Eventful Week

It has been a very eventful week. I'll start with the big news, which Chris may elaborate on in his blog, but I'll brag on him anyway. Last week Chris interviewed for a rotation in another department at PG&E for a Marketing Research Position. He was offerred the rotation this week and accepted it. So what does this mean? It means for the next 6 months Chris will be working in a different department in a Marketing Research position. PG&E has the rotation program so that it's employees can gain insight into other areas of the company and gives them an opportunity to move within the company with greater ease. It is entirely possible that at the end of the 6 months, Chris will be offerred the position permanently. This is exciting for a number of reasons. The first is that this would be a very favorable career move in terms of his long term goals. Even if he doesn't get the offerred a permanent position, this is still 6 months of marketing research experience he can put on his resume. Secondly, it pays more. We already know that the lower end of the salary range for this job is more than he is currently making, so he is guaranteed a pay raise and he may even have bargaining power, as his current boss in regulatory relations would like to see him come back after the 6 month rotation and may give a counter-offer. As it is, he is getting a 5% raise for the duration of the 6 months just because this position does have a higher pay range, and more money is always nice.

In other news, I have been attending the Development Biology conference sponsored by the Society for Development Biology this week in SF. It has been a good meeting, in fact I will be leaving soon to attend another workshop shortly. The talks and posters have been interesting and enlightening, but I have most enjoyed the workshops. On Thursday I attended a workshop that outlined the interview process for faculty positions and also how to write an NIH (national institute of health) grant application. Today, I am attending a workshop that is suppose to discuss the reasoning behind undergraduate research in dev bio as well as how to design a program and convince administration that it is important. There have also been several posters on undergraduate research projects at small liberal arts colleges that have resulted in publishable data. Which is great for a new prof needing to get tenure! I've found the conference helpful and may try to apply for departmental funds to attend next year, as it will most likely not be located in SF again, which is the only reason I was able to go.

It was also nice to see Chris a little more this week. We communted in together on BART and my conference was just 2 blocks from his work, so we had lunch together a few times and I got to meet a few of his co-workers.

Chris is off hiking today, as I needed to work in my garden and had plans to attend this afternoon workshop. Perhaps he'll have some more pretty pictures to post on his blog from the hike. If you haven't already, be sure to see more of his pictures from our Mt. Lassen camping trip on his blog.