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[Anthropoid]

Do dissertation committees serve as an assessment to newly minted PhDs?

Competency-based assessment for the training of PhD students and early-career scientists

Michael F Verderame Is a corresponding author , Victoria H Freedman, Lisa M Kozlowski, Wayne T McCormack Pennsylvania State University, United States; Albert Einstein College of Medicine, United States; Thomas Jefferson University, United States; University of Florida Health Sciences Center, United States

Abstract

The training of PhD students and early-career scientists is largely an apprenticeship in which the trainee associates with an expert to become an independent scientist. But when is a PhD student ready to graduate, a postdoctoral scholar ready for an independent position, or an early-career scientist ready for advanced responsibilities? Research training by apprenticeship does not uniformly include a framework to assess if the trainee is equipped with the complex knowledge, skills and attitudes required to be a successful scientist in the 21st century. To address this problem, we propose competency-based assessment throughout the continuum of training to evaluate more objectively the development of PhD students and early-career scientists.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/34801