All lab members are expected to make satisfactory progress in two main areas:
- Their degree or program of study.
- The deliverables and objectives of their assistantship.
Members of the lab are expected to work a minimum of 20 hours a week towards their degree or program of study, including course work, examinations, qualifications, and progress on their thesis research and professional publications; and to work contribute 20 hours a week towards the deliverables and objectives of their assistantship (if applicable). Graduate school is a full time job, and requires constant progress and a good work ethic to be successful. Ideally your work will overlap between your assistantship and program of study, but this is not always the case. When overlap does occur you should expect to contribute a full 40 hours a week towards this joint work.
Satisfactory progress towards both of these two main areas will be evaluated three times yearly with your advisor in the laboratory, using a progress of trimester planning and evaluation. At the beginning of each trimester (corresponding to the Fall, Spring, and first Summer sessions of the academic year) you will meet with your advisor and complete a trimester plan using the following template. If you have been with the lab for more than one trimester, you will also review progress and goals from the last trimester, and you will be evaluated by the lab PI, Dr. Eric Rozier, who will give you a rating of Satisfactory Progress, Insufficient Progress, or Unsatisfactory Progress. A rating of Satisfactory indicates your performance has met or exceeded expectations. Insufficient indicates and acknowledges that some progress was made, but insufficient to maintain the proposed plan of study, or for the objectives of the assistantship. Two trimesters with insufficient progress is grounds for dismissal at the discretion of the PI. In the case of insufficient progress the next trimester plan should include concrete objectives and deliverables to not only continue progress, but remediate insufficient progress. Unsatisfactory ratings indicate that progress was not evident, and is grounds for immediate dismissal.
In order to help students continue to make progress, and to help inform them of potential insufficient or unsatisfactory progress in advance of the trimester review, each student will have a weekly meeting with PI Dr. Eric Rozier. During this meeting discussion will be about progress over the prior week, road blocks to progress, questions, and schedules.
Before meeting all students are required to fill out and send a Weekly Progress Report. Failure to send this report at least 24 hours in advance of the scheduled weekly meeting will lead to the cancelation of the meeting. These meetings are important for your progress, and expected on a weekly basis. If the PI is unavailable during a given week, the meeting will be rescheduled as appropriate, but the weekly report is still expected by the original due date. If you need to reschedule a meeting due to a conflict, you should do so at the earliest possible date. Missing two or more meetings during a semester without prior approval can constitute Unsatisfactory Progress.
Satisfactory progress towards your degree or program of study is covered primarily COM S Graduate Student Handbook. Additional expectations from the lab include your contribution towards publication goals of the laboratory as follows:
- First year students are expected to be a contributor and co-author on at least one major publication of the laboratory, though generally not as a primary author. It is understood that students will still be learning at this stage and will not be domain experts, however they are expected to contribute to development, and data analysis tasks.
- Second year students are expected to be a contributor and co-author on one, or two major publications of the laboratory and in general are expected to be primary author on at least one publication during the year. Second year students are expected to be mature members of the lab with a developing research agenda and the ability to make large contributions towards lab research goals.
- Third year students are expected to be a contributor and co-author on at least two major publications of the laboratory and are expected to be a primary author on at least one of these publications. Third year students are senior members of the lab who have advanced to candidacy, and are expected to make major contributions towards lab research goals.
- Fourth year students, and beyond, are expected to be a contributor and co-author on at least two major publications of the laboratory, and are expected to lead the efforts on at least one of these publications. Students at this stage of their career are expected to have general and subject-area mastery and be mature junior colleagues.
While these expectations are applicable in general, rejections do happen when submitting. So long as progress is being made, and you are learning, improving, and producing quality work worthy of submission to the scientific community hard numeric requirements for publications need not be met every year, but should represent an average output over your career.
As the title implies, graduate teaching assistants (TAs) share the faculty’s responsibility for undergraduate teaching. TAs are not premitted to teach graduate-level courses. Responsibilities may include intruction, grading, course development and proctoring exams. The TA’s teaching load will necessarily vary from program to program, but should be consistent with the teaching load carried by faculty in the department. Since a teaching assistantship is an apprentice position in teaching, the TA should expect careful guidance from the department. This guidance may take the form of seminars, conferences, observations by experienced teachers, or other methods designed to develop teaching skills. The official university guideline for time spent should be viewed as maximal for a teaching assistantship.
Responsibilities may include instruction, grading, course development, and proctoring exams.
These university-wide services help to make the job of new TAs easier and more effective:
- Teaching and cross-cultural workshops are organized by the Graduate College, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and the Graduate and Professional Student Senate to provide general training for new TAs during the week before fall semester begins.
- A Teaching Assistant Handbook, with university policies and procedures, teaching tips, and other information related to TA assignments, is distributed to all TAs by the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching
Graduate research assistants (RAs) conduct research that directly contributes to the objectives and deliverables of an externally or internally funded grant or project in the laboratory. You will include relevant objectives, deliverables, and due dates in your trimester plan and weekly reports to assure sufficient progress which may include data collection, data cleaning, literature surveys, code development, testing, deployment, documentation, presentations, or other concrete deliverables as needed by the project. Because of the widely varying demands of research duties, and because most research projects become part of a student’s thesis or dissertation, it is nearly impossible to set a specific workweek. The official university guideline for time spent should be viewed as minimal for a research assistantship.