Navigating today's job market requires the proper mix of knowledge and skills. Training courses, typically in the summer, provide the life scientist a means of acquiring additional expertise that can help attain that mix. For decades, well-established institutes have offered classroom and laboratory courses to enhance a life scientist's career.1 Additionally, some organizations are now considering long-distance electronic learning.
According to John Macauley, director, Office of Courses and Conferences, the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, many of his organization's course attendees are looking for a midcareer and research-focus change. Keeping up with new approaches is also a major driving force for many attendees. Macauley remarks, "Other than the well-known 'Bar Harbor Course' on medical and experimental genetics, which has been offered in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University for the past 42 years, a well-defined courses and conferences program did not exist until 1998." Before then, the laboratory held sporadic ...
