Unlike the "consolation prize" master's degrees that were long handed out to
students leaving Ph.D. programs, she continues, PSM degrees, like the Master of Business            Writing a resume/CV
Administration degree on which they are modeled, are designed as terminal credentials for
people seeking science-based careers outside of academe.                                            Beating the interview

                                                                                                    Getting funding
TWO YEARS AT THE INTERSECTION BEATS SIX AT A DEAD END                                               Managing a lab and staff




http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/article... 3/7/2008
Graduates of professional science master's programs often get multiple job offers. Page 2 of 3



Usually lasting 2 years, PSM programs combine graduate-level science courses with business,            Building your network
management, and other subjects related to specific industries. The requirements include an
internship in a relevant "real world" setting--a connection that frequently turns into a permanent    Salary Tools
job. More than 120 programs at 63 institutions across the country offer training in applied
aspects of biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and other sciences for work in                    Find out how much you're
biotechnology, informatics, national security, ecology, energy, forensics, finance, and other          worth with our salary
fields.                                                                                                calculator

Trained "at the intersection of science and business," graduates keep "one foot in the lab, one
                                                                                                      To Advertise   Find Products
foot in the marketplace," says Megan Lehrkamp, who received her degree from the University
of Arizona's applied biosciences program and now works as a manager at Ventana Medical
Systems, a manufacturer of cancer-detection devices, in Tucson. "If you're interested in
knowing about both" science and business, "a Ph.D. is not going to be the right route for you,"
she continues. "I knew I didn't want to stay in the lab for my entire career."

That's also how Kevin Bugin felt as he finished his bachelor's degree in biology and made
plans to enter a traditional graduate program. "That was really all I knew at the time, do that
Ph.D. and that postdoc track, and then, when I'm 35, maybe I'll get a nice job." He knew he
wanted a career using the science he loved but had realized during an undergraduate research
project that bench work "didn't seem like a fit for me." One day while searching the Internet, he
happened upon the PSM program at American University (AU) in Washington, D.C. "I saw the
possibilities and completely changed my mind," he says.

The combination of "hard-core science," business, and regulatory affairs courses he studied at
AU, along with an internship at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's technology-transfer
office, prepared Bugin for his goal of "figur[ing] out how a drug goes from bench to bedside and
maybe mak[ing] the process better." A professor's recommendation pointed him toward a job
immediately after graduation. Now that he works on the regulatory side of drug development at
Amarex Clinical Research in Germantown, Maryland, he says, "I've found what I love to do."
And he believes he saved a decade getting there.

"I've talked to [former] postdocs, people who had made it into pharmaceutical research
companies and [are] managers of research groups," he says. "They've told me they don't use
any of their Ph.D.-specific science anymore. They really wish they could have gone straight to
the real-world applications instead of doing research for 5 or 10 years." But, Sjolander says,
some Ph.D.s and international M.D.s--who are often interested in posts at small start-up
companies--have enrolled in PSM programs to learn "the business side."


PLUSES AND MINUSES

Alumni are not the only ones pleased with the programs. PSM training "actually is more in tune
with the kind of work we do" than traditional graduate school, says Raymond Phillippi, senior
manager of health services and outcomes research at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee in
Chattanooga. Phillippi provides internships for students in the health care informatics PSM
program at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro and supervises an MTSU PSM
graduate who is doing "an exceptional job." With holders of traditional graduate degrees, on
the other hand, "often we ... do a lot of training to bring them up to speed," Phillippi continues.
"Often, they don't have any health care knowledge or experience, [and] their analytical skills
are not as developed" as those of PSM graduates, who arrive with "business knowledge as
well as research and analysis knowledge. That's a difference that I think is very useful."

Lehrkamp has watched one of her employees grow professionally while pursuing a PSM
degree part-time. The employee, Lehrkamp says, has developed an "ability to see the
business side, ... [to] understand more about why we made certain decisions, where we have
to balance between a science and business." The PSM also helps job applicants differentiate
themselves in a market flooded with MBAs, says Pam Gao, a senior vice president and
portfolio manager at Putnam Investments in Boston and a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic
Institute's PSM program in financial mathematics.

The PSM Initiative, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, began only in 1997, and many
institutions began granting degrees only in the past 5 years. Programs generally have some
ties with industry and provide students with help in their job searches, yet many employers are
still unfamiliar with the PSM concept. "My gut feeling is that they are just getting acquainted"
with it, Phillippi says. "We certainly had no knowledge of it until we were approached by Middle




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Graduates of professional science master's programs often get multiple job offers. Page 3 of 3



Tennessee for support in developing the curriculum." He expects, however, that as word of the
new degree spreads ever further, "demand would get greater and greater." His own company
now encourages employees to pursue the degree part-time, with half a dozen doing so
currently.

Unlike traditional graduate programs, which support science students on fellowships and
professors' grants, PSM programs, like law, business, and other professional schools, usually
expect students to pay their own way. Paid internships can cover some costs, and graduates'
earnings may justify taking on debt for tuition and expenses, the CGS survey suggests. Some
institutions offer financial aid. And in certain places, "demand for graduates is so high that
employers are providing full tuition," the survey notes (although it does not reveal where those
places may be). For students seeking a pragmatic route to a career involving science, a PSM
merits serious consideration.


     Beryl Lieff Benderly writes         Comments, suggestions? Please send your
     from Washington, DC.                feedback to our editor.

     Image (top): Comstock               DOI: 10.1126/science.caredit.a0800033
     Business Impacts


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      Mathematical Biology at Arizona State University
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      The Professional Master's Degree
      8 August 2003,



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http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/article... 3/7/2008