Written by Chris Smith, Ph.D.
I am a neuroscientist by training receiving my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014. I was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt in the lab of David Zald (who has since moved to Rutgers University) from August 2014 to January 2019. During my time at Vanderbilt I studied how the brain processes reward and the various biological determinants of individual differences in human behavior. I was active in the Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Association and both attended and supported career and professional development events organized by the BRET Office in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine. My postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt allowed me to develop as both a researcher and leader and the key skills I learned during my 4.5 years in Nashville still serve me well. Since leaving my postdoc I have spent close to seven years working in Postdoctoral Affairs first at North Carolina State University and most recently at Virginia Tech.
Shortly after completing my postdoc and moving into higher education administration supporting postdocs, I become involved in a study investigating the faculty job market from the experience of postdoc applicants. We published the work in eLife in 2020 (https://elifesciences.org/articles/54097) and have since published three additional papers on this work (one in press at Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education). So, while I no longer conduct neuroscience research I still us the scholarly skills of reviewing and synthesizing primary literature, collecting and analyzing data, and interpreting, presenting, and writing up research findings in the field of graduate-level career and professional development.
Also, after moving into my role as Postdoctoral Affairs Program Manager at North Carolina State I ran for the Board of Directors of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA), which I have served on since 2020. I took on a variety of leadership roles while on the NPA Board including guiding our strategic planning efforts, serving as NPA Treasurer in 2023, Vice Chair of the Board in 2024, and Chair of the Board in 2025. My term on the NPA Board will end in December 2025 and I am excited to support new administrators as they move into roles on the Board.
One of my big pieces of advice to Ph.D.s and postdocs is the importance of volunteering in and engaging with organizations doing work you are interested in and/or care about. These can be organizations at Vanderbilt, in the community, or national groups. Service allows you to build critical transferrable skills and cultivate a wide and diverse networks of contacts all while giving back to constituencies you care about. In addition to my volunteer efforts with the NPA I also became an active member of the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC; at the recommendation of Kim Petrie in the BRET Office at Vanderbilt), which is an organization supporting professionals working to aid graduate students and postdocs in their career and professional development. My roles in GCC and NPA held grow my personal brand and gave me opportunities to be involved in a variety of national initiatives including serving on a National Academies Roundtable on Mentorship, Well-being, and Professional Development, mentoring awardees of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Career Guidance for Trainees program, and co-chairing an Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Research, Education, and Training Academic Publishing Working Group.
I want to end with a message to current postdocs at Vanderbilt: You will be amazed at how much your career can evolve and grow after your postdoc. I never would have imagined I would be doing the things I am now 7 years ago when I was still a postdoc at Vanderbilt. So, don’t necessarily stress about planning the next 10 years of your career. Rather, think about how you can build transferrable skills, grow your network, and do work that matters while at Vanderbilt…whether that is directly related to your postdoc role or not. You all have so much to offer the world but exactly how your interests, skills, and values will map onto your career may not yet be perfectly clear to you. That is completely OK as there are people and programs at Vanderbilt to help you out. Be sure to take advantage of them!
More about the Faculty Job Market Collaboration:
https://faculty-job-market-collab.org/
Learn more about my journal from postdoc to working in postdoctoral affairs in this blog post: