Why these PhD scientists swapped research for secondary-school teaching

Students value being taught by real-life scientists with lived experience of life in the lab, say researchers who switched career.
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  1. Anne Marie Conlon
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Eleven years ago, James Carey swapped life as a postdoctoral researcher in molecular and cellular biology to become a science teacher. He settled into his current role at a small secondary school in Norwell, Massachusetts, in 2013. Some friends, he says, still wonder why he spent so long studying, only to take up a job that doesn’t require that level of education. But for Carey, this was the right path. When he was an early-career scientist, he thought a non-academic career meant you were “kind of a failure”, he says. He now sees this as a “very silly mentality”.

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Nature 623, 873-875 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03612-3

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  • Correction 27 November 2023: An earlier version of this Career feature erroneously identified Seed2Sapling as a charity.

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