Making the Most of School

Agencies and institutions strive to better prepare graduate students and postdocs for futures in academia and beyond.

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When Meredith Frie started a PhD program in cell and molecular biology at Michigan State University, she, like most graduate students, focused exclusively on her research. “For the first three years of my graduate program, it did not occur to me to expand my training outside of traditional work in the lab,” says Frie. “[But] when you go out and look for a job . . . having a PhD isn’t enough, because everyone you’d compete against for a job would also have a PhD.” Fortunately, Frie happened to be attending one of 17 universities with a National Institutes of Health–funded Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) grant, devoted to improving career development training for graduate students and postdocs. In her fourth year, Frie completed ...

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Meet the Author

Viviane Callier
Viviane was a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where she studied early tetrapods. Her PhD at Duke University focused on the role of oxygen in insect body size regulation. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Arizona State University, she became a science writer for federal agencies in the Washington, DC area. Now, she freelances from San Antonio, Texas.
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