Achievement

We offered a course, Academic Survivorship, where teams of students select topics critical to any academic career, and present their topics to other students and three IGERT professors. Faculty directly address misconceptions and add advice, providing knowledge often presumed, but not received. Topics include grant writing, giving talks, preparing job applications and for interviews, advising graduate students, reviewing manuscripts and proposals, service activities, managing time, working at teaching colleges vs. research universities, alternative careers, and focusing on women’s and minority issues. As one trainee expressed, “The diversity of views provided by these faculty members in both biology and engineering on ‘essential’ academic topics like grant-writing, journal publications, tenure, and education was invaluable to my professional development as a graduate student, and provided a great deal of insight into my potential future as a professor in an interdisciplinary field.”