Career mentoring in food microbiology

While I am passionate about the training and guidance of young people, and have been so since I first set foot in a teaching laboratory as an instructor 20 years ago, mentoring isn’t really something I’ve done a lot of, and can say I’ve never actually pursued opportunities to offer such guidance to aspiring food microbiologists. The interesting aspect is of course you never know where and when opportunities will present. A few weeks ago, I started moving our video content to our new Brand YouTube channel, with the first (and so far the only!) video on our channel being on my career in food microbiology. In fact, this video formed the basis of our vlog posted on May 24, which is located here: http://foodmicrobiology.academy/2020/05/24/my-food-microbiology-career/. So anyway, a few days ago my video was found by a (very) young aspiring food microbiologist in Mumbai, India. This teenage student made some comments to initiate a conversation with my around career advice and guidance, then we continue our discussions through Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Now, we’re about to formalise our discussions with a mentoring agreement. This is just great news and of mutual benefit as she can clearly gain from my years on a non-traditional career path and I real feel like I’m ‘giving back’ and encouraging and ‘grooming’ the next generation of passionate food microbiologists to come along and really take on the challenges of the world and solve them, which we can all really achieve together. This student is pretty amazing because even at her young age, she has a career vision and a firm goal of wanting to work in the area of food safety and foodborne diseases at the World Health Organization. With such a plan at such an early age, she can so get there as well. What I wanted this blog post to be was to introduce the career mentoring that Food Microbiology Academy now offers by elaborating on some of the examples I provided to this mentee during our early discussions. Firstly, too many people, myself included years ago in the mid to late 1990s, have a general career idea but no firm goal and vision. Without this, you do almost wander aimlessly to some extent. Thus, I would say – don’t worry about or try and identify what you will study as your undergraduate degree and where until you have identified your dream job. Then, you can work backwards. Setting your dream job as your goal will help answer so many questions, such as: Which is the highest degree I’ll need? Do I need to do a Master degree? if so, should it be a research or coursework Master degree? Which country should I complete my various degrees in? What should my undergraduate degree be in? What sort of opportunities should I seek during holidays or internships to support me reaching my career goal(s)? For example, if you have come to the conclusion that you need a PhD, does the Australian (three years, one laboratory, research only) or North American (four years, laboratory rotations during the first year, 25% coursework) model work better for you and your career. Then, for training like a PhD, the importance of factors that you should consider can be ranked like this, from most important to least important: Supervisor > Laboratory > Department > University > Country. Some people get to hung up over doing their PhD in a particular country or a particular university. However, it is the supervisor that is most critical and I’m sure you can find exceptional academic supervisors leading world-class research groups engaging in cutting edge discoveries located in what many would consider sub-standard universities or lower ranking countries for research training or higher education in general. However, you may not even be at the stage where you can identify your ideal or dream job, but you just have a hankering for food microbiology. In such case, perhaps consider the following, as a non-exhaustive list of careers in food microbiology that require high levels of responsibility, so senior positions that typical require a PhD: I) Teaching food microbiology in a college/university (professor in a community college).II) Doing food safety research in a university (research-only academic position, like Research Assistant Professor or Senior Research Fellow, in a research-intensive university).III) Teaching food microbiology and doing food safety research in a university (traditional academic position).IV) Doing food safety research and development in a food manufacturing company (only food manufacturing companies of substantial size, like Nestlé would engage in such R&D)V) Consulting and therefore providing advice to small and medium size food companies on keeping their products safe (either as an independent consultant or working for a scientific consulting firm).VI) Managing food safety at a large food manufacturing company (this may be part of a quality management role of if the food manufacturing operation is large enough, then it would be a seperate position).VII) Tracking foodborne diseases and identifying sources of outbreaks (such as at a government health organisation, which could be at a national level like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States or the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory in the Australian state of Victoria)VIII) Developing public health strategies and government policy to reduce foodborne disease (an advisory role in government to assemble scientific information and make recommendations for policy and legislative changes to protect the health of the citizens under the jurisdiction of the government you’re working for). So, if you’re a budding food microbiologist (no pun intended!) or simply want to find out more about careers and working in our field, do contact myself (Dr Philip Button, @pdbutton, by e-mail to philip.button@foodmicrobiology.academy).

Teaching food microbiology

^ Memories of teaching food microbiology at The University of Melbourne – with some of my undergraduate students near the end of second semester in 2008. We are (re)launching our academic support services (Figure 1), which include tutoring and guidance for research students. It therefore seemed appropriate at this stage that I share my teaching philosophy, so basically how I approach teaching of food microbiology. Without any further ado, here is my teaching philosophy. Teaching is a passion for me. I thoroughly enjoy contributing to students’ acquisition of knowledge and feel truly satisfied when they have really understand a topic or even a concept. My main area of teaching focus is microbiology, particularly in food and industrial microbiology. However, I am able and very much willing to teach a diversity of courses in different areas of microbiology, immunology, pathology or biochemistry, for example. It is imperative to ensure that material presented is relevant to what is currently practiced in industry or in a research setting. Therefore, the course content I deliver is always up to date with present trends, methodologies and thinking. For example, in 2011, I overhauled the advanced undergraduate level Food and Industrial Microbiology course I was co-ordinating at Monash University, to ensure the lectures included coverage of rapid, molecular identification techniques (among other alternative approaches to microbial identification) in addition to the diversity of non-thermal processing methods, some of which were in commercial use already. I am a strong believer of problem based learning teaching methods, but acknowledge that this approach isn’t suited to all topics and subject areas. In those cases, I would use the traditional lecture format to deliver the basic concepts and then use problem based learning to reinforce the fundamental knowledge. I feel this is particularly suited to food microbiology (but not general microbiology) and food processing/manufacturing technology. Related to this approach, I also like to try and teach from original research papers on a particular topic, especially when considering foodborne disease outbreaks or incidents of food spoilage. Using this approach previously, I have allocated a particular research paper to a small group of students and asked them to read it and present relevant details (according to a specified set of questions) to the class – a short discussion session follows presentation of each paper. To enable students to consolidate their newly acquired theoretical knowledge, I believe that the theoretical material for a practical class must be presented in the week of the practical class. To ensure this, I would carefully structure a course so that students gain benefit from this. Furthermore in practical classes, unless all students are given the opportunity for “hands on” experiences, holding practical classes is pointless. This is because, to me, practical classes are the times when all students must have the opportunity to get close to the real science and the real technology and actually do it. Therefore, I would carefully consider the type of exercise, class scheduling and class numbers to guarantee the effective learning experience of all students. I believe that group work has a place in tertiary education today, but consider that it is an area that isn’t a high priority. In my opinion, students must be able to work on their own first and recognise their own strengths and weaknesses and be competent independent workers, so that they can contribute fairly to group work. Therefore, it would be important to incorporate group work for a “taste” of what is to come in the workplace, but to ensure a system such that group work is not assessed solely on the product, but that some weighting is given to the process as well. There is no point in teaching without determining how effective the teaching is. Formal course evaluations of teaching quality provide an indication as to the general areas where improvement is best directed. However, I enjoy casual interactions with students after class and during practical sessions as this is when I can really gauge their understanding of the material and provide direct and personalised information to a particular student to fill a deficiency in their knowledge. I also value the use of practice exams, to gain an honest assessment of where the students are with the material, both individually and as a class.

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