Healthy Living for Graduate Students and Postdocs

Sally Chiu
A hectic and demanding schedule coupled with a, oftentimes, limited budget make maintaining healthful practices very difficult for graduate students and postdocs. Healthy food choices and regular exercise are often sacrificed. In addition, graduate and post-doctoral studies introduce a whole new set of stressors that can take its toll on both the body and mind.

To address the particular difficulties graduate students and postdocs may have in maintaining a healthy lifestyle, I will organize a series of three seminar classes, each focusing on a different aspect of wellness and health management. The three topics of interest include nutrition, exercise, and stress management. I will invite and work with a campus expert in the field to lead each seminar as well as produce and provide written material outlining easy health tips to follow. The project goal is to educate and inform this specific population on how to make wise choices and firm commitments to staying healthy, which will then improve the quality of life.

ResearchNet: Facilitating Graduate-Undergraduate Research Collaborations

Jeremy Davis
Undergraduates at UC Davis are at a distinct advantage in having the opportunity to work in the laboratories of the world-class research community on our campus. When students take this opportunity to participate in campus research, they become an active member of the academic community, learn more about the process of science, and develop technical skills that will assist them in finding rewarding employment upon graduation.

Furthermore, graduate students benefit from working as mentors to undergraduate researchers. When working with undergraduate researchers, graduate students gain experience in mentoring, managing a laboratory, and teaching students about the scientific method. They also receive research assistance and are able to run Òside-projectsÓ that might not otherwise get done. Finally, the entire research community benefits because introducing students to the scientific process in action brings new energy to the laboratory environment.

In order to facilitate the formation of these partnerships I will develop a set of websites, including a bulletin board that will put undergraduates and graduate students with similar interests in contact with each other. The Web site will also contain several advice pages that will assist both members of a partnership in getting the most out of their collaboration.

Communicating Research

Rebecca Fox
Presenting a poster or a talk at a scientific meeting can be an intimidating experience, particularly for new graduate students. Some graduate students may also wish to engage in public outreach and share their research with interested members of the community. Unfortunately, few departments offer programs aimed at helping graduate students learn to communicate effectively about their research.

For my project, I am organizing an informal three-seminar series entitled “Communicating Research.” Students attending the seminars will have the opportunity to receive pointers and ask questions about designing and delivering effective poster and oral presentations and being successful in public outreach. Seminar speakers will include graduate students and postdocs from a variety of disciplines who have received awards for presentations at meetings, as well as students and others with extensive public outreach experience. Additionally, if there is sufficient interest, I will schedule a session for students to practice giving presentations for upcoming meetings and receive feedback in a relaxed environment. Because hectic schedules can make it difficult for some students to attend professional development workshops, I will also either videotape the presentations or make the notes available on a web page so that all interested students can access the information.

Getting Grants: An Overview of the Proposal Process

Quinn Hart
Learning to write effective research proposals is a key to a successful faculty career, but these skills should not be limited to current faculty members only. Post-Doctoral candidates and even graduate students can get special permission to act as PIs or Co-PIs on research proposals. A motivated graduate student who helps prepare a proposal, diligently reviews it and supporting documents, and guides the proposal through the submission process can be rewarded with funding tailored to their research interests.

To provide an introduction for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, I will create an online tutorial along with workshops describing the entire proposal submission process. Some aspects on developing an effective research topic will be discussed, but the workshop will focus other aspects about the grant writing process, including; finding funding opportunities, creating budgets, intellectual property, and review process. Rather than completely describe each issue, the workshop will introduce these ideas and put them into context with the overall process of writing proposals.

The focus of this will be in terms of writing a science proposal, using NSF as an example funding agency. We will utilize NSF because of the program's excellent proposal guidelines, grant opportunities, and review process description. The NSF also has a completely on-line application process, FastLane, which will be described.

Successfully Preparing for a Qualifying Exam

Margaret Hauselt
The qualifying exam is a hallmark of most doctoral programs. It is often a very stressful and intense step of a doctoral student’s schooling. Students often feel lost and are unsure about their preparation. The level of assistance for graduate students is highly variable and often depends on the student’s graduate program or committee members. While some students are given clear instructions from their program or advisors, others may not be given as much guidance and may be unsure of how to proceed. My project creates an open workshop to guide students through the preparation for their exam. It will follow the preparation recommendations developed by Dr. Rhea Presiado and Dr. Louis Grivetti: understand the qualifying exam, know your examiners, prepare early, reduce your stress, and have an exam day plan. The workshop will provide perspectives of students who have taken the exam and professors who have administered exams.

Writing and Research Groups for Graduate Students: Getting the Support You Need for Your Work

Jennifer Jones
I am organizing workshops to teach graduate students across the disciplines how to organize and run a writing or research group. The workshops will address the benefits of writing groups, such as coping with the stress of graduate school, overcoming the isolation of academia, and graduate student retention. These are small groups, usually made up of students in similar disciplines, who meet regularly to discuss one another’s work. This work can range from seminar papers, to chapters of a dissertation, to conference presentations. This would be an excellent forum for practicing conference presentations and for developing poster presentations for conferences. I will then make myself available to meet with writing groups periodically to address their concerns with the functioning of their group or their specific writing concerns. After each workshop I will ask the participants to fill out evaluations of the presentation and make suggestions so I can adjust my approach to fit their needs. Also, each quarter I will ask members of writing groups that I meet with to evaluate how useful their group has been, the benefits of discussing their own and others’ work, how I can be more useful to their group, and how to make the group time more productive for each of the members.

Ph.D. Student to Tenure-Track Faculty: Metamorphosis or Quantum Leap

Ram Keralapura
Graduate students aspiring to be a tenure-track faculty need to focus both on completing their doctoral degree and developing the skills necessary to be a successful faculty member. Given that graduate students are usually under a lot of stress not only to meet various deadlines but also to overcome the frustration of pursuing their dissertation project for too long, it is unlikely for them to focus on developing the skill set necessary for the future. In addition, there is also a lack of emphasis on developing these skills in our graduate program curriculum. Even though one can argue that a postdoctoral scholarship can help in acquiring the necessary skills to be a faculty member, in reality, most postdoctoral scholars spend a significant portion of their time in refining their researching skills, but hardly address other issues of faculty-oriented training like teaching, administration, people management, and grant writing among several others. All these put together often results in the inevitable - faculty position aspirant graduate students or postdoctoral scholars are forced to make a quantum leap to a highly responsible and specialized position of being a tenure track faculty member.

To address these issues I intend to conduct workshops, seminars, and/or surveys with the following focus: (i) What are all the different issues that need to be addressed to ensure an easy metamorphosis of a graduate student into a successful tenure-track faculty? (ii) When should these transformations start? Will it be helpful to incorporate these into our graduate curriculum?

Microteaching

Christopher May
Microteaching is a TA training program intended to augment the many services currently offered by the Teaching Resources Center (TRC) to TAs. Microteaching was developed at Stanford in the 1960s as a tool for teacher improvement and has become popular for group/departmental TA training. As adapted for use at the TRC, microteaching involves a 10-minute presentation to one’s peers of some portion of a lecture, lab, or discussion section. Peers then play two roles. First, as mock students, they ask any questions that arise for them during the presentation as well as respond to questions from the instructor. Second, as mentors, they offer constructive feedback to the presenter. A Teaching Assistant Consultant is present to facilitate and structure the post-teaching discussion. Microteaching thus provides a relatively quick, comfortable, and effective means of getting feedback on one’s teaching style, pedagogy, and content choices. TAs both receive constructive feedback on their teaching, but also begin to develop a meta-awareness of teaching by providing feedback to others. A larger goal of this program is to introduce TAs to the services of the TRC and catalyze their further professional and pedagogical development.

Seeing Past the Present: Helping Grad Students through the First Years of a TAship

Cristina Pardo Ballester
New graduate students secure their education by accepting a fellowship package which covers full or half tuition and a monthly stipend by means of a TAship. What this means in a number of cases is that graduate students are teaching courses on their own, as the primary instructor, from their first quarter at UC Davis. Achieving a balance between attending three departmental seminars, a heavy teaching load, and family responsibilities can affect the lives of any new graduate student.

My project follows three steps. First, the assessment of graduate students across the campus through an electronic mail-based survey regarding their experiences at UC Davis based on coursework, teaching load, and other issues such as family, cultural differences and language difficulties for international students. These results will be shown in a report to address the graduate students’ problems and possible adaptations during their first two years holding a TAship at UC Davis.

Secondly, the continuation of a series of workshops, first organized by a PFTF fellow, Kristin Koster in 2003-2004, entitled “Seeing Past the Present: Helping Grad Students through the First years of a TA-ship”. Finally, in order for those new graduate students to have access to those workshops offered during the academic year 2005-2006, a live webcasting video of these workshops will be available through a link to my Web page as well as the TRC Web site.

Web site for International Scholars

Sven Schmitz
Are you an international student at UC Davis? If so, I know that you need a lot of information about the TOEFL and GRE tests, English courses, taxes and employment, fellowships, security clearances, visa information, etc. My PFTF project is to create a Web site for international students with information and links relevant to all aspects of international life at UC Davis. Furthermore, I want to encourage international students to contribute to the site. I am convinced that international students can benefit from this information database.

Assessing Resources for Graduate Student Physical and Mental Health

Alison Sheets
As a whole, graduate and postdoctoral students are driven individuals who understand that sacrifices must be made to reach their goals. Unfortunately, many times students are not fully aware that these sacrifices can result in the deterioration of their physical and mental health. Finding a way to balance graduate work and a healthy lifestyle is a challenge and students may feel guilty for setting aside time to exercise, or eat well even though they are extremely important and beneficial for long-term health and well-being. Fortunately there are services on campus that strive to help students create a healthy balance.

For my PFTF project I will survey graduate students to determine:
1) awareness of campus resources and services
2) which resources and services are utilized
3) factors that cause students to not make use of a service
4) needs that are not addressed by current programs.

I will then share these results with the Wellness Center at the ARC and will help determine methods of better serving the graduate student population.

Graduate Student Community Service Committee (GSCSC)

Brandy Wiegers
The focus of my project is to encourage graduate students to play an active role in their community through service. This project has two parts, creating the GSCSC and organizing a seminar series. The Graduate Student Community Service Committee (GSCSC) has brought together graduate students, faculty and staff dedicated to encouraging graduate students to get involved in community service by increasing awareness of the opportunities that are available to help. The committee provides opportunities for these students to contribute on many levels including providing service education and service projects for graduate students.

The main goal of the committee for the 2005-2006 school year is to create an campus wide graduate student community service project in April 2006. The seminar series will compliment the efforts of the GSCSC by educating graduate students about bringing service into their research, their teaching, and their personal lives.

For more information about the GSCSC check out our Web site:
http://pftf.ucdavis.edu/gscsc

Complex Systems Network—A Forum for Postdocs

Karoline Wiesner
The science of complex systems is a highly interdisciplinary field. Complex systems concepts originate from efforts to understand phenomena in all fields such as physics, biology, and neuroscience. Complex systems are present in the social sciences and they are even used in performance art. I am organizing a seminar series of and for postdocs researching in complex systems. The seminars are supposed to be a meeting platform for postdocs as well as faculty researching in complex systems.

Postdocs are a highly trained, specialized, and creative group of researchers. They are, however, a very disconnected group. While they are in a very creative stage of their career, they are seldom recognized as a creative resource on university campuses. This is particularly critical for an interdisciplinary field such as that of complex systems.

The seminar series is supposed to give a glimpse into many of the areas mentioned above. Their connectedness through the complex-systems approach will become clear. And it should be the basis on which researchers can connect among each other. The forum of presentation and discussion I am creating consists of a six months long seminar series. To equal parts, postdocs and faculty in complex systems active at UC Davis and neighboring campuses will compose the list of speakers. My goal is to foster a dialog between participants and speakers, between faculty and postdocs on current approaches and future prospects of this very rapidly evolving field.