Paleontólogos en Departamentos de Medicina

Desde el inicio de la andadura de este blog estamos empeñados en demostrar como la Paleontología es una ciencia que está creciendo a nivel mundial, y solo en algunas instituciones por causas puntuales desaparecen los departamentos de Paleontología. Un aporte en esta línea es la una carta enviada por Alicia Stigall a Paleonet que nos habla de las oportunidades de trabajo en Paleontología relacionadas con los departamentos de Medicina. Os adjuntamos un resumen de lo más interesante.

I routinely advise new invert paleo master's students that walk bright eyed into my office with fuzzy plans of "maybe I'll be a professor" to take a serious look at that goal in light of the job marke since they are usually blissfully unaware of the low numbers of tenure track positions. The low number of positions, however, seems to be largely a problem (and a significant problem at that) for those people who wish to work in a geology or biology departments, where systematists in general and specialities with low funding rates/grant dollars are on decline. Medical schools, however, have not yet been discussed in this thread, and they offer great opportunities for vertebrate paleontologists.

One place that I have seen many of my colleagues and their students find excellent employment opportunities are in medical schools--this of course applies mostly to vertebrate paleontologists. But our students at Ohio University that are trained to teach gross anatomy have been very successful in finding employment. In fact, we have also used this to increase our complement of paleontologists on campus. This year, Ohio University has 15 paleontology faculty across campus in four departments 3 in geology (1 retired), 2 in botany (1 retired), 1 in biology, and 9 in the biomedical department of our medical school (there's more info on our group paleo website ).