Thursday, September 25, 2014

Two very #chemjobs-oriented personal statements in the DOC election ballot

Members of the Division of Organic Chemistry get to vote on two industrial folks for Chair-Elect, both of whom seem to be oriented towards issues of chemistry employment and unemployment*: 
Paul L. Feldman joined Glaxo Pharmaceuticals, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina in 1987 following receiving his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley....
Personal Statement: The Division of Organic Chemistry (DOC) of the American Chemical Society has a rich, venerable tradition in serving its membership. Some examples include organizing and sponsoring venues to communicate our research advances, awarding members to honor distinguished research and service to our community, and providing materials and services to support our discipline. Coupled with these important traditions is our rapidly-changing economic, social, and technological environment which requires the DOC to adapt and capitalize on these changes. If elected as chair of the DOC my key objective will be to explore how the DOC can best serve our Division’s evolving demographics in our rapidly changing economic and social environment while maintaining the bedrock traditions and services of the DOC. As examples, how do we best serve our young organic chemists who use different technologies to socialize and communicate and face a more difficult economic environment for job prospects? Furthermore, how do we best serve our retiring members who will become a larger segment of our Division? With advances on this agenda I believe the DOC will be better positioned in the future to serve and add value to its diverse, changing membership. 
Paige E. Mahaney: Born 1969, Parkersburg, WV; B. S. Chemistry 1991, Guilford College, Greensboro, NC; Ph.D. Organic Chemistry 1996, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA... 
Personal statement: My nearly 20 years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry has given me a valuable perspective to address the challenges faced by individual organic chemists and the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, as a whole. Working with the DOC, I am very interested in selecting scientific themes for DOC-sponsored symposia that are highly relevant to current research topics in Organic Chemistry, both for academic and industrial scientists. In addition, I am passionate about career development for organic chemists, not only for scientists who are emerging from academic and post-doctoral programs but also for mid- and late-career organic chemists. Since my research interests span multiple chemistry disciplines, I would also like to foster interactions between the different disciplines in Organic Chemistry, improving interfaces with other ACS divisions and sponsoring partnered initiatives and scientific symposia. Finally, I believe that science, above all, is fun, and I would like to promote a fun and productive environment in the DOC.
I look forward to seeing how either one of these candidates decided to move the DOC towards better serving its members' employment needs.

*Biographies were truncated to the first sentence only.

3 comments:

  1. The statement by the first candidate "awarding members to honor distinguished research" sounds like such elitist bullshit. What about the rest of us who didn't attend Berkeley?
    Simply on the basis of the portions of both candidates' statements which are presented here, I would go with candidate #2.

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  2. Well, I'd go with option #3 - a plague on both your houses.

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  3. The statement in view of the American Chemical Society and how they have been one of the rich society will surely make you think over the probabilities and the ideas they used to follow for their oriented livings. application statement

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