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Taking a chance on the pre-med

What criteria do you have for bringing in premeds to do research in your lab? There are so many reasons to keep away from premeds. For starters, premeds are more prone to: want research “experience”...

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Undergraduate first authorship?

When undergraduates are conducting their own research projects in your lab, should first authorship be one of the main goals of mentorship? This isn’t common, but it happens. (I’ve met several such...

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Training vs. productivity. What’s your currency?

In a big lab, research gets done through the training of grad students and postdocs. The lab simultaneously fulfills its research mission and meets the “broader effect” agenda of developing the...

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Mentorship = Training?

When I was an undergraduate in the early ’90s, I didn’t do much research. But when the students in my midst were doing research, they weren’t being “mentored.” They were getting “research training” or...

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Drifting towards deadwood, or not: learning to use R (updated)

Update 15 May 2013: If you’re a newbie to R and want to know where to start, the comments on this post are now replete with (what I surmise to be) wonderful suggestions. Of course learning in the...

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A method to develop scientists from underrepresented groups: Research Recruits

The United States needs to develop more scientists from underrepresented groups. This post describes an approach I’ve had developed that has helped me do this more effectively. The United States has...

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Broader impacts ≠ reaching underrepresented groups

When the National Science Foundation introduced the required “Broader Impacts” criterion, it took more than a little bit of explaining at the outset. Several years later, most of us understand what a...

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Model systems don’t work at teaching universities

Many research strategies, developed inside large research institutions, don’t work well in small teaching-centered institutions. One of these strategies, I suggest, is the use of a biological model...

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How a research institution can mentor undergrads better than an undergraduate...

More doctoral students emerge from small liberal arts colleges than from the undergraduate populace of research institutions. This is a point of pride held by liberal arts colleges, that market...

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Teaching Tuesday: Incorporating primary literature into courses

As academics, we spend a lot of time reading primary literature (although we often feel it is not enough). It is a real skill to learn to decipher how journal articles are written and how to read them...

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Why I don’t take high school students into my lab

Once in a while, I am approached about taking on a high school student over the summer. I always say no, for the same reason that I turn away most premeds: they want research “experience.” Bungee...

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Does being a “Jack-of-all-Trades” impede or facilitate an early-stage...

This is a guest post by Andrea Kirkwood. She is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Science at UOIT, and you can follow on twitter at @KirkwoodLab Jack-of-all-Trades, Master of Nothing Recently a...

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Natural history is important, but not perceived as an academic job skill

This post is a reflection on a thoughtful post by Jeremy Fox, over on Dynamic Ecology. It encouraged me (and a lot of others, as you see in the comments) to think critically about the laments about the...

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Thoughts on the PhD defence

Last Friday there was a PhD defence in our department and Terry’s post about open defences in the USA got me thinking about the different cultures surrounding PhD defences. The first thing that came to...

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Academic Hazing

A recent conversation* on twitter made me think about academic customs. The conversation centered on PhD comprehensive exams (PhD candidacy in the US system that happens about halfway through the PhD)...

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Why aren’t grad students taught how to teach?

The biology departments at the university I attended for my MSc and the one I just started at for my PhD both have courses for new grad students that are meant to be an introduction to the skills they...

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There are lots of opportunities for grad students to learn how to teach

In my last post I complained that grad students don’t generally get taught how to teach in grad school, despite the fact that they are (arguably) there to be trained for a career that requires them to...

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Useful science communication resources

Inspired by my own endeavours in science communication and an informal talk I gave to my department, I started to think about offering a course. There isn’t anything like that for PhD students so I...

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How bad is the loss of NSF dissertation improvement grants?

Last week, NSF announced they have stopped awarding DDIGs – the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants in the divisions of Environmental Biology and Integrative Organismal Systems. How bad is this...

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Non-mandatory sexual harassment training?

I’d like to think I’m not a clueless ignoramus when it comes to navigating university bureaucracy, but sometimes evidence gets in the way. Let me attempt to recreate some dialogue from our Academic...

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Planning lab “boot camps” for after the pandemic

image by Figueiredo My department just had a great idea: We’re planning “boot camps” to train students with the basic lab skills that they missed out on during the pandemic. The pandemic isn’t over...

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