Annual Poster Session Awards
In conjunction with the Dean’s Office, the PDA has established an award for postdocs who present at the annual open house poster session during student recruitment. Starting in 2006, the best three posters with postdocs as first authors will receive handsome monetary awards. In addition, the PDA has suggested that the first-prize winner be given a slot in the Monday Lecture Series, which would further enhance the prestige and value of this award.

Scientific Retreats
The need for scientific retreats was a common concern of the postdoc body in the PDA survey held last year. In his recently published strategic plan, President Paul Nurse has emphasized the need for such gatherings and the university is looking to increase the options for postdocs to attend retreats more regularly.

Postdoc Seminars
The Rockefeller Research Exchange (previously referred to as the Tri-Lab Exchange) provides opportunities to both students and postdocs to present seminars on their research. The PDA has suggested that some form of feedback mechanism (e.g. an anonymous evaluation form) be added to these seminars. This would allow the presenter to receive comments/evaluation from the attending audience.

Alumni Database
The Human Resources (HR) department has made a list of ~200 RU postdoc alumni with information about the current positions they hold. HR is continuing to add to this important database by requesting heads of laboratories to provide information about their former postdocs. HR has assured the PDA that this database will be made available to the postdoc community very soon.

PDA Website
The PDA website is currently undergoing extensive reconstruction and the updated website will be available by the end of summer 2005. The PDA welcomes ideas from the RU community for further enhancing the quality and design of the website.

Career Symposium
The RU PDA, in association with the Sloan Kettering Institute and Cornell Medical Center, recently sponsored a Tri-Institutional Career Symposium (February 2005). The symposium had panelists from academia and industry, as well as representatives from various alternative professions like consulting and publishing. The symposium was well attended by postdocs and students from the three local institutions and was an overall success. The PDA is considering hosting a mini career symposium in fall 2005, in which alternative professions that were not represented in the earlier symposium, as well as some RU alumni, might be included.

The PDA also organized a seminar where the Department of Technology Transfer summarized the technology transfer process as it works at RU. This informative seminar also highlighted the value of good lab practices (e.g. good notebook keeping), which may at times become important for resolving disputes of intellectual property.

Cultural and Social Events
The PDA has begun a new campaign to make cultural, artistic, and entertainment events in NY more affordable to the RU postdoc community. The initiative involves the PDA providing considerable subsidies (up to 50%) towards the cost of attending these events. As a first step, the PDA has started reserving a limited number of slots (on a first-come, first-serve basis) in the monthly wine dinners organized by the RU Food Service department. Subscription to wine dinners is restricted to one per year to ensure that these benefits are spread more evenly through the postdoc and RA community. To foster social interactions between postdocs, the PDA will continue to subsidize the cost of BBQs ($150 per event) hosted jointly by two or more labs.

Child and Family Center (CFC)
The CFC provides postdocs and other RU employees with a significantly subsidized day care option (the cost of comparable services in New York is considerably higher). In recent meetings with a PDA subcommittee, the administration stated that the proposed expansion of the CFC will not happen before September 2005, as the HR needs to finalize aspects of this plan with the Finance Office.

Some facts about the CFC:
1. Lab heads have priority in the waiting list.
2. Families where both parents are RU employees DO NOT have priority over families where only one parent works at RU.
3. The CFC will no longer provide its services to employees from other institutions.

Some issues that are being discussed:
1. The non-disclosure of a candidate’s position on the waiting list continues to be a major source of frustration for most postdoc parents. Will the waiting list be made public?
2. Possibility of assessing household incomes to determine eligibility and structure tuition schemes to help those in need.

Mentoring of Postdocs
Through discussions with the Dean’s Office and the HR department, the PDA has emphasized the need to enhance the mentoring of postdocs. Similar to President Paul Nurse’s vision in the strategic plan to improve mentoring of Junior Faculty, the PDA has presented some of their own ideas (e.g. a second mentor or advisory committee for postdocs) to improve the mentoring of postdocs. The President, the Dean’s Office, and HR have been very receptive to the PDA’s suggestions and are looking at suitable ways to implement these ideas.

Rent Subsidy and Salary
After a series of meetings last year with President Paul Nurse and university officials, the PDA and its subcommittees negotiated a temporary solution to the proposal to remove the postdoctoral rent subsidy. Postdocs hired before September 2004 continued to receive the rent subsidy, while postdocs hired after that date did not. This strategy intended to slowly phase out the subsidy over the next few years, which the university states is necessary to avoid tax liabilities and ease budget concerns. The administration is completing an appraisal of housing units to establish whether the university might indeed incur tax liabilities. The PDA hopes that without a tax liability the university will find an alternative solution to compensate the loss of rent subsidy for postdocs.

The PDA has worked alongside HR to bring changes to appointment letters for postdocs. Appointment and re-appointment letters now indicate the years of experience the postdoc is considered to have and the RU salary scale for that level of experience. This change was introduced to dispel concerns that some postdocs were being paid below existing university salary scales.