The Postdoctoral Fellows Office (PDFO) is the unit of the Faculty of Graduate Studies that supports UBC’s nearly 800 Postdoctoral Fellows.

In the UBC 2010 Focus on People Annual Report a feature article is devoted to detailing the reasons for establishing the PDFO and sharing its accomplishments to date. Congratulations to the PDFO staff on receiving this acknowledgement of their hard work.

Here is the complete text of the article as published in UBC 2010 Focus on People Annual Report.

Postdoctoral Fellows Dawn Hall and Nirupa Goel say that new Postdocs have an easier transition to UBC since the inception of the Postdoctoral Fellows Office (PDFO) within the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

Postdocs at UBC are among the best of the best in the research world, according to Dr. Tony Farrell, the Associate Dean, Postdoctoral Fellows, and they need to be welcomed, supported and given the tools to continue to their next job.

The PDFO was established in May 2010, and has become both a strong advocate for Postdoctoral Fellows (PDFs) and a resource centre committed to enhancing their UBC experience and expanding their professional skill set. At many institutions, PDFs can find themselves without a support structure because they are neither graduate students nor faculty.

There are more than 800 Postdocs working across the UBC campus and at the various hospital sites who previously, lacked a smooth transition to UBC and received no regularly organized professional and social networking opportunities.

The PDFO hosted their first event in June 2010, a Meet and Greet at St. John’s College. It was a on a beautiful sunny day in June, remembers Hourik Khanlian, the Manager of Human Resources and Postdoctoral Fellows Office. By the fall of 2010 the first ever Postdoc Orientation was complete and is now a scheduled semi-annual event. Feedback from the inaugural session pointed out that an all-day session is difficult for most Postdocs to accommodate given their workloads, so the office has moved to a half day orientation. The orientation covers topics that are especially relevant to PDFs who are new to Vancouver and the UBC campus. In addition to the orientation session, the PDFO has created a comprehensive website and a PDF Handbook, tapping into the expertise of the third member of the PDFO, Daniel Maldoff.

Hall, whose work is on plant-specialized metabolism, specifically on conifer trees and their defence against insects, says UBC has done a great job to become a leader in its advocacy for Postdocs.

The transition from graduate student to Postdoctoral Fellow can be lonely, or even rocky without established systems of support. Hall says she looked to her supervisor to help her negotiate human resources processes at UBC. Because she was among a substantial number of Postdocs who aren’t paid directly by the university, but who are instead paid through a fellowship, she learned that she wasn’t eligible for benefits such as extended health and dental. To address this need, UBC Human Resources collaborated with the VP, Research to put in place expanded benefits for PDFs receiving fellowship earnings.

The UBC experience is much improved for Postdocs, says Goel, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences since September 2009, because of support from the PDFO. “It’s one of the things that can make UBC more attractive to (potential) Postdocs.” After her arrival from Philadelphia, Goel sought out opportunities to meet other Postdocs, and soon joined the UBC Postdoc Association (PDA). She began planning monthly social events, and was recently elected the Association’s president.

The staffers of the PDFO are passionate and enthusiastic supporters of the PDF community. Tony Farrell is the “perfect” dean for the office, says Goel, and “Hourik is great at addressing the needs and questions coming from Postdocs.” Farrell says his job is to put smiles on Postdocs’ faces and to help them feel pleased about what they’re doing and what their future is. “We want UBC to be the university of choice when researchers are thinking ‘where do I go next for post-doctoral training?’ And we want PDFs leaving UBC saying ‘I’m so glad I chose UBC. It was a phenomenal experience.’”

While some PDFs will land faculty roles, the reality is that a majority of Postdocs will find careers elsewhere. To help Postdocs prepare for their future careers, the PDFO has established a series of professional development workshops, including: communicating through conflict, people skills in collaboration, a faculty panel discussion on the first five years in academia, a presentation on alternate career paths and workshops on the effective supervision of grad students and grant writing.

Other achievements include allowing PDFs to extend their position to five years from three. Postdoc assignments are renewed annually, but had been limited to a maximum of three years. Hall explains that expanding the limit to five years better facilitates the development of some projects to publication.

A key near term goal for the PDFO is to find funding that would extend travel benefits to Postdocs. Most graduate students have access to grants and other monies they can use to attend conferences, but for Postdoctoral Fellows, travelling to share research is only a dream. There are travel funds for Postdocs available for the coming year from the Office of the Vice President Research, and the PDFO is fine tuning a Travel Award Competition it will unveil later this year. Part of the research mandate is to communicate, notes Farrell, and UBC can easily showcase its excellent research talent by sending its researchers to engage with the best in the rest of the world.

We invite you to visit the Postdoctoral Fellows section of this website on a regular basis to learn more about Postdoctoral Fellows(PDFs) and the events and opportunities for PDFs at UBC.