Didaktik der Biologie (englisch)
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Influence of the doctorate on conditions and developments of careers of young academics in medicine and biology (E-PROM; BMBF, 09/2013-08/2019)

involved persons:

LMU: Prof. Dr. Birgit J. Neuhaus, Prof. Dr. Martin Fischer, Dr. Lena v. Kotzebue, Dr. Julia Eberle, Julia Meuleners

TUM: Prof. Dr. Manfred Prenzel, Prof. Dr. Pascal Berberat

Universität Köln: Prof. Dr. Stefan Herzig

Strengths, weaknesses or need for reform:
The project aims at investigating the relation between quality features of the doctoral training phase and the career of early career scientists in Germany, focusing on scientist in the fields of biology and medicine, who received their doctorate in the federal states of Bavaria, Saxony, or North-Rhine-Westphalia as locations of high scientific renown. The need for this research project is based on current structural changes of the German doctoral training system from traditionally individual doctorates to more structured training models such as doctoral programs or graduate schools. Additionally, the posterior period of academic careers are focused: the late post-doc-phase until a professorship. This investigation aims at identifying further influencing factors on career development in academia.

The project comprises three studies:
Study 1 is designed as a four-year panel study on career entry and the following career stages of post-docs in biology and medicine; this study focusses on the retrospective descriptions and evaluation of the participants’ doctoral phase and the development of their further career.

Following a qualitative approach, more detailed information about problems and challenges of early career researches is obtained in interviews about the individual careers of a sub-sample of the panel participants (study 2).

Study 3 focuses on the characteristics of the structured doctoral programs in which parts of the panel sample participated. The goal of this study is threefold: (1) capturing the situation of doctoral candidates enrolled in these programs adequately, (2) identifying the effects of participation in structured programs on the doctoral training phase, (3) compare structured programs. This study is based on the analysis of document portfolios and interviews with program coordinators

The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) during the period Sep 2013 to Aug 2019.