Fred Hutch Postbaccalaureate Scholar Program

In their role as a Research Technician-PB, postbaccalaureate scholars will be paid a starting salary of $50K/year. They will work full-time in a laboratory that they mutually choose with a participating faculty member.  Scholars will be mentored by the principal investigator of the lab, as well as a secondary lab mentor, who will also oversee the research project and provide reasonable expectations about research milestones. In addition, scholars will have a second faculty member who will provide further mentoring two to four times a year.

In collaboration with their faculty mentors, Scholars will develop an Individual Development Plan to help establish training goals. Scholars will participate in near-peer mentoring by Fred Hutch graduate students, post-docs, and staff scientists.  Scholars will also participate in events in their lab, such as group meetings and other relevant research seminars.

To help ensure that all scholars in the program have the necessary skills for success in the laboratory, a one-week training course will be offered every summer to provide fundamental lab techniques. These could include pipetting, DNA cloning and amplification, cell culture, protein purification/analysis, and more. Additionally, the course will provide important lab skills like how to access and read scientific literature, gene, and protein databases as well as principles of data storage and bioinformatics.

Examples of the activities that scholars will learn in this course include: how to keep a lab notebook, how to perform lab math, how to communicate with their lab mentors and professional lab conduct, how to identify, read and evaluate scientific papers of interest, and how to write an individual development plan for their postbaccalaureate career.

Scholars will participate in all mandatory Hutch training classes (ex: bias mitigation), as well as the Biomedical Research Integrity (BRI) summer series.

In their role as a Student Scholar, postbaccalaureates will receive an annual scholarship of $5K and participate in a curriculum designed to develop a foundation for further graduate studies and careers in research.

Academic and scholarly development activities will include:

1) monthly mentoring meetings covering topics, including how to choose a grad school, how to write a grad school statement, how to talk to a mentor, how to choose a scientific meeting, how to use social media for scientific networking and knowledge, how to prepare for a grad school interview, how to move through the phases of scientific projects, how to structure scientific presentations, how to write scientific manuscripts, how to write fellowships and more.

2) attendance at: one seminar/month with an associated mentored journal club, one additional monthly seminar of interest, and a monthly career options seminar

3) participation in the annual postbaccalaureate scholar symposium.

Postbaccalaureate scholars will also have access to numerous optional training opportunities, such as guidance on graduate fellowship applications, feedback on graduate applications, computational training, career exploration, course auditing, mock grad school interviews, attendance at division retreats, and participation in Fred Hutch summer undergraduate and/or Office of Graduate Education programs. Scholars who stay for more than one year will also have the option of writing a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellowship and be mentored throughout the process.