-
About
-
- Departments & Offices
-
Academics
-
- Physician Assistant
- Special Master’s (MBS)
-
Admissions & Financial Aid
-
- Tuition & Fees
-
Student Life
-
Research
-
- Research Labs & Centers
-
Local & Global Engagement
-
- Global Health Program
Postdoctoral Training Bridges Science and Teaching
With a dual focus on research and pedagogy, Tufts’ IRACDA program empowers scholars to excel in academia while also fostering effective teaching, diversity in biomedical sciences.
When Sandra Sanchez was a graduate student at Indiana University, she attended a conference at which a fellow participant told her about a unique postdoctoral program: the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA).
The conversation inspired Sanchez to apply to Tufts’ IRACDA chapter, ultimately setting her on a path to her dream career: teaching biology and conducting research in microbiology at an institution with a diverse group of students from underrepresented communities.
An initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and which operates at Tufts and 22 other universities around the country, IRACDA empowers postdoctoral scholars to thrive in academic careers by providing them with advanced teaching preparation in addition to laboratory and research experience.
Tufts’ program, the only IRACDA program in New England, was established in 2006 and repeatedly receives renewed support from the NIH.
“The program is designed for graduate students who are looking to get postdoctoral training that goes above and beyond what you would normally expect for a postdoc, including training in effective pedagogy,” says Claire Moore, Zucker Professor at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Tufts and co-director of the Tufts IRACDA program.
The program boasts an impressive success rate in job placement, with 89% of alumni working in academia; of those, 85% have secured tenure-track positions. “We consistently hear from our alumni that the teaching experience they gain through IRACDA makes them highly competitive on the job market,” says Moore. “Most secure positions that align with their career goals soon after completing the program.”
For IRACDA alumna Sanchez, the focus on innovative approaches to teaching—and the fact that the program is based at Tufts, where she was already established as a postdoc—were reasons enough to apply. “In my undergraduate and graduate programs, I had experiences with great scientists who were not necessarily great teachers,” she says. “IRACDA is an incredible program because it’s not just about science; it’s also about how to be a professor.”
Tufts’ IRACDA program boasts an impressive success rate in job placement, with 89% of alumni working in academia; of those, 85% have secured tenure-track positions.
A Focus on Research and Teaching
A highly selective program, IRACDA at Tufts accepts only three applicants per year. Scholars who join the program are matched, based on their interests, with faculty mentors who are seeking postdoctoral support in their labs.
For the first year of their four years with IRACDA, scholars are funded by their mentors; for the following three years, an NIH grant covers their salaries—at a competitive, Boston-based rate—and provides additional financial support for lab supplies and travel to conferences. During all four years, scholars spend about 75 percent of their time working in their mentors’ labs; the rest of it is devoted to teaching and other career development activities, such as workshops, practice interviews, research presentation opportunities, conferences in specific fields, and an annual national conference that gathers IRACDA scholars from around the country.
“The combination of cutting-edge research and professional development opportunities made IRACDA invaluable to me,” says Lauren Crowe, an alumna of the Tufts program who now teaches in the Department of Biology at the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. “The opportunity to balance lab work with meaningful career preparation set me up for success in ways a traditional postdoc wouldn’t have.”
Katie Mattaini, who entered the Tufts IRACDA program one year before Crowe and who now also teaches in the Biology department at Tufts, agrees. “The chance to be the instructor of record while in a postdoc position, for a course that I had developed myself, was an incredible experience,” she says. “It gave me the confidence and skills I needed to pursue a teaching-focused career.”
Partnering for Inclusive Science
In addition to preparing participating scholars for successful research and teaching careers, Tufts’ IRACDA program has another aim, explains Professor of Biology Mitch McVey, who co-directs Tufts IRACDA with Moore. “One of our missions is to promote diversity of all types in the biomedical sciences,” he says. “We do this in part by partnering with minority-serving institutions, where our scholars gain teaching experience.”
The partner institutions—Bunker Hill Community College, UMass Boston, and Suffolk University—each serve student populations that are underrepresented in the sciences. Moreover, they offer a wide range of classroom settings and student needs, says Jordan Wilkinson, a senior research administrator with Tufts’ IRACDA program.
For example, at UMASS Boston, IRACDA works with both the biology department and the Honors College. That means that Tufts IRACDA scholars have the choice of teaching, for example, a traditional introductory biology course with 300 students or a specialized honors course that they've developed themselves for just 15 or 20 students. That choice, Wilkinson says, allows them to customize their postdoctoral teaching experience based on the type of training in which they are interested and the kind of institution they ultimately want to join.
It’s not just the scholars who benefit from the teaching partnerships, emphasizes Moore. “The scholars commonly bring something new to the departments where they teach, either subject-area expertise or pedagogical innovation. They also often mentor the students they’re teaching in both research and career prospects, so there’s a lot of value they add.”
A Community of Collaboration and Support
Beyond the teaching experience IRACDA postdocs gain and the research they’re enabled to conduct, scholars benefit from the program’s unique emphasis on community, McVey says. Unlike traditional postdocs, which often lack structured peer networks, IRACDA scholars enter with a cohort.
“Normally, for postdocs there’s no community,” says McVey. “In IRACDA, they have a very supportive community—one that often remains in place well beyond their time in the program.”
That was the case for Sanchez. She joined IRACDA during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The community she found among fellow scholars—both at Tufts and in IRACDA programs nationwide—served as a lifeline for her. “Even though everything was on Zoom,” she says, “I had a support system. We helped each other navigate the challenges of remote teaching and research, and that didn’t change after the pandemic.”
Mattaini and Crowe had similar experiences. “You come in with a community of people who are like-minded and who have the same passions within academia,” says Mattaini. “You learn about each other’s research, discuss things like managing a classroom or new teaching methods, and help each other apply for jobs.”
“And the community extends beyond Tufts,” Crowe adds. “Every year at the national conference, it was energizing to interact with IRACDA postdocs from across the country, learning about what they were doing in their teaching and research and how they were mentoring undergraduates in their labs.”
Sanchez keeps the spirit of community going even now that she’s landed a position as an assistant professor at Framingham State University. She meets monthly with one of the mentors who guided her through her time in the IRACDA program, receiving support in working through the challenges of starting a new academic job. At the same time, she attends workshops, alumni social gatherings, and current scholars’ practice teaching sessions whenever she can.
The Skills for a Successful Academic Career
Tufts IRACDA provides postdoctoral scholars with the additional skills needed for faculty positions at both research-intensive universities as well as schools with greater emphasis on teaching.