{"378661":{"#nid":"378661","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Students Making Connections","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ELet\u2019s say you\u2019re a graduate student working toward a Ph.D. in bioengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. You\u2019ve got a solid background in the sciences. You\u2019re studying at one of the world\u2019s top ranked engineering institutions. And you\u2019ve spent more late nights than you can remember working in a lab, maybe at the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, where you spend many hours focusing on the large impact of little things, like cells and molecules.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESo, what waits on the other side of your thesis, besides a potential stint as a postdoc? What will your career look like? A new \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/bbugs.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience Unified Graduate Students (BBUGS)\u003C\/a\u003E mentorship program is trying to help Georgia Tech students bring that picture into clearer focus.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe started talking about internships and how graduate students get career advice, and we came to the conclusion that while there is this great community around the Petit Institute and BBUGS, it was kind of hard for us to access a lot of information and networking,\u201d says Tom Bongiorno, who co-chairs the Education and Outreach committee for BBUGS. \u201cSo we came up with this mentorship program. It seems like a great way for both the student and the mentor to connect.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EGrad students are paired with mentors from academia, industry, or government \u2013 professionals who have a good handle on the different career paths available because, even for very smart people, the career element of the bio-equation can be tricky business.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cFor example, I see a lot of people graduating with Ph.D.s from Georgia Tech who say they\u2019re interested in going into industry without really understanding the different opportunities,\u201d says Cynthia Sundell, director of life sciences industry collaborations for the Petit Institute. She\u2019s serving as one of the first 25 mentors in the new BBUGS program. \u201cThat is something I can bring to a student, the perspective of someone who has worked 20 years in industry and knows how it\u2019s organized and the different career paths.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESundell helped connect the BBUGS program to different industry partners, and the students also tapped into the Petit Institute\u2019s Executive Advisory Board, several of whom have signed on to serve as mentors. The students, led by Bongiorno and Claire Segar (co-chair of BBUGS), sent out a request to potential mentors. Half of them agreed to help, and their professional background information was made available online to students.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe set a time for signups online, and gave people time to review the list of mentors to see who was a good fit for them. Half of the mentors were gone within a minute,\u201d says Segar, who is interested in an academic career and chose Arizona State professor Sarah Stabenfeldt as her mentor. \u201cThe great things about these mentors is they\u2019ve had a lot of different experiences so they\u2019ve transitioned between academia to industry, or the other way around. They can not only speak to what led them to where they are today in their careers, but for students who aren\u2019t sure, they can help define their options.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat\u2019s exactly what Bongiorno is looking for with his mentor, Russ Bell, a member of the Executive Advisory Board and a Georgia Tech graduate who is retired after a long career in industry, during which he spearheaded the development of many diagnostic products in cancer and cardiovascular disease (among other things). \u201cGetting that one-on-one mentorship from someone like Dr. Bell can really help you hone in on a specific career goal,\u201d Bongiorno says. \u201cStarting out you\u2019re like, \u2018oh yeah, industry sounds great.\u2019 Narrowing that down is something else.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESundell totally agrees. She hears it all the time. \u201cSo many people who want to get into the pharmaceutical industry are thinking, \u2018research.\u2019 That\u2019s too narrow. They can broaden their concept of what to think of as a job in industry,\u201d she says. \u201cResearch and discovery is a small part of what pharma does.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA mentor like Sundell can also speak to other challenges facing Ph.D.s thinking about a broader life picture.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cTo women, I can speak to the life-work balance and the issues I\u2019ve confronted in my career. I can share those real-life experiences with them, offer some perspective of what they can anticipate when they get to the job market, but also want to be married and have a family,\u201d says Sundell, who has a PhD.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe mentorship program lasts a year and mentors meet with their students (mentees) about once a month, which Sundell says, \u201cgives a student and mentor time to build a relationship. Which means she\u2019s got time to open up to me, and I\u2019ve got time to understand what gets her jazzed, so I can help guide her toward the proper career path.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECONTACT\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"New Mentorship Program emphasizes career guidance"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ENew Mentorship Program emphasizes career guidance\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"New Mentorship Program emphasizes career guidance"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2015-02-16 10:10:27","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:02:42","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-02-16T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-02-16T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"377651":{"id":"377651","type":"image","title":"Bongiorno and Segar","body":null,"created":"1449246205","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:23:25","changed":"1475894342","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:02","alt":"Bongiorno and Segar","file":{"fid":"75188","name":"tomnclaire.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tomnclaire.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tomnclaire.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":695798,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/tomnclaire.jpg?itok=mqnpzkFu"}}},"media_ids":["377651"],"groups":[{"id":"1254","name":"Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"4943","name":"BBUGS"},{"id":"1808","name":"graduate students"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}