A look back at Hopkins postdocs
Joanne P. Cavanaugh's article, "
The Postdoc's Plight"(February 1999), gives a gloomy picture
of postdoctoral education at Hopkins, which, based on my
experience of about 50 years of participating in training
postdocs, is an incomplete portrayal. Postdocs are a
heterogeneous group. Some history may provide perspective.
In 1963 Hopkins had more postdocs per total student body than any
other U.S. institution, and a greater absolute number of postdocs
than any other except Harvard and Michigan. With some concern
about how best to handle this newly recognized breed of
university attendee, Hopkins sent a questionnaire in 1963 to 40
institutions of higher learning, concerning postdoctoral
education. Thirty-six responded. Most, but not all, regarded
postdocs as students, not as faculty. Usually postdocs were not
expected to teach or to counsel, but they received some faculty
privileges. Some were required to pay tuition. Many were hired
by a faculty member to perform some specified research service.
There was great variation as to the amount of stipend; often
there was none. Where there was a stipend, it rarely came from
the institution, but from an extramural grant.
In 1964 Hopkins president Milton S. Eisenhower appointed a
long-range planning committee; I chaired the subcommittee on
postdoctoral education. Our subcommittee began by making its own
survey of Hopkins departments' attitudes about postdocs. It had
been suggested [by some at Hopkins] that because faculty devote
uncompensated time to training postdocs, postdocs be charged
tuition (then $1,800 a year).
But our report pointed out: "Balanced against the cost of the
post-doctoral fellow to the University are the contributions the
post-doctoral fellow makes directly to the University....The
post-doctoral fellow, while he is learning by his research,
contributes to the research productivity of the faculty, and gets
on-the-job training as a teacher of predoctoral students [and of
junior postdocs]."
We predicted that demand for postdoctoral training would increase
dramatically over the next decades--as the scope and depth of
human knowledge increased--and listed six items as the
University's responsibility to postdoctoral fellows. All of them
were included in our final, not unanimous, recommendation:
"In recognition of the problems and opportunities presented in
this report, it is recommended that The Johns Hopkins University
establish a School of Post-doctoral Studies. We are now at the
stage with respect to post-doctoral education that the United
States was with respect to a pre-doctoral education when the
University was founded. Such a school should attract financial
support on the merits of its own program.
"High standards of selection should be established. The specific
criteria should remain in the hands of the departments, but the
School itself should stress high standards and may even reserve
the right to recommend rejection of an applicant.
"Most of the fellow's education should remain on the present
apprenticeship or tutorial basis, but there should be
opportunities to remedy formal deficiencies and to supplement the
training with whatever course-work is desired.
"Criteria should be established for satisfactory performance
during the tenure of the fellowship, and satisfactory completion
of the fellowship should be given formal recognition.
"A range of stipends should be established for post-doctoral
fellows.
"A tuition fee should be set. [On this issue the committee was
most sharply divided.] After a survey of financial resources, the
School should decide on ways and means of handling cases in which
there is no third-party provision for meeting tuition costs.
"The School should assist fellows in matters of housing, visas,
health insurance, and so on, and the School should help in
placing the fellow in the best position on satisfactory
completion of the training.
"The School should coordinate post-doctoral programs and, in
general, assist in any way it can in providing the most
stimulating intellectual environment.
"The School should cooperate with other divisions of the
University in providing post-doctoral fellows the proper teaching
opportunities."
Although 34 years ago some of our committee did not agree with
our recommending a School of Postdoctoral Studies (on the grounds
"that it has no really important function, that it omens more
paper work for the faculty, that it may interfere with faculty
freedom"), your article suggests that our proposal should be
dusted off and re-examined.
Kenneth Jeiler, MD
Professor emeritus of medicine and of physiology
More insight on millennial matters
Senior writer Dale Keiger's "Inventing the
Millennium" (February 1999) was most interesting and
entertaining. Obviously the year 2000 completes the 20th
century A.D. for the simple reason that the year 100 completed
the first century A.D. He is also on target, citing Hopkins
French professor Stephen Nichols, in stating that the "dread of
the year 1000" in Western Europe in the last years of the 10th
century was a 19th-century invention lacking any historical basis
in fact.
It is true, as Keiger points out, that The Venerable Bede (ca.
673-735) of the Benedictine monastery at Jarrow in Northumbria,
provided the example for the calculation of years from the birth
of Jesus Christ. Among Bede's numerous scholarly works were two
that should be cited in this connection. One was Concerning
the Computation of Times (725), and the second was his justly
famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People
(completed in 731). Copies of both of these works soon enjoyed
wide circulation among the cathedral and monastic libraries of
Western Europe.
However, due credit should also be given to Bede's
near-contemporary Northumbrian scholar, Wilfrid of Lindisfarne,
Bishop of York (634-709). When, in 664, Edwin, king of
Northumbria, summoned a Council at Whitby to resolve the
differences between the proponents of Celtic Christian practices
and those who defended the more recent customs introduced from
Rome by Augustine and his successors, Wilfrid successfully
defended Roman practice--including that involving the proper
annual celebration of the Easter Feast. He cited the Easter
Tables of Dionysus Exiguus.
In 525 Pope John I had assigned Dionysus, abbot of a monastery at
Rome and a noted astronomer-mathematician, the complex task of
computing Easter days for the ensuing century. His completed
Tables began with "the year of our Lord's Incarnation DXXXII"
i.e., A.D. 532. Until this time the solar year had either been
reckoned from the legendary date for the founding of Rome (735
B.C.) or from the first year of the reign of the Emperor
Diocletian (A.D. 284).
Although most modern biblical scholars believe the birth of
Christ actually occurred [earlier than had been believed], in the
time-frame 6 to 4 B.C., the very first year of what is now often
called "The Common Era" was the year 1 A.D. as calculated by
Dionysus.
Franklin M. Wright (PhD '59)
Memphis, TN
Irritated by vulgarity
In his "Morality
Tales" in the April issue, Michael Rosenbloom '00 says of a
tutee, "The left side of her face is twisted into a scowl. She
looks p----d." (The blanks are mine.)
How did the vulgar word for "urinated" take on the meaning of
"extremely irritated" and then become acceptable in some of the
media, including a number of fine magazines such as Johns
Hopkins?
Perhaps the answer, in part, is this: Since Americans often fail
to make the "v" sound distinctly just before making the "d" sound
in the same syllable, "peeved" is often heard as "peed." And if
irritated is "peed," then extremely irritated is ... you
know what.
Henry Harlan (MA '54)
Churchville, MD
RETURN TO
JUNE 1999 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
An urgent need for language guides
