Chapter 07: Gaining Experience in Education Leadership at MD Anderson
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Description
Here Dr. Bogler talks about the series of events that led him to leadership roles in developing educational initiatives at MD Anderson.
Dr. Bogler first describes the Odyssey Program, an internally awarded post-doctoral fellowship for emerging, gifted researchers. Dr. Bogler explains how he reorganized the Program (in particular its finances). Next, he talks about his work on the Annual Symposium and the Trainee Recognition Day. He then explains what he learned from these experiences that prepared him to apply for the position of Vice President of Global Academic Programs.
Identifier
BoglerO_01_20141110_C07
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 Administrator; The Administrator; Professional Path; Professional Practice; Leadership; Research, Care, and Education; Education at MD Anderson
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - The Administrator; The Administrator; Professional Path; Professional Practice; Leadership; Research, Care, and Education; Education at MD Anderson
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
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
At the same time, or right around that time, I guess, I started working with Steve Tomasovic. I think in 2007, so a couple years after I got here, he sent an email around the faculty saying—I think he was looking for someone to help him with a couple of his educational programs. And I remember sending that email to Ray Sawaya and saying, “You know, there’s probably no chance they would consider me, but should I—?” You know. And Ray, I think he said something like—I forget how he expressed himself. At that point, it might have been later, he said something like, “I’m afraid the administration’s going to steal you away.” (laughs) But anyway, I did apply for it, and I doubt very many people did. So anyway, Steve gave me the opportunity to help out with some programs, and that was the Odyssey program and the annual symposium and a couple of things.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, you had—I’m sorry.
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
You had mentioned that the Odyssey program was pretty key for you. So tell me about that experience. What was that project?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
It’s still going now. The Odyssey program, I didn’t start it. It’s really an in-house fellowship program for postdocs, so there’s an endowment and some philanthropy funds that support the salaries and a little research stipend for a handful of postdoctoral fellows. So the program really consists of an annual competition for slots in that program, and also we have a publication award. So every year the best couple of papers from postdocs get an award, which is with some money and a chance to present their research at a lecture.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What was the reason for establishing it? It may seem obvious, but what’s the significance of this for the institution, for students?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
So it’s really a way of recognizing and identifying the best up-and-coming postdoctoral researchers and provide some resources for them, because it force-multiplies in the lab. So if a professor hires a postdoc in on a grant, and then that postdoc applies to the Odyssey program and gets support, they’ll get three years of support from Odyssey, which frees up the original support, and then the professor could hire another postdoc. So it is a way of putting resources into the best labs that are training the best people and giving those people sort of an early start. It also gives them a mark of distinction. The Odyssey program is competitive, and when they go forward for the next stage, they can talk about the fact that they competed for this. Only about 10 percent of the applicants get accepted in the program, and then the program also pays a little better than the typical rate, so they get a 20 percent bump above the NIH rates. So it’s also good for the applicant, and they get a little extra money in their pocket at a time when they’re really not earning particularly well.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So what about this particular program, and what did you do for this program, and then what were the lessons learned that were so significant?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
So the offer that Steve made was really a [unclear] of these things. It wasn’t like a menu I could pick from. He wanted me to run Odyssey and the Training Research Day and then the annual symposium. Frankly, and this is a little bit sensitive, but the key challenge with Odyssey was to put it back on to a financially sound footing. So what had happened, which is not unusual, I think, is that the endowment had accumulated over a significant amount of time, so there was quite a lot of money in the endowment in sort of cash, interest had accumulated, and the way the project had been managed was to try and spend that down. But the way that that had been done the year I took it over, it was a million dollars in the red because the endowment itself was actually not that big, and so I think the endowment at the time—now we have some additional funds, but at the time, the endowment, which still is here today, only has enough money for four or five fellows if it was just a steady state. But there were fifteen or twenty fellows, so a lot of fellows had been brought into the program when there was still a lot of it in the checking account, so to speak, without looking at the interest-bearing savings account, which was not that big. So that very quickly diminished. So anyway, we had to, over a year or two, smooth it out, and there the challenge was almost exclusively on the managerial side. And I don’t know the backstory. I don’t know how that happened or how that came about, but I was able to prove that I could very quickly—I mean, frankly, it wasn’t rocket science. I mean, you had to look at the core and then find out how many fellows you could afford. Then I put a plan forward and I advocated ultimately to Dr. Mendelsohn that we would still take a few fellows each year so that we wouldn’t have a gap in the program ultimately, but I put a three-year plan, I think, forward that would get us back on to where we needed to be to then live within our means. Then also during that time, we were able to get some other foundations on board so that we started getting in some new cash, and that helped get us back on track sooner. So now we have, in addition to the core, we have some people who donate year to year to keep the fellows going. And then under Dr. Dubois, we’ve got another $5 million that we are using over a six- or seven-year period. So there, really, that was the challenge. And then obviously running the—there’s a committee that does the adjudication of the new fellows, does the scoring, and I run that committee. But it’s really not a bigger deal. That works pretty well. So that was the challenge there, and with the other programs, it was really just trying to bring them up to speed a little bit. The annual symposium was kind of in a little bit of a state of disrepair and—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How so?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
I think it was really sort of seeking its purpose. This has been around for many, many years, and back in the sixties, it used to be the definitive cancer meeting, and it was sort of—that’s at least my perspective, it wasn’t that anymore. So we really kind of recast it as an educational program built primarily to focus on a particular area for our trainees, and now Greg May is running it for me, and he’s working with the Vice Provost for Science, and they’re really taking it to showcase some of the best research that’s going on. So it’s again changed a little bit, which is natural. It evolves. Then there was Trainee Recognition Day, which, when I took it over, really consisted of an enormous poster session, with hundreds of posters—maybe not hundreds, but certainly many dozens of posters and then a handful of talks from the best abstracts. And there I really—the four or five years I did it, we restructured it to become a more restrictive program. So we basically only allowed a certain number of posters into the poster session to try and make it more attractive to faculty and try and get participation up. And to make it more attractive, we also introduced live judging, so for the posters themselves, we brought in faculty to actually—so at least the poster presenters, if they got chosen for presentation, they would have some people coming to look at their posters and some opportunities to discuss it. And we rebranded it Training Research Day to try and get it away from being a recognition event to being an event where there might be some interesting research to see. Again, we’re still experimenting with that formula. I think it’s an ongoing experimentation because, really, in a large institution with so much going on, it’s really hard to get people to come and spend time with any kind of venue. So, again, Greg is running that for me now. But, yeah, those were really interesting experiences for me, got me a chance to work with different people in different institutions, the support staff in Academic Affairs, I got to know a handful of them pretty well over the years working through these things, and got to network with some faculty and so on. I really have to say it was an enjoyable experience. I really liked doing the work. I found it satisfying. I enjoyed when the events were successful, when the trainees got a chance to share their work and there was good feedback, you know, so those were just very interesting, also enjoyable things. And I think I discovered that I like working with people more than—I really hadn’t had a chance to do that in—I mean, through science you do, but it’s not the same kind of thing, you know. You’re working with people in a different way when you’re running these kinds of programs, and also with the SPORE experience. So these sort of things came together for me. Chapter 08
Recommended Citation
Rosolowksi, Tacey A. PhD and Bogler, Oliver PhD, "Chapter 07: Gaining Experience in Education Leadership at MD Anderson" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1560.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1560
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