Please sign up to mentor a student in applying for grad school and for fellowships, to help build a more inclusive environment in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. #eebMentorMatch
https://smallpondscience.com/2020/07/13/sign-up-now-for-eeb-mentor-match-2020/
My head spins when I see science opportunities designed to increase the diversity of applicants to graduate STEM programs, they are designed to exclude students who just graduated. I think this f...
https://smallpondscience.com/2020/01/29/hanging-newly-graduated-students-out-to-dry/
Metaphorically, that is. What can you do to increase the representation of minoritized people in your department and in your lab? Well, the big answer to the question is that anything worthwhile ...
https://smallpondscience.com/2019/10/18/look-in-your-own-backyard/
Authorship is weird. As an instrument to attribute of credit, it’s far too coarse whenever the number of authors is greater than one. Authorship is a slippery concept, because you can’t rea...
https://smallpondscience.com/2019/09/15/on-unearned-authorship-by-advisors-of-graduate-students/
For most grad students in the sciences, their doctoral advisor has an extraordinary level of power over their professional and personal life. This is long overdue for an overhaul. No single perso...
https://smallpondscience.com/2019/05/21/we-need-distributed-power-structures-in-grad-school/
I had a great time in grad school. I absolutely loved it. But I’m quick(er than some) to recognize that my experience can’t be generalized. If you listen to enough grad students, you’ll hea...
https://smallpondscience.com/2019/03/25/preventing-abuses-of-power-in-grad-school/
Dropping the GRE is not enough, not even close. Sure, pat yourself on the back for dropping the GRE -- briefly -- and then roll up your sleeves.
https://smallpondscience.com/2019/03/08/what-are-the-reasons-we-have-for-dropping-the-gre/
For all the concern about pipeline problems, we seem to be fond of creating bottlenecks that filter out the people we’re trying to recruit. Let’s take a quick look at how people get into grad...
https://smallpondscience.com/2019/02/06/responding-or-not-to-prospective-students/
When a department is recruiting grad students, what should you do and not do on a recruitment weekend?
https://smallpondscience.com/2018/01/16/what-a-good-recruitment-weekend-looks-like/
With the internet currently atwitter about a new paper in the upstart journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, I have a couple specific thoughts that I’d like to share that go beyond whatever ch...
https://smallpondscience.com/2017/11/14/what-are-the-top-100-must-read-papers-in-ecology/
The moment after students graduate, many resources and opportunities become unavailable. This is a problem. I can classify the undergraduates who are currently affiliated with my lab into two cat...
https://smallpondscience.com/2017/11/06/deserting-students-after-graduation/
I and my family are now up in Oregon to experience the total solar eclipse. Which will be amazing. This trip wasn’t hard to plan, but only because we were ready many moons ahead of time. I ask...
https://smallpondscience.com/2017/08/21/deadline-awareness-for-everybody/
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...
https://smallpondscience.com/2017/06/12/how-bad-is-the-loss-of-nsf-dissertation-improvement-grants/
As long as we compare URM and first-generation students with metrics that have been used to evaluate students who have been handed more advantages in life, then we are always going to perpetuate ...
https://smallpondscience.com/2017/05/01/the-deficit-model-of-stem-recruitment/
The bar for minority students at regional state universities is absurdly higher than the bar for white students attending universities with impressive reputations. This is caused by an amalgam of...
https://smallpondscience.com/2016/10/10/student-experiences-of-bias-in-graduate-admissions/
The last couple weeks have posed a challenge, as several people have contacted me (mostly out of the blue), asking me for ideas about specific steps they can take to improve the recruitment of ...
https://smallpondscience.com/2016/09/05/recruiting-underrepresented-minority-students/
I’m about to make some statements that I think should be obvious. In fact, everything I say in this post about travel awards will probably be obvious, but I feel moved to write about it since t...
Shouldn't undergrads get NSF graduate fellowships *before* grad school decisions are made?
The US National Science Foundation has changed a rule for their Graduate Fellowships. As of next year, grad students can only make one attempt at landing a graduate fellowship, which is intended...
https://smallpondscience.com/2016/03/08/nsf-makes-its-graduate-fellowships-more-accessible/
A couple weeks ago, I emphasized that most PhD advisors are really good. In a haphazardly conducted poll, one in four people reported their PhD advisor that was not caring or helpful. Crappy adv...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/12/07/what-to-do-you-have-a-bad-phd-advisor-in-grad-school/
I just returned from a tremendous meeting of the Entomological Society of America. I experienced a lot of moving moments. I attended my first EntSoc meeting twenty years ago, as an early grad stu...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/11/24/a-lot-of-scientists-are-kind-careful-and-caring/
Recently I attended the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of Canada, which this year was held jointly with the Société d’entomologie du Québec, in Montréal. While chatting with a...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/11/23/costs-and-benefits-of-attending-conferences-as-a-student/
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 ...
The Ecological Society of America has wonderful program called SEEDS, which is designed to support and mentor underrepresented undergraduates who are pursuing careers in academic ecology*. Let’...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/09/08/faculty-research-is-like-a-potted-plant/
How many undergrads in your department want to go to grad school? Do all of them know what grad school is about? Are there any students who might benefit greatly from grad school but aren’t eve...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/08/10/do-all-of-your-undergrads-know-what-grad-school-is/
Guest post by Rosie Burdon, a PhD student at Uppsala University in Amy Parachnowitsch’s lab. She is studying interactions between Penstemon digitalis and its pollinator Bombus impatiens in east...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/06/16/working-away-from-work-and-making-work-home/
Chatting with people at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica, the topic from a recent post came up: that journals have cut back on “accept with revisions” decisions. There was a little ...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/06/04/the-acceptances-that-werent-acceptances/
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...
Students who did their undergraduate work at elite universities are dominating access to federally funded graduate fellowships in the sciences. I pointed out this obvious fact at the beginning o...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/04/22/how-to-promote-inclusivity-in-graduate-fellowships/
I’ll be soon be sharing specific ideas about what can be done about the disadvantages experienced by talented students who attend non-prestigious undergraduate institutions. But first, I though...
I had a conversation a couple months ago about the fact that I’m a bit wary of taking Straight-A students into my lab as research students. Here’s an explanation. A couple weeks ago, I saw a...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/02/26/on-being-wary-of-bringing-straight-a-students-into-the-lab/
At one point I thought about writing a post about the difficulties that academia wreaks on friendships. All that moving about means picking up, making new friends and leaving behind the old. It i...
https://smallpondscience.com/2015/02/24/academia-and-friendships/
A couple of recent conversations have got me thinking about the culture of academia and grad school training. The first conversation relates more to the general culture of academia. The complaint...
https://smallpondscience.com/2014/09/23/graduate-training-missed-opportunities-and-the-good-ol-days/
I’m an Associate Professor at a regional state university. How did I get here? What choices did I make that led me in this direction? This month, a bunch of folks are telling their post-PhD st...
https://smallpondscience.com/2014/05/26/one-persons-story-about-post-phd-employment/
I have no clear answer and I had my daughter just after finishing my fourth year… A post on having kids in grad school has been on my roster basically since I started blogging. I sometimes get ...
https://smallpondscience.com/2014/05/08/is-grad-school-a-good-time-to-have-a-baby/
The fitness of organisms is measured by their reproduction. Successful scientists make more scientists. Successful professors make more professors, so the story goes. With some folks, honoring a...
https://smallpondscience.com/2014/05/07/dont-go-to-grad-school-and-other-fairy-tales/
The weekend was beautiful and I spent a good portion of it in the backyard digging up grass. The plan is to have a small raised garden for vegetables, nothing too extensive but enough to plant a ...
One of the great things about being on a small campus is that I have lots of opportunities to interact with colleagues in different departments and colleges. One positive side effect of being suc...
https://smallpondscience.com/2014/03/10/differences-between-the-sciences-and-the-humanities/
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...
https://smallpondscience.com/2014/03/05/thoughts-on-the-phd-defence/
In the United States, PhD students defend their thesis with a public presentation. After this presentation (or sometimes, on another day), the student has a private session with the dissertation ...
https://smallpondscience.com/2014/02/26/public-thesis-defenses-are-illegal-in-the-usa/
If you’ve only just started grad school, or if you’re getting ready to finish, there are a ton of great reasons to take the OTS course this summer. The Organization for Tropical Studies cours...
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 ab...
There are two inspirations for my post. First, a conversation over at Tenure She Wrote is really worth reading. Sarcozona started it up with a great post on poverty in the ivory tower and Acclima...
This is a guest post by Lirael. I’m a PhD student in computer science at a university where most of the undergrads come from pretty affluent, educationally privileged backgrounds (as I did myse...
https://smallpondscience.com/2013/11/04/inequality-in-computer-science-curricula/
Like many grad students in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, I my made a living through grad school as a TA. One semester, there were open positions in the Human Anatomy cadaver lab. I was foolis...
Now’s the time of year when prospective grad students need to get serious about applying to graduate programs. Students are probably relying on their professors to guide them through the proces...
https://smallpondscience.com/2013/09/10/advising-undergraduates-on-applications-for-grad-school/
Isn’t it a bummer when your research is founded on an invalid premise? This can’t be a good moment for a researcher whose work was featured in Science online. This article would be just silly...
https://smallpondscience.com/2013/09/05/so-teaching-is-for-people-who-have-imposter-syndrome/
I loved grad school. I have serious nostalgia for grad school. If I could be a grad student forever, that would rock. In fact, my job as a faculty member is a lot like being a grad student. I do ...
https://smallpondscience.com/2013/05/03/getting-past-the-comic-stereotype/
If you have undergraduates who are thinking about doing a Ph.D., they may be seeking advice about how, or whether, to do an M.S. first. I’m in a field in which the M.S. is entirely optional. So...
https://smallpondscience.com/2013/04/24/dispensing-advice-on-whether-to-do-an-ms-degree/