About the Course

Professional Issues for Computational Biologists (02-602) is a course giving master’s students in the Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon the opportunity to practice the professional skill development necessary for a successful career in either academia or industry. This course, required in the first semester of both the MS in Computational Biology and the MS in Automated Science, includes assistance with elevator pitches, interview preparation, resume and cover letter writing, and presentation skills. The course is pass/fail only and does not have any prerequisites.

I co-taught this course from 2015 to 2020, and in the process I worked to integrate active learning into this course as I have in my other courses (see my Statement of Teaching Philosophy for more information). To this end, I collaborated with co-instructors to reorient the course to operate on a flipped model, in which students review materials outside of class, freeing class time for students to demonstrate their professional skills with real time feedback from the instructors and their peers.

Curriculum

Professional Issues for Computational Biologists focuses on five different “failure points” during a candidate’s job search.

1. Elevator pitch
2. Resume
3. Cover letter
4. Technical presentation
5. Interview

These topics take different amounts of time in the course; elevator pitches only last a single class meeting, while interviews are given several meetings as students carefully plan answers to potential interview questions (using STAR format) and then execute them in mock interviews over a couple of weeks.

For elevator pitches, students must complete a recorded and live introduction of themselves.

For resumes and cover letters, students submit materials before class, and class time is devoted to students and instructors reviewing submissions in small groups so that students will have several chances to receive feedback.

For technical presentations, students must give a short (maximum ten-minute talk) on a technical topic. We choose a broad topic (e.g., “gene editing) and require all students to speak on some facet of this topic, using the Three Minute Thesis guidelines to evaluate student work.

For interviews, students begin with planning written answers to a few very common interview questions, practice their responses in small groups with another student playing the role of interviewer, and then complete mock interviews with instructors in which they receive feedback afterward.