All RUSH postdoctoral fellows are automatically part of the RUSH Postdoctoral Society and can join the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) free of charge.
If you are a new postdoctoral fellow at RUSH, you can send us an email at mentoringprograms@rush.edu to let us know that you are a new postdoctoral fellow at RUSH and we will add you to our postdoctoral fellow contact list. After you are added to our postdoctoral fellow contact list, you will start getting emails and event calendar invitations that we send to all of the postdoctoral fellows.
Postdoctoral Seminars
We have organized postdoctoral seminars that you can attend every month. We will not organize a postdoctoral seminar in September because that is the month when we have our RUSH Mentoring Programs Annual Symposium. In addition, we will not organize a postdoctoral seminar in December due to the holiday season. If you are interested in attending a postdoctoral seminar, you can RSVP through the Upcoming Events table by clicking on the following link: RSVP HERE. We usually update the Upcoming Events table once a month. You will see other event information listed in the Upcoming Events table. All of the seminars are open to all faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, staff and students at RUSH.
National Postdoctoral Association (NPA)
The NPA is a member-driven, nonprofit organization that provides a unique, national voice for postdoctoral scholars. Since 2003, the organization has committed to enhancing the quality of the postdoctoral experience in the United States. Visit the NPA website to learn more.
We are the RUSH University representative for the NPA. The Office of Mentoring Programs supports the national goals of NPA. Since RUSH is a sustaining member of the NPA, all postdoctoral fellows are encouraged to join the NPA free of charge.
How To Join NPA
You need to create an account on the NPA website. You will be asked the name of your institution and should enter RUSH University. This way they will be able to link your account with ours. It will take approximately 7 to 10 days for them to link the account.
Effective Grant Writing Workshop
Participants will learn the different components of an aims page, logic flow of specific aims, critical best writing practices to enhance document readability, to understand funding agency criteria, and how to connect those criteria directly to their research goals. In self-reported surveys, attendees were awarded more than $20 million in funding from federal, industry, and foundation sources.
All RUSH postdoctoral fellows are eligible to participate in the Effective Grant Writing Workshop.
If you have any questions about the Effective Grant Writing Workshop, please feel free to email us at mentoringprograms@rush.edu.
RUSH Mentoring Programs Annual Symposium
The RUSH Mentoring Programs Annual Symposium highlights the excellent research that is being conducted at RUSH. It offers a venue to stimulate interdisciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration. Every year the symposium features approximately 138 attendees, 27 poster presentations, and eight podium presentations. You can view the 2021 Rush Mentoring Programs 7th Annual Symposium website by clicking on the following link: 2021 Rush Mentoring Programs 7th Annual Symposium.
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All RUSH postdoctoral fellows are eligible to submit abstracts for this symposium. Every year, the three best abstracts (2 RRMP mentee abstracts and 1 postdoctoral abstract) will be selected for the podium presentation. In addition, we have a poster session for our symposium every year and the best poster will be selected for the best poster award. All RUSH postdoctoral fellows will have an opportunity to win this award.
If you have any questions about the symposium, please feel free to email us at mentoringprograms@rush.edu.
Writing Accountability Group
The writing groups meet weekly to provide support and accountability for group members as they work toward increasing writing productivity. Group members share strategies for success and help each other set reasonable goals.
All RUSH postdoctoral fellows are welcome to join the writing group.
If you are interested in joining the writing group, let us know by emailing us at mentoringprograms@rush.edu.
About Postdoctoral Training
The following data were obtained from the Sigma Xi Postdoctoral Survey.
| Time Spent as a Postdoctoral Trainee (in Months) | Percentage of Total Surveyed (N=6244) |
|---|---|
| 0-6 | 4.7 |
| 7-12 | 10.2 |
| 13-18 | 5.7 |
| 19-24 | 19.7 |
| 25-30 | 8.6 |
| 31-36 | 25.2 |
| 37-48 | 13.3 |
| 49-60 | 9.3 |
| More than 60 | 3.3 |
What Is Expected of You
The association asked 109 schools, laboratories and industrial centers to rate the most relevant skills for successful careers, whether academic or not. Below is a summary of findings from 48 responses, rated on a scale of 1 to 4 (not important to very important).
| Basic Skills | Average Rating (N=48) |
|---|---|
| English language skills | 3.63 |
| Research skills (experimental design, critical evaluation of literature, data analysis, responsible conduct of research, etc.) | 3.59 |
| Social/professional conduct | 3.48 |
| Quantitative skills (mathematics, statistical analysis, etc.) | 3.38 |
| Discipline-specific knowledge | 3.31 |
| Technical skills (knowledge of equipment, familiarity with software, use of information technology, etc) | 3.16 |
| Teaching/mentoring skills | 2.30 |
| Government policy | 1.50 |
| Foreign/international relations | 1.34 |
| Applied Skills | Average Rating (N=48) |
|---|---|
| Critical thinking/problem solving | 3.82 |
| Oral communication | 3.80 |
| Teamwork/collaboration | 3.78 |
| Written communication | 3.67 |
| Self-direction/self-motivation | 3.64 |
| Project management (ability to meet deadlines and manage resources, including personnel and budgets, etc.) | 3.52 |
| Creativity/innovation | 3.38 |
| Leadership | 2.79 |
| Entrepreneurship | 2.36 |
What You’ll Get
| Institution | Average Salary |
|---|---|
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | $36,799 |
| Indiana University | $37,511 |
| University of Illinois at Chicago | $38,140 |
| University of Illinois at Chicago | $39,200 |
| RUSH University Medical Center | $39,714 |
| Northwestern University | $40,917 |
| Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital | $41,380 |
| Michigan State University | $41,500 |
| University of California, Riverside | $41,757 |
| Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis | $42,247 |
| Texas A&M University | $43,400 |
| University of Chicago | $43,744 |
| University of Oklahoma | $45,267 |
| University of Mississippi | $45,479 |
| University of Colorado at Boulder | $45,736 |
| University of Georgia | $46,000 |
| University of Nebraska | $47,333 |
| State University of New York | $47,588 |
| Brown University | $48,798 |
| Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago | $49,504 |
| Baylor University | $50,000 |
| Rosalind Franklin University | $50,698 |
| Texas Tech University | $51,174 |
| Fermi National Laboratory | $52,200 |
| SUNY Buffalo | $64,000 |
| University of Chicago | $65,279 |
| Argonne National Laboratory | $68,541 |
| Los Alamos National Laboratory | $75,670 |
| University of Chicago Computational fellow | $81,216 |
| Argonne National Laboratory fellows | $87,000 |
| Los Alamos National Laboratory fellows | $95,000 |
| Average | $51,703 |
| Median | $46,000 |
Learning to Teach
More than two of every five science postdoctoral scholars have an interest in teaching, according to a Sigma Xi survey. Yet few receive any training on how to teach, with only one in 20 having attended workshops or done formal coursework on how to teach.
While a 2012 article from Science Careers online found that university postdoctoral fellows have a better chance of teaching than their peers at national laboratories, their experience is still limited. To help remedy that, 19 schools participate in a program to develop postdoctoral fellows as faculty for minority-serving institutions, funded by the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards:
"The Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards (IRACDA) program has supported some 550 postdoctoral fellows from a wide variety of backgrounds, placing most of them in tenure-track faculty jobs," the article noted. "The formula employed by the program's participating consortia — partnering a research-intensive institution with one or more institutions with a large minority enrollment—combines a mentored research experience with structured training in academic career skills, especially teaching. More than two-thirds of IRACDA graduates end up in academic careers, most of them at teaching-focused and minority-serving institutions.”
The following is a list of all current IRACDA host institutions:
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
- Baylor College of Medicine
- Emory University School of Medicine
- Medical University of South Carolina
- Northwestern University
- Stanford University
- Stony Brook University
- Tufts University
- University of Alabama, Birmingham
- University of Arizona
- University of California, San Diego
- University of California, San Francisco
- University of Kansas, Lawrence
- University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
- University of Minnesota, Duluth
- University of New Mexico
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
- University of Pennsylvania
- Virginia Commonwealth University