Getting an IGERT begins with getting your Group Together “Any program we support must sacrifice.” Peter Rabideau Yes, but if your university has any program.
Dec 28, 2015
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Getting an IGERT begins with getting your Group Together
“Any program we support must sacrifice.”
Peter Rabideau
Yes, but if your university has any program development funds, tell the potentates in charge what you will do for them.
Organization is free!
A group that gets along well together is intrinsically valuable.
Students are better beggars than faculty.
LSU’s Macromolecular Studies Group was 15 years old when IGERT was written.
Try to get on a pre-proposal panel. See if someone else from your team can get on a full proposal panel.
Jelinski: “Good, now you will see all the annoying things people do so you will know how to avoid them when you write your own proposal.”
Initial Impressions• Huh? Training? Integrative? • Another big science program
to suck money away from the little guy.
• More $$$ for those fat cats at Northwestern, UCLA & MIT.
• More social engineering.• Wow! Only 8% indirect!
L U
Increased time for teaching researchEncourage high-risk researchAmeliorate risk by working in teamsKeep “small science” flavor in a big impact projectIncrease exposure of our programProvide a gentler learning curve for the difficult
subjects American students avoid…thus tapping a huge pool of talent (a.k.a. bait and switch, but with a purpose)
Fun
Beginning to see the IGERT possibilities
Does Grad School Need Change?
“I don’t want to be like you.”
A person (and period)
worth considering.
Mission-oriented research.
Wilmer Miller
25 years later
1970’s
“What’s an allen wrench?”
Apprentice-Artisan-Craftsperson Ladder
New apprenticeOld craftsperson
General exam
Community serviceMinigrants
Finishing school, or “predoc”
New craftsperson
Artisan
Other Central Ideas, Some learned Post-Award
Faculty as active scientists. Better than a bootstrap. State schools often have a big advantage in
IGERT! Curiosity-driven science is OK! Vector cross products of capabilities: what
new direction will the team go into that faculty participants and their groups could not do separately? The students become the agent (arrow) of that vector cross product.
Research is a fun life, even for professors.Creativity development.Formative & summative evaluation.
Draw on your own experience…but consider carefully other organizations that train people well. Afterall, really outlandish proposals place living students at risk.
2. New Graduate Educational Model
Well….we barely have one. Encouraging anything macromolecular worked for first round of funding, but may not be good enough for a renewal.
1. Scientific Focus
In summary, IGERT’s Must Have:
3. Evaluation & Dissemination
Getting studentsLaunching StudentsGetting professors to changeDevising solutions to idiotic regulationsWriting nastygrams and love letters to administrationManaging 13 accountsHosting visitorsA larger role in university and state affairsCreating Interdisciplinary TechnologyStepping aside gracefully
Operating an IGERT
Recruiting: Three Initial Sources of Students
3. The occasional new and fabulous applicants from peer or better institutions—these will often leave you for Florida, UCLA, etc.
1. New arrivals to your department
2. Summer interns who maybe are or maybe
are not interested—no strings attached. No summer intern program?Write an REU site proposal!
4. A lot of first-generation college students tend not to go so very far from home. You can get these, but …
Graduate student recruiters with REU
student at undergraduate fair
Rent Booth at National Meetings
All these help, but the most important thing is……
More about Recruiting
Win National Football Championship
Feeder Schools: Better Sources of StudentsCourtesy of our Advisory Panel
(copying the recruiting experts at USM)
Info
Minigrants work (sometimes)Subject OutcomeGrant-writing workshop “PolyCommunity” non-profit corporation???
Langmuir imprinting Supports NSF-CAREER grantee in new direction
Preliminary data for new grant at Dupont/Univ. of Delaware
Grant submitted
Summer at NRL Student quit graduate school !!!
Experimental flow test apparatus
Simulation expert built apparatus with own hands
Set of tools like that at SAXS line
Real tools in that lab
Manifold for organic synthesis Badly needed manifold for organic reactions in a lab where synthesis equipment was dated
SAXS at Tsukuba 2 students to Tsukuba, Japan
Travel to NIST for SANS Students learn contrast matching—new capabilities for that research. Survive the drive home after snowstorm.
Build machine not commercially available.
Still under consideration—likely will require cost sharing plus teaching/outreach component.
Virtual Infrastructure is Better than None at All
Interdisciplinary Technology Example: Database-driven
Student Tracker
To-die-for IT Example: Internet Scheduler
Web Seminar Sign-up With Negotiation & Adjustable Talk
LengthDay Date
Speaker (Enter your
Name: First & Last
Names)
Research Group
Type of Seminar
Title or Subject
Michael Baylis Russo CT
TBA
changde Zhang Daly CT
TBA
Friday 2/20/2004
Elena Loizou
Schmidt CT TBA
Erick Soto Cantu
Russo CT TBA
Jianhong Russo CT TBA
Friday 2/27/2004
Derek Dorman Russo CT
Lipids and Dendrimers
Friday 3/5/2004 Hyuk Yu Russo FT Polymer Scaling
Current Trends at LSU1. Enfranchisement: involve young faculty more deeply.2. Dissemination begins at home: developing other LSU
IGERT’s3. Strategy IS execution. 4. Student-led IGERT. 5. Cohort teaching. 6. Interdisciplinary Technology
– Computer tools (some progress)– LSU administrative infrastructure (well…)– Staff support (well…)
6. Economic development.7. Planning renewal with sharper scientific focus (with
someone else as PI, because dissemination begins at home).
IGERT Fellows—the next generation of IGERT PI’s—practice running the show…in consultation with “old” people. Leaders
earn some special opportunities.
No, not West Point. West Point is for Weenies.
Impressions
How it sometimes
seems students
want us to teach them.
Leuven, Belgium
GETncm/justsaycust-recrate-itemcommunittg/stores/dtg/stores/d-favorite-listruejust-say-no
What they get from us instead
1. “Well, I never thought I’d see a professor weigh something out.”
2. Influenza minithesis, synthetic polymer thesis.
3. Quitting graduate school with MS!
Mechanical Engineer and High School Science Fair Judge…in Chemistry
1. Scope on a Rope school demos….now going beyond that.
2. With a teammate, spent a 2 hours trying to load tiny cell with high-surface tension fluid. A craftsperson showed her how in 5 minutes.
Science & Technology in Service to the Community http://macro.lsu.edu/stsc
STSC class. Teamwork meets its limits.
Problem 4. A few weeks ago, Professor George Newkome of the University of Akron lectured on self-assembling hexaruthenium terpyridyl clusters. A sample molecule appears below:
Shortly after his return to Akron, Dr. Newkome sent a related sample that we took to Laboratorio Nacional Luz Sincotron (LNLS) in Campinas, Brazil, where small angle X-ray measurements were made. You can download a typical SAXS data file at:
Does the presence of Ruthenium aid or interfere with SAXS? Guesstimate the size of the molecule from the drawing above, using what you
know about C-C bonds, the diameter of benzene rings, etc. Analyze the SAXS data by the method of Guinier to obtain the radius of gyration,
Rg. There are 3 columns of numbers: q in inverse Angstroms, intensity I, and uncertainty in I. For the present purpose, you can ignore the uncertainty.
How does the Rg value compare to the "ring" diameter for this self assembly? Would you expect Rg from SANS to be the same, larger or smaller? Estimate the translational diffusion coefficient of the molecule. Do you think the real translational diffusion coefficient will be larger or smaller
than your estimate? Estimate the rotational diffusion coefficient of the molecule. Would it be possible to measure Drot by polarized (as opposed to depolarized)
light scattering? Would it make sense to do zero angle depolarized dynamic light scattering on the
molecule? These data on a novel synthetic material are less than one week old so this problem provides, just in time for summer, a natural transition to real research.
Integrative Training
•Visitor’s seminar•Collaboration established•SAXS trip to Brazil•Analyze data for team exam•All in one month
Macromolecular Systems II, Homework #3 (shortened) Our group and some others here are getting into DOSY and Prof. Butler wants a friendly CONTIN, like our ANSCAN. Some translation is needed, but of course the two programs are totally unconnected. Butler's program is on a Mac (what else?) and gives output that looks like this: PS2150_500_31_2 7.2122 ppm Polystyrene containing MW standards of 500 and 2150 298 K 1.00000000E-03 % little delta (seconds) 1.00000000E-01 % big delta (seconds) g(gauss/cm) q^2(big_delta - little_delta/3) expt_signal 6.65000000E-01 4.40750917E-02 1.00000000E+02 1.66200000E+00 2.75303652E-01 9.88369747E+01 2.65900000E+00 7.04671340E-01 9.57348015E+01 3.65500000E+00 1.33144949E+00 9.25603053E+01 4.65200000E+00 2.15689670E+00 8.80876912E+01
(etc. you can download the whole file later) Write a limber, easy-to-use program (a high school student should be able to use it) that converts Butler's DOSY output to ANSCAN input.
Some header information (7 lines) Then: row after row of G (gauss/cm) Something y(x)
Integrative Training: Semester-long programming assignment for inter-group
research
Turn loose!
“If this is true, he is indeed the greatest of men.”
King George, on hearing that Washington had voluntarily stepped down from his position as Commander in Chief at the end of the War of Independence.
George III
I is for Integrative• Research, ethics and high standards can be taught by
example when faculty are still research-active. • Research finds its way quickly to the classroom.• Seminars & visitors that play off class, lab and
research are integrated with the evaluation/dissemination/recruiting efforts.
• Global experience that enhances E, R & T• Interdisciplinary = vector cross products of research• Infrastructure for interdisciplinary• Students as teacher/researchers/leaders/inventors• Teamwork• Students learn by teaching (buzzphrase for this is
cohort teaching)• The program itself is an experiment: it integrates
physical science with social science. • Students gain (something like) business skills by
running their own IGERT. • Dissemination & evaluation begin at home.
T is for Troubles• Teams are HARD in academia. Try to learn from
pros in industry. • Students can fool you; some are just in it for
money.• Faculty can fool you; some are just in it for
money. • IGERT’s can be perceived as an elite, protected
group by students with just as much talent but not IGERT-eligible. Only solution: IGERT students must excel.
• Two-year funding limit. • Faculty motivation. • Assistant professor problem: can they afford
interdisciplinary activity? • Change hundreds of years of academic tradition
in a five-year time span?
What I meant to say
• The most fun I have had as professor.
• Flexible $$$ for an important experiment.
• Revolutionary or weird? Neither!
• Better? Maybe.
• Resonates with students.
• Important.We are happy to provide copies of the LSU pre-proposal, full proposal, reviewer comments, this presentation, etc. …But don’t blame us when it doesn’t work!
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