Chapter 06 : Coming to MD Anderson to Help Craft a SPORE Grant
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Description
Dr. Bogler begins by explaining how his PhD and fellowship work set some groundwork for his administrative perspective and focus on collaboration. He then sketches his positions after his post-doctoral fellowships, then talks about the series of events that brought him to MD Anderson. He comments on opportunities that gave him experience with leadership in the area of education.
Dr. Bogler explains that he was hired primarily to work with Dr. Alfred Yung [Oral History Interview] on coming to MD Anderson to insure that the institution was awarded a SPORE grant, a goal achieved.
Dr. Bogler notes that he was always collaborative in approach throughout this training and that most researchers are “built that way.” He describes his leadership style.
Identifier
BoglerO_01_20141110_C06
Publication Date
11-17-2014
Publisher
The Historical Resources Center, Research Medical Library, The University of Texas Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Oliver Bogler, PhD, Oral History Interview, November 10, 2014
Keywords
The Researcher; The Researcher; The Administrator; Professional Path; Joining MD Anderson; Understanding the Institution; On Research and Researchers; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; Professional Practice; Leadership
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - The Researcher; The Researcher; The Administrator; Professional Path; Joining MD Anderson; Understanding the Institution; On Research and Researchers; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; Professional Practice; Leadership
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
But what I wanted to ask you, just to kind of shift gears, I mean, it sounds like you were really in labs, I mean, your head was in—and let me just ask you, because I saw that your specialization is developmental biology, molecular biology, or— (laughs)
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
I would never call myself a developmental biologist. I mean, I’m really, I guess, a cell and molecular biologist [unclear].
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, so cell and molecular, because developmental was in there somewhere and I thought, hmm, you know.
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
Mark was more of a developmental biologist. I would never claim that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. So your head is really in this area, I mean evolving these methods.
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
But is there some dimension of those experiences that, as you look back, you feel was kind of forming you for your philosophy of education, your approach to the kinds of administrative issues that you’re taking on, certainly in academic affairs, but also more specifically with global academic programs? So I’m sort of trying to bring that general question area, this view towards education, the word “stewardship” came up when I was doing my background research, which is a really interesting word to use in the context of education. So tell me a little bit about that, that graduate experience and how that begins to form you in that area.
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
I would say that probably the most dominant thing is that when you—so once you get familiar at the bench to a certain extent, once you become proficient, I would say, at the bench, which is itself a learning curve, it takes a few years, and I got a bit of a head start with some of my experiences when I was younger, but there comes a point when you feel like you’re limited by what you can do by your own two hands, and that creates an urge to move beyond it. So for me, that was the urge that made me finish doing my postdoc and go on and try and start my own lab, because the idea, the thought was that I’ve got more ideas that I can actually work on, and if I have some people around me, maybe we can work on more things. And I think it’s that same instinct that drives my interest in international collaboration or collaboration of any kind. I would say the real sort of steppingstone towards that, though, didn’t happen till much later, really till I came to MD Anderson. So just to tell the short story quickly, after I left Web’s lab in 1997 and went and did a faculty job at Virginia Commonwealth University for three years—you’ve seen this all in my CV. And then after that, I was recruited up into Detroit, to Henry Ford, and I was there for five years, and that was an interesting experience. It was a very small research, brain tumor center, There were four or five of us faculty, maybe thirty, forty people, and a great environment for research, lots of tissue access and decent environment, decent size, and some of the leaders of the other labs, we knew some of them. Irene and I knew them. They were also previous Ludwig people, great relations with them. But I felt very limited up there, I have to tell you, and I didn’t see a potential for growth, personal growth or career growth. So when I got the opportunity to compete for the position here at MD Anderson, I really was excited and I took it. And Dr. Sawaya, chair of Neurosurgery, encouraged me to apply for the position.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So what was the position and how did you hear about it? You were recruited?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
Well, I competed for the position. It was definitely a national search, and in the end, I believe there were two main candidates, myself and another person. Dr. Sawaya initially mentioned it to me. It was at a conference. I remember him telling me, “Hey, this is happening,” and I was like, “Wow.” This was the Society for Neuro-Oncology Conference, and at the time, it was still a very small meeting. Now it’s a couple of thousand people, I’m sure. I don’t go anymore. But it was just sort of, “You know, we’ve got this position open.” And it was really a research position. So like a lot of clinical departments at MD Anderson, Neurosurgery has two or three basic scientist positions, and he was looking for someone to come in and not just be a scientist, but also help craft the program. And the person I competed with, I think the reason I was selected is that the other person was a neurosurgeon and a researcher, and what Ray wanted was someone who was not going to be having a clinical practice, just because he wanted this person to focus on the research, and he was afraid that this other person, who was actually a very good surgeon and a very good researcher as well, wouldn’t have as much time to focus on the team-building area. So I was lucky to get the position, and really the focus of it was—it was an interesting experience. The formative aspects for me was that it was really a classic MD Anderson soft power position, right? I mean, I didn’t really have a formal title. I think I was Director of Research in Neurosurgery for all three labs that were there, and, of course, the other two faculty members had no reason to do what I said, and I had no intention of telling them what to do. They were being very successful without me, and that wasn’t how I saw myself. Then for the brain tumor center, which isn’t really a center in the MD Anderson ecosystem, it’s really a program in the core grant, if anything, I was formally—it has an Executive Committee, and I was the chair of the Research Subcommittee or something like that, but I never put that on any CV because it was like three sentences long and I would have spent more time explaining to them. So I really had no position. I have no—you know. I didn’t have resources to give anybody. No one reported to me. My job was to work with Dr. Yung on the SPORE. So if I recall correctly, there had been a SPORE submission that hadn’t been successful, and the team felt somewhat discouraged, I would say, and there wasn’t really anybody who could really make it their full-time job to go after this. I mean, Dr. Yung was the principal investigator, but he’s a chairman and a clinician and a researcher. He really didn’t have time to devote to it. And I took this on very happily. I realized that my job was to be the co-PI of the grant and to get people together, and I actually enjoyed that. And I think that was a formative experience for me. I enjoyed trying to help people come together and be more as a group than they would have been individually. I have to tell you that scientifically, I think all the other people on the grant, I felt, were better scientists than me, were doing more interesting and more exciting projects, certainly more translational projects. I mean, there was amazing stuff going on, Juan Fueyo and Fred Lang with the adenoviruses that they were using that are now being tested in the clinic, and at the time Ken Aldape was—you know, he’s left now, but he was doing some really good molecular characterization work, and Alan was leading our project, I was a part of it, on PI-3 kinase inhibitors. So it was some really, really cool stuff. So it wasn’t about me and my science. It was about getting the team together, doing some nudging, and getting people and encouraging people to come together and do these things, and then trying to—also doing a lot of the sort of organizational work, writing work, trying to get everybody in on time. On the second round, we got it, and that, for me, was a really positive experience and one that I enjoyed more than I thought I would.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Where did you cultivate those particular network-building skills and collaboration-building skills?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
You know, I don’t know. I mean, maybe to an extent you do that anyway as you grow up. But I’d always been fairly collaborative, even as a trainee. I mean, you learn to collaborate. You learn to partner. I’d worked very closely with a dear friend of mine now, Frank Furnari, at the Ludwig. So Frank and I were postdocs together. Frank is still working at the Ludwig. He’s now on faculty, of course, as a senior faculty member there. But Frank and I started talking even before I joined the Ludwig, and then when I joined it, there was a natural affinity and we did a lot of cool stuff together, and it was a lot of fun. So I think that was one of many positive experiences, probably one of the core experiences. But I think most scientists are built that way. I mean, it’s just easier to do things together. I think what I learned with the SPORE experience was to—some of my colleagues are not the easiest people to work with, and one of the core challenges for me is—and this is maybe my Germanness—I get very anxious close to deadline. I’m just not a last-minute kind of person. I’m just not. I’m always ahead of time if I can possibly be, and I just live happier that way. And some of my colleagues, who are really good at what they do, I mean do amazing stuff, they just thrive on that last-minute stuff, and it would absolutely drive me nuts. So learning not to let that drive me nuts and learning to keep—because, you know, there’s quite a lot of support staff who were there trying to help and trying to keep everybody happy. So what would happen is that some of these folks, these project leaders, would deliver their stuff much past deadline, my deadline anyway, not past the actual deadline, and then we would have to scramble to get it all into the right place, and it would mean lots of late nights for my support team and grants manager and so on. So to keep their morale up and to have them not see the other people as being simply taking advantage and trying to get—you know. So these were the challenges, and trying to keep everybody on board and moving forward, and I think it worked pretty well. So I guess that’s where I really learned that I enjoyed that kind of work.
Recommended Citation
Rosolowksi, Tacey A. PhD and Bogler, Oliver PhD, "Chapter 06 : Coming to MD Anderson to Help Craft a SPORE Grant" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1559.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1559
Conditions Governing Access
Open
