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Robbins-Roth, Cynthia, editor. 1998. Alternative careers in science: leaving the ivory tower. Academic Press, San Diego, California. xviii + 267 p. $29.95, ISBN: 0-12-5893752 (alk. paper).
When I was in graduate school I knew that I was not interested in becoming a professor. Like most of the science-- trained, but not academically employed contributors to this cleanly edited and readable volume, I completed the standard academic program, then strayed. I became a population biologist because I was driven by my love for the natural world, research, and scientific inquiry. It has not been easy to leave academia, but it would have been impossible, given my predilection, to stay. My personal transition would have been helped by this collection of stories from successful individuals. Most of the accounts are written by former students of cellular and molecular biology (and not even one organismal or population biologist, if psychologists and physicians are also excluded). Nevertheless, I recommend this book to all graduate students in ecology, and to any professor who cares for the well-being of the substantial fraction of graduate students who will not stay in academia.
There are twenty-three contributors to this book. Nearly all earned Ph.D.s. Many also completed postdocs. A few rejected offers of tenure-track positions. One...