Julie Gould 00:09
Hello and welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Julie Gould. This is the sixth and final episode of the Last few miles: planning for the late stage career in science.
Julie Gould 00:29
The academic workforce, according to some studies, is said to consist of people from four different generations. Boomers, who were born between 1946 and 1964, Gen X from 1965 to 1979, the Millennials from the 1980s until 1994, and Gen Z, from 1995 until 2012.
With such a wide range of ages from say, mid 20s all the way to people in their late 70s, and 80s, there’s bound to be a difference in how these different generations behave and interact with each other in the workplace. And these differences can lead to stereotypes, preconceptions, or even some tensions.
The tension that exists between younger and older generations in academia is something that is frequently witnessed, and it is understandable.
Fewer jobs exist in academia, (for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into now), for younger generations. And for the purposes of this podcast series, the tenure system, or lack of mandatory retirement age, also contributes to challenges in climbing the career ladder.
But the other side of the argument is that these days, as we’ve said on previous episodes, people live longer, healthier and more productive lives as they age. So why should they stop contributing?
Roger Baldwin, president of the Association of Retirement Organisations in Higher Education in the US, says that overall, it’s actually a huge benefit to the older individuals and society that they should continue to work.
Roger Baldwin 01:55
One of the things that I learned as I was researching these retirement issues, is that the more engaged people in their later years remain socially, physically, intellectually, the less likely they are to have ageing issues like physical impairments, cognitive decline, things of that sort.
So they place less stress upon our support services, the medical profession, and the other services that are provided by the society to support people in the later years of life.
Besides the fact that if they stay physically and mentally active and alert, they’re continuing to contribute to the society.
So not only are they not placing the demands on the social service system, but they’re actually helping their caregivers and supporting their friends and, and relatives, and they’re actually continuing to contribute to society.
There are many compelling reasons to help people prepare more effectively, and continue to provide structures to engage people in these later stages of life.
Julie Gould 03:09
Yep. Stacey Gordon, a gerontologist and social worker, and the program director of The Next Phase Adult Caregiving Ageing and Retirement at the Work Life Office at New York University in the US, says that the stereotypes, preconceptions, or tensions, still exist.
Stacey Gordon 03:22
We know that age is a number. And sometimes it signifies quality of health, quality of life, quality of work, research, teaching. And sometimes it doesn’t.
So I mean, we have this big conversation going on about age in politics in the US now. And I think a lot about how, you know, people project all sorts of negative stereotypes onto older politicians based on their own internalized ageism, not necessarily on who that person is.
I mean, there’s a saying, you know, if you’ve seen one eighty-year old, you’ve seen one eighty-year-old.
Julie Gould 04:08
The worry that many academics have once they start approaching retirement is that they don’t want to be that person that they resented when they were younger.
This is something that Inger Mewburn, Director of Research and Development at the Australian National University, is acutely aware of.
Inger Mewburn 04:21
Yeah, well, I don’t want to be one of those people, so that’s what really gives me pause for thought. I think there’s a fine line between being around and being valued, to being around and kind of being a pain in the ass and no one will tell you to go away.
And some of them are so embedded in, I mean, carrying a lot of the load, especially around supervision, that they have to be sort of treated with kid gloves a little bit.
And that annoys a lot of people. I know, it annoys some younger colleagues and particularly those tasked with managing those people.
So I think it’s good from the point of view of myself looking at that as my next phase of life, to sort of think I don’t, I don’t want to be that person.
Julie Gould 05:03
Or people don’t want to be the person that is no longer adding value, which is how Pat Thompson, a part time professor of education at the University of Nottingham in the UK, feels.
Pat Thompson 05:11
I don’t know. I think I dread going on too long and being seen, being seen as a kind of sad person who should have stopped some time ago.
And so I think, you know, for me, kind of continuing to engage with people who will kind of tell me if I’m not, if I’m not adding anything anymore, is important.
You know, I’d hate to just be repeating myself over and over again. Because yeah, I do think that academic work is, is continuing to learn and to contribute.
Yeah, so I think, being able to put yourself in a situation where people will honestly tell you if you’re not making sense anymore, or adding anything, is probably important.
Julie Gould 06:03
But what Roger was saying earlier was that if you can stay active and healthy, then really there’s no reason for people to stop contributing to academia. Just like Carlos García Canal, an eighty-year-old physicist at the University of La Plata in Argentina.
He sees firsthand the generational differences. But he also says that this doesn’t need to be a bad thing.
Carlos García Canal 06:24
I like the connection with young people in the scientific world.
And that is very rewarding, because my lectures are different from a lecture of a young professor, because I have a tradition, I have an experience, and I can mix my lecture with anecdotes, with a history of science, that I have lived.
Because I knew personally Heisenberg, Dirac, Schrodinger, all these people, and I have pictures of them here. So that’s another complement of my lectures.
Julie Gould 07:13
Others like Roberto Kolter, professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School in the US, continue their links with academia in a slightly more removed way.
When I spoke to him for this podcast series, he was actually at an academic conference.
Roberto Kolter 07:26
So I’m here at the conference, north of Copenhagen, a conference on secondary metabolites and the ecological role secondary metabolites from bacteria play. And it’s more interesting why I am here.
So you know, one of the first things that I did after retiring is I received the fellowship for a sabbatical, actually short sabbatical, at the Danish Technical University, and Lone Gram was hosting me.
And she was just starting at the time, this is 2019, a program on focus, a really big, big project, many labs, focused on what are the ecological roles of the secondary metabolites?
So she asked me to come here and give the keynote address yesterday, last night. So that was wonderful. Lots of positive feedback from that talk.
And, I should say, the day before, on Saturday, I was giving a talk in Asti in northern Italy, on a completely different topic, which was the cities of the future and how we might learn from microbes and how they organize and how they’ve evolved to organize, in terms of city planning.
And just two days before that was in Marburg, at the Max Planck (Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology) giving a talk on what can we do about the problem of antibiotic resistance.
All of that is to say, it’s not to brag, but it’s to say that one can be very active and can be a participant in the community.
Julie Gould 08:49
One of the added benefits of being retired and doing these types of activities, says Roberto, is that he is more free to speak his mind,
Roberto Kolter 08:56
I can truly express my opinion without the concerns that people who might review my papers might not like what I say, you might not like what I might say, or somebody applying for a grant might want to get my favour because they know I’m an …
So having all of that gone, it really gives a certain amount of freedom in both what we talk about and what we speculate on.
Julie Gould 09:21
So given that there are people who are willing and able to contribute to academia in a valuable way, isn’t it time to reevaluate how we perceive academics approaching retirement age?
This is a question I put to Shirley Tilghman, professor emeritus and previous president of Princeton University in the US.
She agreed it would be a good idea. But there are challenges in finding what formal roles a university could put aside for those who are retiring and want to stay involved.
Shirley Tilghman 09:47
Here’s the dilemma. If one thinks about what are the primary roles of academics in research universities, (I’m talking here about research universities), one is conducting research, original work. And the other is teaching.
And if I were to design the faculty member who I would most want in those two positions, it is someone who is either heading into or at the peak of their, you know, their creativity, their innovation.
So the last thing, for example, which some people have suggested, is that we should encourage the more senior faculty to take on a greater percentage of the teaching in the university. And, you know, nothing could be further from the truth.
I think the people you want in the classrooms are the people who are engaged with the cutting edge, with what is happening in science today. So the problem then for universities is okay, so what do you carve out then?
If you think that you want to have really active researchers doing the teaching, what are the roles that are left for those who have, you know, frankly, passed their peak of productivity in science?
And yes, there are tons and tons of administrative responsibilities, some of which should be decided by those who have an investment in the future of the institution, right?
So the key committees like hiring and promotion, again, you want those occupied by people who are actively in the field.
So what’s left, unfortunately, are committees that are often seen as burdens. And I don’t think those are any more attractive to a senior faculty member than they are to a junior faculty member.
So, although yes, absolutely, finding additional roles for senior faculty that would give them meaning… it’s hard to do it in an institution that values creativity and innovation, and all of the things that tend to come at earlier stages of one’s career.
Julie Gould 12:10
So I think the conclusion we’ve come to is that people need to find their own way of staying involved in academia, if that is what they choose to do. This, as we’ve learned, can take some advanced planning.
But one of the joys of retirement is that you have the flexibility, and the ability, to choose your own path.
And this is exactly what Heather Middleton has done. Honestly, this is one of my favourite stories from this whole series.
Heather went to the University of Cambridge from 1962 to 1965, to study botany, zoology, geology and anthropology.
When she graduated, she started a family, and with four young children, she decided to work as a science teacher to support her family.
Heather Middleton 12:48
So I’ve had nothing to do with universities or research. I was teaching, either in Ghana, West Africa, or in the UK, in secondary and FE [further education] colleges, teaching mainly biology.
But when I retired at 60, my first thoughts were – rest at last. I was absolutely worn out with balancing family and work.
And I thought, time at last to rest and do all the things that I would never have time, I never had time for, in a busy working life.
But gradually, it came to me that I would like to contribute to science. And that degree that I had in the mid 60s, all the knowledge was lying in me and could be used.
And in fact, teaching helps you to refine some of the things that you know. But on the other hand, it doesn’t allow you to stretch yourself into research.
But the point I think is that I’m an autodidactic person. I simply love learning for myself. So with the foundation of a science degree and years of honing it teaching, I was ready to go.
Julie Gould 14:10
Heather lives on the Jurassic Coast in the UK, a UNESCO World Heritage site where there is plenty of scope for studying fossils, especially since very few people have done this in the past.
Heather Middleton 14:20
The fossil site I collect from has been a rich site noted from about 1850 or even earlier. So it was going at the time of Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, Weymouth was a famous fossil area.
And yet, in the years since 1850, hardly any papers have been published. It’s a whole, it’s a resource just waiting for a development and publication.
It’s not that I’m going to find whole specimens lying there, like a whole dinosaur, a whole Plesiosaur.
It’s more that the preservation of the bones and the teeth is so superb, that they are prime targets for analysis. So, appetite analysis of crocodile teeth to see how global warming was affecting their adaptation to warmer or colder seas.
So I’m thinking that the fossils can be used for paleophysiology in particular.
Julie Gould 15:21
So Heather spends several days a week combing the Jurassic Coast.
Heather Middleton 15:25
Picking up fossils, being astounded by the wonderful preservation and range of them, and bringing them home and starting to trawl through the internet papers, books, and find out what they are.
Julie Gould 15:40
As well as finding fossils. Heather has contributed to the scientific literature with the fossils that she’s found. She’s been named a co-author on three papers with PhD students, and another entirely on her own.
One of her favourite finds is some crocodile teeth that were in excellent condition. And after reaching out to several institutions, and PhD researchers, Heather heard back from two students from Bristol University in the UK.
Heather Middleton 16:02
On the kitchen table, we looked at these crocodile teeth, and lo and behold, they were all likely to be three or four new species or even genera. So I donated the teeth to them. Some of them went to Edinburgh University, some went to Brazil.
And so there’s the start of national and international links to academia. And these young students were good enough to say if we publish a paper on this, you can co-author it, or we’ll name you in it, or we’ll feature the fossils.
And that set me off on the realization that what I was finding needed to be directed into academic research. Not always to find academics ready to use it, but the possibility was there.
Julie Gould 16:52
But one thing she is aware of, now that she’s approaching 80 years of age, is that physical and mental decline does come with age. And yet, that doesn’t deter her from continuing her passion.
Heather Middleton 17:03
I found to my astonishment and amazement, that when I went into that bank of knowledge and started extending it, the brain is most happy to play and is working very well.
So that fear should be set aside. But I do understand that poor health does come with age. And not everyone is lucky to have an active brain. And everybody’s mobility will get worse eventually.
For example, I said, I won’t be able to go fossil hunting after 75. I’m going to fall over, down on the site which has a lot of big boulders to clamber over.
But I’m now 79, nearly 80, and I’m still doing it. I do take my mobile phone. So if I fall over I can call the ambulance, which probably won’t come but …
Another way of looking at it is keeping an open mind. So when you retire, you can open your mind to the things you never thought you’d do.
I never thought I’d do a podcast, for example. I hardly know what they are. But it’s exciting, it’s great.
I’m talking to you, a much younger person. It took me a while to fumble my way into the Zoom. But here we are on a podcast. It’s exciting. It’s new.
You might after this thing say, Heather, are you really retired, you seem to be working? But I definitely have fun and enjoyment and I balance my science, which is perhaps a couple of hours a day maximum, with plenty of holidays, family, grandchildren, friends and Tai Chi.
It’s a great balance, which I hope other retiring scientists will be able to enjoy such opportunities that I’ve had.
Julie Gould 19:00
Thanks for listening, I’m Julie Gould.