A growing number of universities, students, and funding organizations are working to change biology graduate education to meet the needs of students on a wide array of career paths. But before this new education model can take hold, graduate programs first have to figure out which career-development strategies work and how to cultivate a culture that embraces the change.
Last fall, the academic career coach Jennifer Polk conducted an informal Twitter poll: How many of you, she asked her followers, received any meaningful pedagogical training during graduate school?
Replies ranged from the encouraging to the mostly dispiriting, with one doctoral candidate noting that the only training the program had offered took the form of “trial by fire.” Just 19 percent of the 2,248 respondents said they had received at least “decent” training — a number that, however unscientific, is also symptomatic.
This statistic reflects something that many of us could confirm firsthand: Teaching remains undervalued in the context of doctoral training and the profession at large. The result, by this anecdotal reckoning, is that less than one-fifth of aspiring college teachers are effectively taught how to teach.
Dear UCLA Graduate Students and Postdocs,
The UCLA Entering Mentoring Training (EMT) Program seeks to develop a mentoring ethos by providing leadership, mentorship, and diversity sensitivity training to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. This course is specifically for those who directly mentor trainees working on STEM research projects. The seminar is based on a curriculum developed by the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching titled “Entering Mentoring: A Seminar to Train a New Generation of Scientist”. This course is supported by the NIH Diversity Program Consortium.
The next offering will be this Spring, April 04 – June 13, 2018 on Wednesdays, 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Those who complete the seminar course will receive a certificate of completion. Please see the syllabus attached. [EMT Spring 2018 Syllabus]
All are welcomed to RSVP; however, priority will be given to participants currently mentoring someone and senior graduate students and postdocs.
Please RSVP by March 18th at the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/EMT2018Spring
Participation confirmation will be sent out by March 20th.
Please contact the Program Director, Dr. Diana Azurdia, at dazurdia@mednet.ucla.edu for questions.
_________________________________
Diana Azurdia, Ph.D.
Associate Director for Recruitment and Diversity, Graduate Programs in Bioscience
University of California, Los Angeles
Email: dazurdia@mednet.ucla.edu
Website: http://bioscience.ucla.edu
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