Researchers Network, Keep Current With Continuing-Education Courses

Continuing-Education Courses SIDEBAR: Selected Organizations Sponsoring Continuing-Education Programs for Life Scientists As students put away their books for the summer, some life scientists pick up theirs and head off to continuing-education programs. These workshops and short courses offer participants opportunities to brush up on their technique as well as an informal environment for nurturing professional networks and research collaborations. Selected Organizations Sponsoring Continuing-Education Programs for Life Scientists American Type Culture Collection 12301 Parklawn Dr., Rockville, Md. 20852 (301) 231-5566 Fax: (301) 816-4364 E-mail: workshops@atcc.org http://www.atcc.org/workshops/workshop.html Center for Advanced Training in Cell and Molecular Biology, Catholic University of America 103 McCourt-Ward Building 620 Michigan Ave., N.E., Washington, D.C. 20064 (202) 319-6161 Fax: (202) 319-4467 E-mail: cua-catcmb@cua.edu http://www.cua.edu/www/catc Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 1 Bungtown Rd., Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. 11724 (516) 367-8346 Fax: (516) 367-8845 E-mail: meetings@cshl.org http://www.cshl.org/ Jackson Laboratory Box 361, 600 Main St., Bar Harbor, Maine 04609 (207) 288-6260 E-mail: training@jax.org http://www.jax.org Marine Biological Laboratory 7 MBL St., Woods Hole, Mass. 02543-1015 (508) 289-7401 E-mail: admissions@mbl.edu http://www.mbl.edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology Office of the Summer Session Room 8-101 Cambridge, Mass. 02139 (617) 253-2101 Fax: (617) 253-8042 E-mail: summer-professional-programs@mit.edu http://web.mit.edu/summer-programs/ Most programs are a series of intensive, one- to six-week-long classes involving lectures and labs, held on the sponsoring institution's campus, usually during the summer. The diversity of offerings-from such technique-based courses as immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization to newly emerging topics like molecular parasitology-are generally geared toward Ph.D.-level scientists and late-stage graduate students. "Generally, a majority of our students already have their Ph.D.'s," says molecular biologist David Stewart, director of meetings and courses at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. "Most are typically early- to mid-career." However, he adds, lab directors who "want to branch off into a new area" also sign up for Cold Spring Harbor programs. LEARNING NEVER ENDS: Participants in American Type Culture Collection courses investigate recovery and purification of proteins, above; photomicroscopy, top right; and rDNA techniques, bottom right Motivations for attending are as diverse as the individual course offerings. But participants agree that broadening their research programs is one major reason for taking a continuing-education course. "The courses are retraining in the sense that people may feel that their research is going up a blind alley or will fare better if they had access to some new concepts and techniques," Stewart explains. "So they take a course to learn how to switch directions. Most of the attendance in our courses is generated by research questions that come up in the labs of our students. In fact, participants tend to be chosen by instructors on the basis of how their research will benefit from taking the course." Other participants attend courses to learn a specific technique to bring back to their lab bench. "We're hoping to expand into using PCR [the polymerase chain reaction] as a diagnostic tool for basic research," says David Horlick, a biological science laboratory technician from the University of Arkansas. In April, Horlick attended a PCR class that was sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), a Rockville, Md.-based nonprofit organization that maintains reference cultures. "Eventually, we would like to determine messenger RNA expression in poultry diseases and immune systems," he notes. Alternatives to ATCC's PCR class such as reading a textbook or enrolling in a university-based graduate course did not appeal to Horlick. Textbooks don't offer necessary hands-on experience, and semester-long graduate courses are somewhat inconvenient, he says. Both students and instructors stress that professional-society meetings do not offer the same educational benefits as intensive continuing-education courses. "With intensive courses, you can really interact with people who can give you their full attention," comments Joan Ruderman, a professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School and a summer course instructor at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass. "That's not really the case at a national meeting, where you have all these short, sound-bite-type talks. "There the goal is for people to show you their results, which they have obtained with new techniques or approaches. But in the courses, the goal is to explain the power of these approaches and to teach researchers how to use them. The classes are centered on you as a student rather than you as a member of an audience." There's a long tradition-dating back more than 100 years-of scientists traveling to coastal institutions for summertime learning and rejuvenation. But students, instructors, and coordinators all emphasize that these lab and lecture courses are by no means a day at the beach. Today's classes run at a breakneck pace. They are "a total immersion" experience, in which abundant information is packed into a short time frame, according to many coordinators. Many classes run 12 to 16 hours per day, six to seven days per week. "The great quote around here," says Dorianne Chrysler, MBL's education coordinator, "is that Jim Watson [president of Cold Spring Harbor] said he never worked so hard in his life." Nobel laureate James Watson, codiscoverer of DNA's molecular structure, was an instructor in MBL's physiology course in 1962. This course celebrated its centennial in 1992. ONE-ON-ONE: A Cold Spring Harbor student receives a demonstration during the 1996 summer course entitled "Arabidopsis Molecular Genetics". MBL's Nobel tradition continues: 1996 physiology or medicine laureate Eric Wieschaus, the Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, has been both a student and an instructor in MBL's 103-year-old embryology course. "In the beginning, these courses also had undergrads as students," says Chrysler. "Now the courses are aimed at advanced grad students, postdocs, junior faculty, and occasionally principal investigators or senior scientists who are coming back to retool at the bench." In addition to the embryology and physiology courses, MBL offers almost 20 other classes, including courses on such emerging topics as medical informatics and microbial diversity. MBL is not the only institution with a venerable program. Cold Spring Harbor's workshop on bacteriophages just marked its 50th year, notes Stewart. "We have a long track record of holding courses in molecular biology. This year the lab is offering a new course on mouse behavioral analysis, and several other courses are evolving to meet what we perceive as the changing needs of the research community." A bit further up the coast from MBL and Cold Spring Harbor is the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Phyllis Mobraaten, manager of courses and meetings, says the 37-year-old "Medical and Experimental Mammalian Genetics" is the lab's longest-running course. In addition to technique-oriented classes, such as "Cryopreservation of Mouse Embryos," Jackson Lab offers a new policy-oriented course entitled "Biotechnology: Products, Policy, and the Public." Other individual scientists started programs to fill educational voids in their fields. One such program was established by molecular biologist Roland Nardone, now a professor, emeritus, at the Catholic University of America. Nardone started the Center for Advanced Training in Cell and Molecular Biology 22 years ago because he saw "a need for scientists to be able to quickly learn recombinant DNA techniques," according to Mark Miller, the center's director of operations. HANDS-ON: Participants in the Center for Advanced Training in Cell and Molecular Biology's course in "In Situ Hybridization". Echoing other coordinators, Miller says the center's courses are constantly evolving. "Six years ago we added a class on PCR. Now courses on DNA binding proteins and transcriptional regulators, and in situ hybridization techniques, are on the roster." Unlike other programs, the center also offers off-site training. For example, notes Miller, the center recently held a bioinformatics and genomics course for Schering-Plough Corp. employees in Madison, N.J. FOCUSING ON CHANGING NEEDS: Fred Lightfoot started a course for researchers on electron microscopy more than 20 years ago. The course-"Protocols in Microscopic Imaging, Immunocytochemistry, and Image Analysis"-was created by Fred Lightfoot, director of the Center of Microscopy and Image Analysis at George Washington University, to address the changing technical needs of scientists. "We established this because no one was teaching this kind of program two decades ago," says Lightfoot. There are benefits beyond the hands-on technical experience, course directors point out. "Not only do the students get a focused, in-depth experience at the lab bench," says Stewart, "they also get the opportunity to listen and discuss their research with the leading people." CAMARADERIE: Students are "in close quarters" facing similar dilemmas, says Ken Carter "It's great networking, sure," says Ken Carter, ATCC's education specialist. "But it's also a great informal information exchange. You're all in close quarters, facing the same dilemma of trying to learn new techniques." Jackson Lab's Mobraaten says another benefit, especially for graduate-student attendees, is to meet other people in the same subject area, find collaborators, and network. For example, the lab's course on experimental mammalian genetics is specifically geared toward postdocs and older graduate students, she reports. "It allows them to build up a network of people their own age and to pick the brains of experts in their field." TOTAL IMMERSION: Intensive courses allow researchers to form new collaborations, notes Joan Ruderman. Harvard's Ruderman contends that the immersion in intensive courses that last several weeks allows students and instructors to cultivate new professional relationships in a casual, "bonding" atmosphere. "There you are, standing next to Ted Salmon [a noted biologist from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill] discussing cell-cycle-check-point controls while you're moving your laundry from the washer to the dryer," she remarks. For Ruderman, these associations go far beyond shop talk over the spin cycle. An ongoing collaboration started when she and Timothy Hunt, a cell biologist at the London-based Imperial Cancer Research Fund, met while teaching MBL's embryology course in the summer of 1979. Those experiments continued over the years, leading to the discovery of a class of key cell-cycle proteins called cyclins (E.T. Rosenthal et al., Cell, 20:487-94, 1980; T. Evans et al., Cell, 33:389-96, 1983). Courses are by no means designed only for basic researchers. In fact, many are aimed specifically at applied investigators, primarily those employed in industry and government. For example, says ATCC's Carter, "roughly 50 [percent] to 60 percent of the participants in our 21 life-science-related courses come from biotech and pharmaceutical firms; 20 [percent] to 30 percent from government labs such as [the National Institutes of Health]; and the rest from academia. Most participants have an advanced degree-a master's or Ph.D." ALTERNATIVE TECHNIQUE: Biochemical toxocologist Oliver Flint teaches a course on non-animal testing procedures for the American Type Culture Collection Biochemical toxicologist Oliver Flint, a principal scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in Syracuse, N.Y., has been leading ATCC's "In Vitro Toxicology" workshop for the last four years. Flint teaches this course because of his involvement as president and founder of the Industrial In Vitro Toxicology Group, a nonprofit organization of corporate scientists that informs toxicologists about the availability of non-animal testing techniques. "We have postdocs or scientists from mostly industry or the Army," relates Flint. "We also have a number of regulators from the Food and Drug Administration-people that actually review the toxicological data-that take the course." Although most of the classes in the 47-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Summer Professional Program are designed for postgraduate engineers, "we do have six bioscience-related courses," says coordinator Dawn McNeil. These range from the 20-year-old "Fermentation Technology" to a newer course on controlled-release drug-delivery systems. "Most of our students are mid-career employees from industry who are sent to keep technologically current," says McNeil. "Most of the people who come have at least a master's degree and are, on average, between the ages of 38 and 42." MIT's courses also appeal to scientists who find themselves between jobs. She adds: "A limited number of our attendees are out of work and looking to upgrade their skills." Some institutions sponsor courses on topics other than the hottest research areas and techniques. "We've been offering a patent conference for 14 years," notes ATCC's Carter. "It's mostly attended by patent attorneys, although we do welcome and do have a few scientists that attend each year. More and more researchers are attending because more and more are patenting their discoveries and need a quick way to learn the newest developments in patent law." MIT's summer professional courses also include classes in management and technical communications. Some life scientists do attend these, says McNeil. For example, CEOs from companies such as Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc. and academics from such places as Johns Hopkins University take the course entitled "Management of Research, Development, and Technology-based Innovation." This class covers managerial skills, marketing, and strategic planning. Whether a scientist needs to branch out and learn advanced administrative skills or catch up on the latest lab technique, program coordinators emphasize, course development is constantly evolving to keep up with the rapid-fire rate of scientific discovery. "We're all very flexible to the changing needs of science," says Cold Spring Harbor's Stewart. "We respond to areas where people think there's a gap."

Selected Organizations Sponsoring Continuing-Education Programs for Life Scientists
American Type Culture Collection 12301 Parklawn Dr., Rockville, Md. 20852 (301) 231-5566 Fax: (301) 816-4364 E-mail: workshops@atcc.org http://www.atcc.org/workshops/workshop.html Center for Advanced Training in Cell and Molecular Biology, Catholic University of America 103 McCourt-Ward Building 620 Michigan Ave., N.E., Washington, D.C. 20064 (202) 319-6161 Fax: (202) 319-4467 E-mail: cua-catcmb@cua.edu http://www.cua.edu/www/catc Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 1 Bungtown Rd., Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. 11724 (516) 367-8346 Fax: (516) 367-8845 E-mail: meetings@cshl.org http://www.cshl.org/ Jackson Laboratory Box 361, 600 Main St., Bar Harbor, Maine 04609 (207) 288-6260...

Researchers Network, Keep Current With Continuing-Education Courses

Jul 21, 1996

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