From owner-drosophila@net.bio.net Thu Jun 15 23:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!COMP.UARK.EDU!wetges From: wetges@COMP.UARK.EDU (William J. Etges) Newsgroups: bionet.drosophila Subject: Re: Drosophila faculty Date: 16 Jun 1995 12:45:43 -0700 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 60 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: <199506161940.OAA28501@comp.uark.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net At 12:07 PM 16/6/95 -0700, Alan C. Christensen, Ph.D. wrote: >In discussions of faculty hiring priorities, no doubt many of you have >heard comments such as "We already have enough Drosophila labs here". >Naturally, we all realize that Drosophila is not a field but an organism, >and that Drosophilists come in an impressive array of fields, but our less >enlightened colleagues don't often realize that (for example) a person >working on transcription factors in Drosophila and a person doing >population genetics with Drosophila are not actually working on the same >thing, and that a developmental geneticist working on Drosophila would >actually broaden and strengthen a Department rather than being redundant. > >So my question is simple: What arguments have been successfully used to >persuade a diverse group of biologists (including ecologists, >parasitologists, plant biochemists, etc.etc.) that another Drosophila >faculty hire is actually a good idea? > >I would also like to collect information on various Departments around the >U.S. and list how many of the faculty work on Drosophila, in order to >demonstrate that a group of 3 or more P.I.s is actually healthy. > >Please e-mail responses to me. If anyone is also interested in knowing >what the responses are I can share them or post a compilation. Alan, Perhaps I can help by describing what its like to be the ONLY Drosophila person on a faculty. Imagine running your lab without a core of students and faculty working on flies: I must find the manpower and resources to wash glassware, make food, change stocks etc. This means if I can find a good work-study student, the department will pay for him/her, and things are OK. Otherwise, my graduate and undergraduate students must pitch in. So far, the department has not allocated the funds to pay for a part-time lab tech just for me. It is mysterious to me how anyone could argue for or against someone based on the organism they work on - surely the decision must be made on the person's qualifications, the department's perceived teaching needs, etc. Seems to me that there is certainly a large advantage in having a group of people working on flies in the same department, even if they are asking different questions. By the way, I work primarily on ecological genetics and evolution of cactophilic Drosophila, primarily D. mojavensis. Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- William J. Etges Department of Biological Sciences SCEN 629 University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701 USA wetges@comp.uark.edu voice: (501) 575-6358 FAX (501) 575-4010 I changed her oil, she changed my life. ................title of a country and western song. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- .