Career Development: ‘It’s Not One Size Fits All’

[00:00:00] Erin Spain, MS: Welcome to Science in Translation, a podcast from NUCATS, Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. I'm your host, Erin Spain. NUCAT's Center for Education and Career Development is a national leader in training the entire spectrum of the translational research workforce. Today, you're going to get to know Laura Rasmussen Torvik, who is a recently named co-director of the center alongside Dr. Ravi Kalhan. We welcome her here today to talk about how NUCATS has supported her own research journey, and the pivotal role she's playing in shaping education and career development initiatives that advance Northwestern's research enterprise. Welcome to the show, Laura.

[00:00:49] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:50] Erin Spain, MS: Well, congratulations on your new position, and I think you have many new positions lately that we're going to talk about, but your position as co of the Center for Education and Career Development within NUCATS. Tell me, what excites you most about this new role?

[00:01:03] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: whole bunch of things. I was really excited when I saw that job opportunity come up because I have been involved with the Center for so long and in two different roles, right? So first, I was a junior researcher using so many of the Center's resources. and I think a lot of them are really integral into getting me where I was today. And then I've been involved in leading or co-leading several of the initiatives supported by the Center. So I'm a really big believer. and having had that long history with the Center, I believe in its mission. I believe in its success. I think I understand pretty well what it already does well, and I had some new ideas that I think would be exciting as well. So I was really excited to get to play a leadership role in something that's been important to me for a pretty long time.

[00:01:45] Erin Spain, MS (2): Tell me how you initially became involved with the center.

[00:01:48] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: Sure, I have been at Northwestern for 14 years, and not very long after I came to Northwestern, I became a KL2 Scholar, in that role, took advantage of the first Mondays and third Mondays, which is like the K Support Group, and also then responsibility and research that's mandated, but also just tremendously important information for any junior investigator. And so I was graduating because I had finished my K and Bill Schnaper, who ran the group at that point, he wanted, I think, another more junior perspective in the group. And so he asked me to join as a co-director of that particular group, which I felt pretty unqualified to do since I was just this graduate. But I do think the model of having a very senior person who was tremendously experienced and also just an amazing mentor. I learned so much about being a mentor from Bill. But I think the model of having a younger person too, I could share a lot of perspectives of, being just a little bit past that career stage, but not very much. That was my first sort of, you know, job with the center was working on that program.

[00:02:42] Erin Spain, MS: Tell me what it was like developing your own research career at the same time that you were developing and using these other skills in the areas of mentoring and career development programs.

[00:02:53] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: I am trained as an epidemiologist. My focus has been genetic epidemiology, although I do a lot of traditional epidemiology, too. And I was really trained as a methodologist. When I look back on my PhD level training, yes, I focused in specific areas. But I was really pushed through my training to just really understand the methodology in a way where it could be applicable to lots of different projects. And that's one of the things I love about epidemiology. I mean, I think I am sort of a born methodologist. I do have a passion for certain topics, but I also just really love working with other people and helping them, like, Oh, here's a little tweak you could make to your study that would make things so much better or make things more reproducible. And I think when that's kind of your research passion, It's a very logical fit to get interested in mentoring and get interested in sort of helping other people grow their career because you do have a lot of this sort of methodological expertise that can help people along the way. I think part of it was having really good mentors myself, they made it look effortless. It's certainly not effortless, right? Being a good mentor. But Bill was an amazing example. Mercedes Carnethon, who I replaced her in this role, but she is someone who's mentored me since I have been at Northwestern. My department chair, Don Lloyd Jones, all of those people were amazing mentors to me and an amazing example of what mentors can and, in my opinion, should be and I think helped me realize really how important quality mentoring is. So, it's been a really nice fit for me.

[00:04:15] Erin Spain, MS: Tell me how your research career helps inform your work at the CECD and vice versa.

[00:04:21] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: I think this opening came at such a great time for me professionally because three years ago I was MPI of one study and, working to manage staff and working with junior faculty and working with faculty more senior than me. Since then, I've now been In addition, MPI of a second study in a very different area. The first study was looking at genetic medicine. The second study is focused on heart failure. I had to hire a whole different set of staff with a different set of skills. And I'm about to actually take on being MPI of a third observational lab. study cohort. And, those experiences have been so critical in helping me really understand and embrace this ethos that at CECD, we're really trying to train the whole spectrum of people who are involved in clinical research at Northwestern. And I think, Five, seven years ago, I hadn't had enough experience with the whole spectrum of people doing research, and I'm still learning every day, and I hope to bring that back to the job, but having had the opportunity to have more experience with sort of study management, I think is really critical to informing, again, the wide variety of people we're trying to touch in CECD.

[00:05:23] Erin Spain, MS: You were instrumental in the creation of the ramp mentors program. This program actually pairs KL2 awardees and diversity supplement awardees with methodologic mentors, and this addresses some gaps in the traditional mentoring approaches out there. Talk to me about that.

[00:05:40] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: Sure. And I have to give credit to Leah Welty because she was the one who had the idea and she and I have workshopped it over the years and refined it. But you know, I think it came about because of two patterns that we were seeing. And one is that, I think this old model of K awards was that you had one mentor. You were sort of in that mentor's quote unquote lab, kind of fully supported by that mentor, and you really almost worked under them and did this project, which I think that there were lots of challenges with that model. People would really struggle to, like, reach that point of independence. What am I doing? That's me. What am I doing? That's my mentor. But one thing that probably worked well in that model is that were sort of expected to just use all the resources of your mentor. And, hopefully the mentor had some connections for x, y, and z, including maybe methodologic support that you needed. I think now we're moving to this team mentoring approach where people tend to be, I think, functionally independent earlier, which I think is great. It's great for people. I think it's probably great for science to have more people and more diverse ideas out there. And have this, often a mentoring committee, which is also great. You get a diversity of perspectives. I think, brainstorming multiple people, putting their heads at a single problem. That's a great approach too. But when there's not one person that is solely supporting you. Some of these things, like, for example, methodologic support, can really fall through the cracks because you've got five mentors. All of them are individually helping you, but maybe there's not someone attached to someone's lab who they sort of think to hook you up with. And probably as a result of this shift, Leah, who works with our biostatistics core, she was seeing a lot of people, and particularly K level people, come to her pretty late in a grant development process, like they were pretty close to handing in their R01, and they were like, had realized, I desperately need biostatistics support, I need a power calculation, I need to understand my study design, and it was, pretty late in the process to try to help them. They'd already made a lot of decisions about this grant. Maybe some of them were good. Maybe some of them weren't. No one does great work when you're rushed under the last minute. So we thought, wouldn't it be great to find a way to provide some of this methodologic mentoring in this sort of new era where people have these great teams of mentors, but maybe don't have a lot of resources. And also let's get people working together early because when people have been talking for two years, it works so much better. The right methodologic decisions are made really early, and that just ends up being a really great grant. The other piece that makes this increasingly important, K awards have never had a lot of research support, right? They offer excellent salary support, but very small levels of support for anything else. And that number has definitely increased. It's barely changed over time, so it's functionally gotten smaller, right, because the world has gotten more expensive. So, there's just no money or resources there for people to get the sort of methodologic support they might need. And this has happened at the same time as computing has expanded. There's all these different statistical softwares, there's all this different parallel computing, there's all these new technologies that require more advanced analysis. So, you've got way more complex methodological needs. shrinking resources and ways to address them. So, I think it's really filling a keyhole that we see right now for honestly everyone in science, but particularly for K awardees.

[00:08:44] Erin Spain, MS: RAMPS is very much a Northwestern homegrown project. Do you see this expanding though, to other universities replicating what you've created?

[00:08:53] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: published a paper about it, and we've taken this around to different educational conferences. There's been a lot of excitement about it. It's a little bit hard to tell people how to replicate it. I think, one piece that's important is you do need sort of a coordinator, and this is the role that I have largely played, Leah has played it as well, you need to level set right away what the relationship is and isn't. Some people have trouble sort of getting started because they say, I don't have data yet. And we say, that's okay. You can like, Find a paper that you're really interested in, but you're having a little bit of time, hard time getting through, read it with your Ramp Mentor, or, get an example dataset and pull out a new computer program you want to use, but you're having trouble with and just spend the hour, like, troubleshooting that with your mentor. And then, we actually haven't had too many problems with this because I think we level set, but we also make very clear, you're not hiring an analyst, you're not hiring someone, here's my data, come back in two weeks with some answers. You're hiring someone to train you, and in some cases train, sometimes people have master's level support staff, sometimes they have PhD students, but you know, we always emphasize these RANP meetings don't need to be just two people, they could be a whole team, but it's about higher level, What are the right methods? What are the optimal ways to implement them? You're not just hiring someone to do your data. And I think the time we spend at the start, kind of level setting, is important. That absolutely could be done at other institutions. The other thing, I'm tremendously grateful that NUCAT's funding has allowed us to do this, because the other challenge we've had in expanding it, and I've talked about how there's very little NUCAT's funding has allowed us to do this, because the other challenge we've had in expanding it, and I've talked about how there's very little research support in these K awards, there's also a lot of rules about what you can or can't fund with that. And, that has complicated efforts to include this type of funding in a K award. So, creatively finding institutional ways to fund such a program is a bit of a challenge. But I would love to see it, replicated more broadly. I think it works really well.

[00:10:39] Erin Spain, MS: So, mentorship is clearly a cornerstone of your work. Can you tell us about the expanded NUCATS initiatives around faculty mentoring, particularly in fostering inclusion and diversity?

[00:10:51] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: With the very new NUCATS award, we have modules, we have initiatives. I'm still wrapping my head around the organizational chart for the new system and we have a ton in CECD focused on mentoring broadly. We don't have a specific initiative really focused on diversity and inclusion. We try to really weave that throughout. I'm just so excited about all the different projects. Two that immediately come to mind we have a project where we're trying to have summer program with undergraduate students where they come and they learn about, what we do here at Northwestern to maybe encourage students who don't necessarily think that clinical research or medical school or maybe that's not their future to like demonstrate to them that it is something that they can aspire to. We also have a lot of initiatives aimed at sort of retaining and helping to grow staff, like helping them understand what their career pathways could look like. Maybe you come in as like a research associate, but then eventually you build up to a project manager or you go and work for the IRB. So, helping people understand how they can, grow and thrive at the institution. And, diversity and inclusion is woven through all of those.

[00:11:55] Erin Spain, MS: As someone who, as we said, you came in as a junior faculty member at Feinberg, you've grown into all of these new roles what advice would you give to young faculty, young investigators, and even the broader CTS workforce who are just now starting their careers? What have you learned that you would like to share with them?

[00:12:14] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: It's not one size fits all. It can be really intimidating when you're starting out. Imposter syndrome is real. You look at someone and you think, I can never accomplish what that person has accomplished. I think that's very normal, but I think there are so many paths and so many ways to be successful. So would encourage people not to like fixate on one person or one model. I think an example of that is, I'm a team scientist. As opposed to someone appointed on the tenure track. And it's been a tremendously good fit for me because I love the collaboration. I love the methodology. I love the mentorship. Team science lends itself really well to that. But you know, when I first got here and was comparing myself to people on the tenure track and looking at the things that I really had a passion and aptitude for. I didn't understand how that would work, but know, it has. It's worked really well, and it's allowed me to have these different leadership positions and do things that I love and be successful. So keeping an open mind everyone's got struggles. Nobody has it all figured out, and that's a big part of several of the programs in CECD, and I go back to that third Monday as the sort of case support group. A big part of that is having a space where people can talk about the fact that it is hard and talk about roadblocks that they're hitting. I do think sometimes in academia, we're also focused on giving our impressive presentation. And of course that is very important for advancement and people need to do things like that. But a space to share the legitimate challenges everyone is facing and know that you are not alone in that. Problem solved as a group. That's really important. It's important for success. It's important for preventing burnout. I think there are lots of spaces in NUCATS that are trying to create communities of people who hopefully can share their successes, but also their challenges in a way that helps people develop their careers.

[00:13:57] Erin Spain, MS: So NUCATS is positioned around three aims. Include, innovate, and implement. What do those aims mean to you?

[00:14:04] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: I mean, include really is about broadly including people, so we can think about that as diversity and inclusion, even beyond that, people who have different current life situations and challenges people from different countries. I mean, I think we can apply it very broadly, but it goes back to one thing I really do like about the way NUCATS is set up now is we don't have the one diversity and inclusion project in our module. It's an idea that's carried throughout all of the grants, all of the modules. So, I think it's this idea that diversity and inclusion isn't a single project. It is an ethos and it is important to think about sort of throughout the grant. Innovate. You know, science is constantly changing. Training is constantly changing. It is important to innovate. It is important to critically look. what's working, even something that worked great for 20 years may then stop working because outside factors have changed. So, I think that innovate is so important. And then, obviously there's a huge theme of implementation science throughout the grant, it's great to put that lens back on training. We know best practices. But you need to figure out what actually works in the real world, in your institution, not necessarily in a perfect textbook situation, but in the real world when there's competing demands on people's time, so I think using that implementation science lens, let's not just be, sort of purely theoretical about everything, let's also be practical. I really understand what the challenges are in the real world when it comes to implementation. I think that's a wonderful idea to apply to training and career development as well.

[00:15:34] Erin Spain, MS: Well, as you said, we're just at the beginning of the seven year grant. There's a lot ahead and Dr. Laura Rasmussen Torvik, we look forward to seeing all that you're going to do in this new role. So thank you for coming on the show today and talking with me.

[00:15:47] Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, PhD: No problem. Thank you so much for having me

[00:15:48] Erin Spain, MS: Subscribe to Science in Translation wherever you listen to your podcasts. To find out more about NUCATS, check out our website, NUCATS.Northwestern.edu.