Winter 2008
Q & A with Owen Griffith, PhD
Owen W. Griffith, PhD, Dean of the Medical College’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, shares his thoughts on the Graduate School’s strengths and opportunities
How would you summarize your vision for the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences?
It was a great honor for me personally to be asked to serve as Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The Graduate School has, of course, a long history of providing excellent training to both doctoral and master’s degree candidates. That training is well respected nationally and internationally.
I am committed to seeing that the success of our programs continues. I am also looking forward to addressing the challenges that face the School. Three deserve special mention: (1) expansion of both our master’s and doctoral programs to serve new constituencies, particularly students interested in translational and clinical research, (2) continued recruitment of excellent students in the face of increasing competition from peer institutions, and (3) completing the development of an integrated Student Management Information System that will allow us to efficiently follow the applicants, enrolled students and alumni of the 18 individual graduate programs that currently constitute the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
In meeting these challenges I am privileged to have the advice and assistance of Susan Barnes, Director of Enrollment, and Guy Berst, Manager of Recruitment and Marketing. They and the entire staff deserve a large share of the credit for the growth and accomplishments of the Graduate School.
The Graduate School has experienced substantial, continuous growth in the last 10-15 years. To what do you attribute this growth?
Over the past several years, the Graduate School has grown substantially both in programs offered and in the number of students enrolled per program. Much of the credit belongs to my predecessor as Dean, Dr. William Hendee. Largely through his initiative, we developed new master’s degree programs in medical informatics (offered jointly with Milwaukee School of Engineering), bioinformatics (offered jointly with Marquette University), and healthcare technologies management (also with Marquette). Bill also helped launch the joint MCW-Marquette PhD program in functional imaging. Our most recently added program, offering a PhD in Public and Community Health, serves to meet the increasing regional and national need for public health training and research. Dr. Cheryl Maurana and others within the Department of Population Health deserve credit for spearheading that effort.
Finally, the number of students admitted into our PhD programs in the basic sciences has increased as the size of our research faculty in both basic science and clinical departments has increased. Our faculty see education of graduate students as an important part of their mission, and, speaking for a moment as a Professor of Biochemistry rather than Dean, it is one of the most enjoyable aspects of our job. Graduate students bring enormous energy and enthusiasm to our research labs, and they actually do much of the work that is ultimately published jointly by faculty and students. That work and the resulting publications are an important part of MCW’s contribution to science and medicine; they serve as the basis for the federal and foundation grants that will support future research here. If the research enterprise is to continue to succeed and grow, it will be important that the Graduate School continue to grow also.
What draws top recruits to the Graduate School for study?
Recruitment of graduate students is highly competitive, and potential students typically receive acceptances from multiple schools. The Graduate School is unusual in having a full time recruitment manager who continually evaluates and improves our strategies for recruitment of highly qualified graduate students.
The Graduate School administers and helps support a Summer Program in Undergraduate Research (SPUR) which offers undergraduates an opportunity to spend the summer working in the laboratory of an MCW faculty member. Dr. Bert Forster (Professor of Physiology) has had a huge role in its success. For many students, this is their first opportunity to experience the thrill of scientific discovery and to see what a career in science would be like. SPUR has also become an important mechanism through which we recruit graduate students. In recent years up, to 15 percent of the entering PhD class has consisted of former SPUR students. Many of these students might not have considered MCW among their graduate school choices if they hadn’t gotten to know us during their SPUR summer.
Our Interdisciplinary Program provides entering students with an exceptionally broad range of choices for their thesis research – 96 faculty members representing five basic science departments and affiliated faculty from several clinical departments. This is particularly attractive for students who are uncertain what type of science they want to pursue for their thesis and careers. All of our PhD science programs allow students to complete brief rotations in three or four laboratories before choosing their thesis mentor and laboratory. This makes it highly likely that the student completes his or her dissertation work in a lab that is a good fit.
For the last several years, the Graduate School has had a 100 percent placement rate. How does the School help students find post-graduate matches?
The Graduate School and the Office of Postdoctoral Education are unusual in employing a part-time career counselor to advise students and post-docs about various career options and to help them prepare for their next position by conducting mock interviews and helping them refine their presentation skills. A virtual career center is available 24/7 and provides access to a range of employment resources. There is also a jointly offered annual career symposium and a twice monthly series of discussions on career planning and development called “Spotlight on Science.” Graduates of our PhD programs are highly sought as post-doctoral fellows. A majority continue their training at prestigious institutions including Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Yale.
What external challenges does the Graduate School face?
Pressure on the National Institutes of Health budget has made funding for academic research more difficult to obtain. This impacts our faculty, who rely on NIH grants to support graduate students, and impacts many of our students as they consider the feasibility of beginning their own academic careers. Without better funding, it is likely that fewer students will choose to attend graduate school in biological sciences, a problem for the Graduate School. Without adequate NIH support, fewer of our graduates will choose to make their careers as academic basic scientists, which is a problem for continued American leadership in this critical area.
What can alumni of the Graduate School do to reconnect and become involved with their alma mater, and do you encourage such involvement?
I am pleased you asked about our alumni and how they might continue to connect with the Graduate School. It’s an issue we’ve been working diligently on over the past few months. The custom designed Student Management Information System, which we hope to complete by June 2008, contains an “Alumni Portal” that will allow both master’s and doctoral alumni to log on and keep us updated with respect to their activities and career development. Even without the new system, we’ve started to collect some of this information with the view of keeping alumni informed about the Graduate School, encouraging them to help with our student recruitment efforts, and facilitating their staying in touch with us and with each other.
During their time here, most of our graduates formed close friendships not only with the people in their thesis lab but also with other students with whom they shared courses, seminars, discussions, and, I’m certain, at least a few “Eureka moments.” In fact, one of the great strengths of MCW is the high degree of cooperation shown by departments and programs, and that spirit of collegiality carries over to the graduate students who train here. I want to facilitate a continuation of that collegiality and interaction for our alumni. We look forward to staying in touch with our recent graduates and reconnecting with alumni with whom we may have lost touch.