Anatomy Education and Career Workshop at AAPA

Please attend the Anatomy Education and Career Workshop at AAPA, Saturday 14th, 2-3:30pm.
Snacks for attendees will be provided in addition to some great discussion and advice!
RSVP here.
Many thanks to the American Association of Anatomists for their generous financial support of this workshop!

Rationale and goals of the workshop:
The current scarcity of qualified anatomy instructors for professional programs is well documented. In response to the growing need for anatomy educators, institutions and programs have initiated a number of strategies, including the development of Masters and PhD programs that specialize in anatomy education and the recruitment of qualified educators from a broader range of fields such as biology and biological anthropology. In fact, an increasing number of anatomy educators have a background and degree in biological anthropology. The importance of this relationship for anatomy education is evidenced by the presence of numerous anthropological research talks and poster presentations at the Experimental Biology/AAA annual meetings over the last several years. In a constrained job market, there are also advantages for biological anthropologists with a background in anatomy as they can pursue a wider range of faculty positions. Even so, many undergraduate and graduate students in biological anthropology are not aware that anatomy education is a career path available to them. For those that are aware of this opportunity, many are unsure of the specific requirements for teaching in this context and many are also confused as to how their research interests can be integrated into the environment of a medical, dental or other professional institution. This is unfortunate, because a deep understanding of human gross anatomy and histology provides irreplaceable context for studies of variation and adaptation, reproductive ecology, nutrition, growth and development, genetics, and many more topic areas within biological anthropology


At the AAPA/AAA Anatomy Education and Career workshop the pros and cons of pursuing a career outside of anthropology will be discussed, as will advice to graduate students who are interested in the anatomy pathway.

The ultimate goals of this outreach workshop are twofold:
1) To encourage anthropology students to pursue anatomy education to a) augment their research and b) enhance their opportunities on the job market upon graduation.

2) To encourage faculty to forge connections with anatomy education venues on their campuses for the purpose of opening training and teaching opportunities for their students.

JOIN US!

The Elevator Talk

I'm a faculty scholar in the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health program at UIC and the big emphasis is on career development. I just got this email and wanted to share what I think is a fantastic idea with you:

"The January meeting will focus on scholars' "elevator talks". An elevator talk should highlight your research in a nutshell, is easy for people to understand, and is useful in networking/conference settings (like a pitch).

Each scholar should prepare two versions of their elevator talk: a 2-minute version (more like a cocktail party version) and a 30-second version (if on an elevator with the director of Office for Research on Women's Health, for example). Everyone will practice their talk in the meeting and we will critique them as a group."

Holy cow, what a great thing to have prepared and ready to pull out of your pocket on a moment's notice! As much as I love my research, I do sometimes find it hard to encapsulate it within a reasonable time span and vocabulary for social purposes. And there are those moments at a conference when you look up and realize your fellow passenger is an editor at that press you're hoping to submit your manuscript to, or the director of a funding agency, or someone whose work you admire and have wanted to approach about possibly collaborating. It would be great to have a quick and easy introduction on hand at a fortuitous moment like that. I'm looking forward to working on this and suggest that you find a fellow grad student, colleague, or senior faculty mentor to try it out too. (Hey, why don't we all work on these and try them out on each other at AAPA in a couple of months?)

The "elevator talk/speech/pitch" concept is new to me, but apparently a familiar one in the business world. But since the point of this talk is indeed a sales job, with you as the product, we could probably learn a thing or two from business principles. Here are couple of websites with helpful tips for crafting your elevator talk:
http://www.brassmagazine.com/article/elevator-talk-30-second-bio-get-you-remembered

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2005/02/14/smallb2.html

http://www.quintcareers.com/job-search_elevator_speech.html

http://www.quintcareers.com/elevator_speech_dos-donts.html