It's back! The year 2000 edition of the National Doctoral Program Survey (NDPS, survey.nagps.org), better known to Next Wave readers as the Grad School Survey, is under way. Designed as a barometer of graduate student satisfaction with the educational and professional development practices in U.S. and Canadian doctoral programs, the NDPS hopes to collect responses from 75% of all current graduate...
Your student loan is about to get 1% more expensive. That may not sound like much, but when it is compounded over the life of the loan, that single point can get awfully expensive; the increase could add $1500 to the cost of a $20,000 student loan. But all is not yet lost, you still have a few hours left to lock in your currrent interest rate and save that money for something important, like food...
RESOURCES PAGE Congratulations! You have reached the last step in your graduate career: defending your thesis. After all the hard work and years of sacrifice, the end is in sight. Your eyes can almost discern the prize. The light is shining brightly at the end of the tunnel. Scary, isn't it? But I bet the actual defense isn't the biggest thing in your mind right now. By the time my defense pulled...
Responding to concerns voiced by his advisory committee and the larger scientific community, Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has decided not to continue with plans to create a graduate school at the NIH. Although the response to Varmus's proposal was generally favorable (see "Scientists Block NIH Plan to Grant Ph.D.s"), some questioned NIH's ability to provide t...
Mad scientists are both born and made. Ambitious young scientists hoping to pursue benevolent careers could learn a thing or two about mad science from diabolical mentors: Just ask Frederick von Frankenstein (pronounced Fronk-en-STEEN). Trained to view the human body as an exquisite machine, the young grandson of the legendary flesh reanimator Victor von Frankenstein (pronounced FRANK-en-Stine) r...
FEATURE INDEX: SCIENTISTS IN COMPUTER GAMING Evin Levey recently lived through every engineer's worst nightmare. While Levey was taking a test drive across a suspension bridge he had designed and built, gale-force winds struck. The bridge began to sway dangerously, threatening to dump Levey and a few thousand tons of heavy equipment into the water below. But through it all, Levey grinned like a k...
Any graduate student who so much as mentions the word "union" in the presence of a university administrator has probably heard the argument: Unions poison the educational relationship between faculty and students. But a new study of 299 faculty members at five universities with graduate student collective bargaining agreements is casting doubt on that truism. Gordon Hewitt of Tufts University and...
I went to see a therapist while I was in graduate school. In fact, I went once a week for more than a year. I decided to start this month's column with that admission for two reasons. First, I want you to know that I practiced what I am about to preach. Second, I want to try, in some small way, to remove the stigma that still seems to be attached to seeking help when graduate school gets you down...
Money isn't everything, but Massachusetts Board of Higher Education Chancellor Stanley Koplik is betting that it is. Koplik proposes that all Massachusetts state universities offer two options to newly hired faculty: the traditional tenure track or a nontenured, multiyear contract. For those who willingly leave the tenure track, Koplik is offering a pay increase of 8%. And what does the universit...
Aristotle believed that scholars shoulder a dual burden: They must strive to understand their specific discipline and also be skilled at communicating their knowledge to the public. Otherwise, instead of enriching society, the fruits of their labor will wither like unharvested grapes. But University of Texas (UT), Austin, communication professor and associate dean Rick Cherwitz thinks the modern ...
Graduate students in the sciences have one tremendous advantage over their colleagues in the humanities: money. Once you get into grad school, you are almost assured of funding. Most of you will start as teaching assistants and then shift to a research assistantship as you progress toward completing your thesis. But although a TA or RA does provide a measure of financial security, the stipends ar...
Every year at colleges and universities across the U.S. a quarter of a million undergraduates enroll in an introductory astronomy course for nonmajors. "We are packing 'em in," says American Astronomical Society (AAS) education officer Bruce Partridge, an astronomer at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. But the success of Astro 101, as the courses are generically called, has made profe...
FEATURE INDEX: SCIENTISTS IN COMPUTER GAMING How would you like to spend your professional life doing nothing but playing computer games? Does building empires, slaughtering trolls with a broadsword, and winning aerial dogfights with the Red Baron in the Berlin skies appeal to you? And what if I threw in job security, a high salary with stock options, and regular hours? If these are the things th...
Today Geoff Davis, creator of PhDs.org, and Peter Fiske, motivational speaker and columnist for Science's Next Wave, announced that they will not be ranking graduate departments based on the anonymous online survey that they conducted from 25 April to 8 July 1999. One of the primary goals of the survey was to rank graduate school departments based on student satisfaction. And although the America...
Aging tenured professors often describe graduate school in terms reserved for first loves and walks in the Paris moonlight. They were happy, free to explore, intellectually stimulated, and their productivity soared unfettered by the burdens of administration and teaching. Lacking the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, grad students tell a rather different story. They know that even at its best, gr...
S&T RESOURCES All your life--or at least for the past few years--you've wanted to be a research scientist. You took the classes and passed the exams, and now the time has finally come to throw yourself into your first big research project. Hopefully, the results will form the foundation of your thesis and--sometime soon--earn you the coveted title of Doctor of Philosophy. ... So why the nagging d...
Graduate students are reacting with dismay to a decision by the organizers of the Graduate School Survey * not to distribute rankings of student satisfaction in graduate departments across the country. "The promise to release scores specific to the departments was THE selling point of the survey," says University of California, Berkeley, chemistry grad student Elisa Cooper. "It is a terrible betr...
What resources are available to students looking to survive and thrive as they plow through graduate school in the sciences? Here, I'll list the books, Web sites, and Next Wave articles that I come across as I write each Survive and Thrive column. Speaking of which, please check back here often...we'll be updating the resources page each time Next Wave publishes a Survive and Thrive column! BOOKS...
John Hanson was first introduced to geographic information systems (GIS) while studying for a degree in environmental science and education at the University of Redlands in Southern California. He was so intrigued by the powerful map-making software that he went out, sought, and landed a volunteer job as a GIS analyst intern for the city of Ontario, California. Three months later, it turned into ...
Choosing an advisor is like choosing a spouse, and I mean "spouse" in all its myriad modern interpretations. Certainly, the consequences of your selection will be similar: The perfect advisor or spouse will forever be a source of joy in the good times and solace in the bad. But make the wrong choice and you will inevitably--like that delicious stud-muffin Meatloaf--find yourself praying for the e...
