EEB graduate student orientation seminar
EEB 5894 Section 003 (Planning for a career in EEB) - FALL 2014
This 1 credit seminar course is intended to provide orientation information to incoming EEB graduate students, although it is open to other students; we strongly advise new students to take it. The course will meet for about an hour a week, with 2-3 faculty present each week to discuss a given topic. This is a new course and we seek input on what topics we should include.
Meeting time: Tuesdays 3:45-5
Location: Bamford Room (Torrey 171B)
Course coordinators: Elizabeth Jockusch, Chris Elphick
Tentative syllabus (subject to change)
Date | Presenters | Topic | Resources | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Aug 26 | Kent Holsinger, Elizabeth Jockusch | What do you aim to accomplish in grad school (and beyond)? | Graduate Certificate in College Instruction Employment Data GradHacker - A blog with advice on graduate school and beyond Grad Traps: Traps to avoid in graduate school, written by a philosopher, but the advice is good for everyone |
Relate to strategies for different career paths |
Sept 2 | Bernard Goffinet, Kurt Schwenk | What is a dissertation/thesis? | NSF fellowships | |
Sept 9 | Yaowu Yuan, Janine Caira | Formulating good scientific questions | Alon 2009 on choosing good scientific problems E. O. Wilson on scientific discovery Janine and Yaowu on good questions |
|
Sept 16 | Carl Schlichting | University/department structure and resources; Degree ontogenies | Departmental and University Resources University Resources II |
|
Sept 23 | Pam Diggle, Chris Elphick | Research ethics and regulations |
Nature Editorial on research misconduct |
NSF ethics training/IACUC/IRB/EH&S/BAUR/other lab safety/etc |
Sept 30 | Eric Schultz, Mike Willig | How does research funding work | Schultz funding presentation |
need to address both NSF/NIH and other agency/foundation sources, cover OSP etc. |
Oct 7 | Grad panel-Jessie Rack, Lily Lewis, Geert Goemans, Manette Sandor | How to fund your graduate work | Panel discussion | |
Oct 14 | Mark Urban, Louise Lewis | Communicating your work: how does publishing work | Louise and Mark on publishing Guide to Peer Review (British Ecological Society) |
|
Oct 21 | Morgan Tingley | Communicating your work: talks, conferences, and networking | Getting a speaker award |
Homework: get set up to edit in eebedia or Aurora |
Oct 28 | Paul Lewis | Communicating your work: web sites | P. Lewis presentation Example files: html-examples.zip |
You should leave knowing more about how web sites work and what options you have for creating your own web site at UConn |
Nov 4 | Margaret Rubega, Dave Wagner | Broader impacts, social media, and communication outside academia | ||
Nov 11 | Eldridge Adams + ?? | Developing as a teacher | (also discuss how TA assignments work) | |
Nov 18 | Cindi Jones, Andy Bush | Work-life balance | ||
Nov 25 | THANKSGIVING BREAK | |||
Dec 2 | Grad/postdoc panel: Kerri Mocko + ?? | Lessons I learned the hard way | Panel discussion (NEED VOLUNTEERS .....) | |
Useful readings:
Some modest advice for graduate students: Steve Stearns and Ray Huey
The full exchange is on Ray Huey's page: http://faculty.washington.edu/hueyrb/prospective.php
Stephen Stearns's later reflections: http://stearnslab.yale.edu/designs-learning
Nature editorial on life outside of academia
Nature perspective on choosing alternative careers