Paul Marc Stein

Present Position

Director of Research and New Product Development at Onciomed, Inc.

Chapter Affiliation

University of California - Irvine

Statement

I am a Life Member of Sigma Xi, and am proud to list it at the top of the professional organizations section of my curriculum vitae.  I am running for my second three-year term as the Southwest Regional Director.  When I ran three years ago, I had a three-point platform concerning issues very close to my heart, and I have worked very hard to remedy them.

1.  Improving Career Development.  I recognized long ago that academic advisors only knew how to train their students one way, the way that got them their own jobs.  These same “advisors” were also averse to readying their students in "alternatives", primarily because they simply didn’t know how.  Well, the fact of the matter is that the real “alternative” career is the academic professorship, where less than 15% of candidates will ever achieve that cherished goal.  This leaves the vast, vast majority of Ph. D.'s totally dependent on their own pluck and determination to scrape out some sort of non-academic career for themselves.  That, unfortunately, compels most to waste years of potential productivity to drift from one position to another before finally settling where they naturally should.  I knew that our premier Society needed to take a leadership role to reduce that real waste by creating a system to help prepare people to achieve meaningful careers.  With tens of thousands of scientists and engineers from every walk of life, there simply had to be many who could give precise one-on-one career advice to those sincerely seeking it.

For the past two years, I have tirelessly worked with the new leadership of the Sigma Xi Board of Directors to develop just such a mentoring system.  It will soon appear on the Sigma Xi website and as an app, where anyone can seek personalized help with information on career choices from real individuals who actually know something about those jobs…because they personally live them every day.

2.  Respecting Life Membership.  With the offer and choice of Life Membership, for a significant one-time monetary outlay, came with it what I felt was a contract that went on for, well, the life of the member.  That bond was broken when a terrific asset, hard copy issues of the “American Scientist” were withdrawn, to be replaced with an online version.  The hard copies many wanted could only be obtained for an additional yearly fee.

I knew this shift by the members of a previous Board of Directors was an incorrect action, and I worked to reverse that decision.  Beginning with the July/August issue of the “American Scientist”, all Life Members, and, indeed, any member, can receive our Society journal without a fee.

3.  Increasing Membership in Sigma Xi.  Declining membership in Sigma Xi had been an ongoing issue for many years now.  I came into the Regional Director position understanding that with membership came income, the lifeblood of any organization, to continue its vital core values.  I saw that there was much to maintain interest in Sigma Xi as an interdisciplinary science and engineering Society that simply hadn’t been utilized.

To move those efforts forward, the Board of Directors needed a tangible shake-up, an awakening, to not only suit the original mission of the Society, but to suit the new, professional scientist and engineer.  For the past two years, I have been working with some other aggressive members of the Board of Directors to bring more value to the membership for the yearly dues.

Additionally, during the past two years, I have pushed a rigorous, business-oriented, fiduciary responsibility position onto the Board of Directors.  Towards that goal, I voted to sell an inadequate, ill-suited, permanent structure, relocate to a much less expensive leased site, and pay off all long-term debt, and I voted against what I felt was an unnecessary, expensive alliance with the International Society for Global Policy.

As can be seen, I have worked very hard on many fronts to move our Society’s goals forward.  There is still much to do, especially to maintain and then gain membership.  That is a very tough nut to crack.  But, right now, there is the exact leadership in place to reinvigorate our Society.  In my next term, with them, I will strive to define just what essential new efforts will be necessary to push forward.

Paul Marc Stein's CV