Alumni Perspectives on Career Preparation during a Postdoctoral Training Program: A Qualitative Study

Published evaluations of career preparation of alumni from long-standing postdoctoral fellowship programs in the biomedical sciences are limited and often focus on quantitative analysis of data from extant publicly available sources. Qualitative methods provide the opportunity to gather robust information about specific program elements from structured postdoctoral training programs and the influence of this training on subsequent career paths of alumni. In-depth interviews with a subset of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program (CPFP) alumni (n = 27), representing more than 25 years of the program’s history and multiple career sectors, were conducted to assess alumni reflections on the training environment and career preparation during their time in the CPFP. NVivo software was used to analyze data and identify major themes. Four main themes emerged from these interviews, including: the value of structured training curriculum, mentorship, transdisciplinary environment, and professional identity. Even when reflecting on training that occurred one to two decades earlier, alumni were able to highlight specific components of a structured postdoctoral training program as influencing their research and career trajectories. These results may have relevance for those interested in assessing how postdoctoral training can influence fellows throughout their careers and understanding salient features of structured programs.     

Using Six Sigma and Lean in the Library

Businesses have long relied on a variety of strategies to improve quality, efficiency, and service. Some ideas that have persisted over time are Six Sigma and Lean. While Six Sigma, originally intended for manufacturing, focuses on quality and Lean mainly addresses waste, many of the tools and principles involved can also apply to libraries. This article will review the literature on Lean and Six Sigma as they are used in business and then as they have been used in libraries. The resulting discussion will cover how the principles can be applied to better connect with stakeholders by mapping processes and discovering what is value added (VA) versus nonvalue added (NVA), anticipating failure modes using the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) framework, and implementing control plans to maintain quality processes and service.     

Correction to: Mapping the field of research on African higher education: a review of 6483 publications from 1980 to 2019

Higher Education - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00691-x     

Effect of foster care on young children's language learning

This report examines 174 young children's language outcomes in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, the first randomized trial of foster placement after institutional care. Age of foster placement was highly correlated with language outcomes. Placement by 15 months led to similar expressive and receptive language test scores as typical age peers at 30 and 42 months. Placement from 15 to 24 months also led to dramatic language improvement. In contrast, children placed after 24 months had the same severe language delays as children in institutional care. Language samples at 42 months confirmed that placement after 24 months led to lower expressive skill.     

V. THE NEUROBIOLOGICAL TOLL OF EARLY HUMAN DEPRIVATION

Children raised in institutions frequently suffer from a variety of behavioral, emotional, and neuropsychological sequelae, including deficits in attention, executive functions, disorders of attachment, and in some cases a syndrome that mimics autism. The extent and severity of these disorders appear to be mediated, in part, by the age at which the child entered and, in some cases, left the institution. Here we review the neurobiological literature on early institutionalization that may account for the psychological and neurological sequelae discussed in other chapters in this volume.     

The effects of adult literacy on earnings and employment

This paper provides evidence of the effects of adult literacy on individuals’ income and employability in Brazil based on information obtained from the monthly employment survey (PME). The OLS results indicate that after controlling for observable characteristics, there is a 21.25% increase in wages for individuals who become literate; however, there is no significant impact on employability. Moreover, the findings show an 8.1% increase in the probability of being employed in the formal sector. We also explore the longitudinal structure of the dataset to control for unobservable fixed characteristics of individuals. The fixed-effects estimators show smaller effects compared to the OLS estimators. We find that literacy has a 4.4% effect on wages and a 4.3% impact on the probability of being formally employed. The effects are significantly different from zero.