Achievement

We successfully integrated MS students into our IGERT this year as Associates, which had many benefits including 1) the PhD students had a greater opportunity to serve in a leadership capacity, 2) the PhD students who were younger and less experienced had more "colleagues" at their level, 3) increased diversity of research interests, cultural backgrounds, and educational backgrounds, 4) greater exposure to nonacademic career interests. Based on our positive experience integrating these interdisciplinary MS and PhD programs, we recommend that other IGERTs explore ways to programmatically include MS opportunities.