Yale Postdoctoral Association Statement

Mission

The Yale Postdoctoral Association (YPA) exists to support and enrich the experience of postdoctoral scholars at Yale University by:

  1. Acting as a liaison to the postdoctoral scholars and representing the interests of postdoctoral scholars to the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, and to the Schools and Offices of Yale University

  2. Assisting the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs in fulfilling the YPA mission

  3. Supporting the professional development of postdoctoral scholars by connecting them to Yale University resources and enriching the available career development opportunities

  4. Enabling connections between postdoctoral scholars to create a community network

Membership

All individuals with the title of Postdoctoral Associate, Postdoctoral Fellow or Postdoctoral Researcher at Yale University are eligible for membership on the YPA.

Organization

The YPA strives to maintain diversity among scientific disciplines and national and foreign national representation. The YPA also seeks to promote diversity and inclusion for all postdocs in the YPA membership, leadership and activities regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, national origin, socioeconomic status, or religion. 

The YPA is structured as follows:

  1. The YPA Council acts as the core committee of YPA members who attend the monthly meetings, oversee the creation and management of satellite and ad-hoc committees and decide on the activities, partnerships and focus of the organization in accordance with fulfilling the YPA mission.

  2. The YPA Volunteers are individuals who assist with the logistic details of social and professional development event organization.

Meetings

  1. The regular meetings of the YPA Council will be held on the second Tuesday of every month at 12:00pm in a location to be determined by the YPA Council members. The meetings will be scheduled for one hour. Unfinished business will be relegated to the next meeting.

  2. Meetings with the YPA Volunteers will be held as needed.

Officers

The officers of YPA shall include two co-chairs, an OCS, CTL and OISS liaison, a communication and public relation person, a community building manager and a webmaster who will hold office for a year. 

All current postdocs are eligible for nomination to any officer position, provided that they intend to remain as a postdoc at Yale for the duration of their term. The postdocs wishing to become officer in YPA need to express interest at one of the monthly meeting. The roles will be attributed by informal vote during the monthly meeting. If two postdocs want the same position, preference will be made to the postdoc the longer involved in the association.

Before leaving their position, the officers need to inform the steering committee two months in advance and be willing to train the new officer and pass all information and access (web, mailing list, facebook administration privilege…) depending on the role.

Roles

Co-chairs

The role of the co-chairs is to lead the association in collaboration with the steering committee. Therefore, the responsibilities of the Co-chairs are as follows:

  • Schedule the monthly meetings of the YPA steering committee, preparing and disseminating the agenda at least one day before the meetings.
  • Maintain a strong and active relationship with the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs.
  • Maintain active relationships with the YPA liaisons to other Yale Offices, Organizations and Departments (such as the Center for Teaching and Learning Liaison, and the  Office for Career Strategy liaison).
  • Ensure that suggestions, issues, and concerns brought to the YPA are discussed in the monthly YPA meetings.
  • Oversee the timely appointment and/or election of new members.
  • Co-facilitate the scheduled monthly meetings in accordance with the YPA Bylaws.
  • Maintain a record of monthly YPA steering committee meeting attendance and determine if a quorum is present when required.
  • Maintaining the YPA email address by replying to emails or directing them to the appropriate YPA member or subcommittee in a timely manner.
  • Meeting together once a month separately from the YPA steering committee meetings to discuss upcoming events, activities and partnerships of the organization.
  • Encourage active participation of postdocs and YPA members in subcommittees and meet with the subcommittees when required.
  • Encourage and facilitate the active participation of the YPA in the National Postdoctoral Association in collaboration with the Yale Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. The co-chairs shall endeavor to keep up to date with respect to the activities of the NPA, or have another YPA member responsible for reporting.

CTL liaison

The role of the Center for Teaching and Learning liaison is to support postdocs who are interested in teaching and learning. Therefore, the responsibilities of the CTL liaison are as follows:

  • Maintain a strong relationship with a representative of the Center for Teaching and Learning (Kaury Kucera) by meeting with them on a monthly basis, or more frequently as required.
  • Ensure that postdocs are aware of opportunities and events related to teaching and learning at Yale as well as at other collaborating institutions.
  • Disseminate information on and enrich the opportunities for the professional development of postdocs who are interested in teaching careers. Some examples of this include but are not limited to disseminating information on available resources such as how to become a Teaching Assistant, facilitating postdoc participation in education-related conferences where possible, and disseminating information on teaching opportunities such as the Residential College Seminar Program. 
  • Facilitate the professional development of postdocs interested in teaching by collaborating with the OCS liaison and the OCS representative for teaching and learning related job applications.

OCS Liaison

The role of the Office of Career Strategy (OCS) liaison is to support the professional development of postdocs interested in any career trajectory. Therefore, the responsibilities of the OCS liaison are as follows:

  • Meet with the representative of the Office of Career Strategy (Ellie Schmelzer) to assure a strong and active collaboration between OCS and YPA. The meetings shall be more frequent as required when the two organizations are planning an event such as a job search seminar series.
  • Collaborate with the other professional development organizations on campus such as the Biomedical Careers Committee, CNSPY, and the Science Diplomats to co-organize events of interest to postdocs.
  • Disseminate information on the professional development-related activities, events and opportunities available through other Yale organizations to the postdocs by updating the Communications/Public Relations Chair. 

Communications/ Public Relations Chair

The role of the Communications/Public Relations Chair is to facilitate bringing the Yale postdoctoral community together with the purposes of networking, collaboration, and sharing downtime away from the bench with our peers. To this effect, the responsibilities of the Communications/Public Relations Chair are as follows:

  • Manage all communications from the YPA to the postdocs by writing the material for the YPA website, Dannika Byrd’s newsletter, the YPA facebook group and emails to the postdoc body.
  • Attend new postdoc orientation to introduce the YPA to the new postdocs and invite them to participate in YPA events, committees and other activities.

Webmaster

The role of the webmaster is to maintain an active and functional website for the YPA. To this effect the responsibilities of the webmaster are as follows:

  • Keep the website up to date, modify it when needed, add events to the calendar, add new sections and resources as necessary.
  • The webmaster is also in charge of granting and revoking access to the editor tools of the website to members of the steering committee as needed.