Documentation:CTLT Resources/New Faculty Faculty Graduate Student Night

Faculty-Graduate Student Night

Jointly sponsored by the CTLT Faculty Mentoring Program and FoGS, the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

At the Faculty/Graduate Student Night, the following questions led to animated discussions. The goal of the evening was to enhance communications between Graduate Students, Post-Doctoral Fellows, and Supervisors.

SOME QUESTIONS – to ask your supervisor if you are a graduate student

What kinds of post-docs or other opportunities have your graduate students traditionally had?
Will I be the one to present my work at meetings and conferences? If not now, when?
How will you support my professional development in areas other than the laboratory work itself? i.e. will I get the chance to manage collaborations and develop projects?

The above questions were suggested by Cheryl Wellington, PDF, CMMT (Medical Genetics) for Faculty/Grad Student Pub Night, March 25, 1999.

For what expenses will you take responsibility – office supplies, travel to conferences?
For what expenses am I responsible?
With regard to authorship on publications, is your name always on the publication? How is order determined?
How will you use my data at conferences, in publications?

SOME QUESTIONS – to ask your graduate student if you are a supervisor

Goal: to elucidate the self-motivation, problem solving, and communication skills of the incoming person

Ask open-ended questions, such as: Describe the way you would prefer to handle submitting a paper. Tell me what responsibilities you would like to have and how you would manage these …

These kinds of questions tell you a lot about the person. Their skills can be trained, but their integrity and viewpoint (optimist, pessimist, problem solver, wallower, self-confident or self-doubting) are pretty fixed.

I think it is more important for a good fit between the philosophy of the supervisor/supervisee than any other factor, at least at the beginning.

The above is adapted from comments made by Cheryl Wellington, PDF, CMMT (Medical Genetics) for Faculty/Graduate Student Pub Night, 1999

SOME QUESTIONS – to ask your supervisor if you are a post-doc

What kinds of permanent positions have your previous post-docs held? Academia, industry, or something new?
Will I be permitted to take *reagents, projects, or lines of research that are developed within my stay here with me as I begin an independent career?
Will I be expected to contribute to grant writing and reviewing of papers? If so, how will my contribution be acknowledged?

The above questions were suggested by Cheryl Wellington, PDF, CMMT (Medical Genetics) for Faculty/Grad Student Pub Night, March 25, 1999.

Reagents can be recombinant DNA materials, or intellectual property such as knowledge on how to synthesize a particular chemical compound (and the compound itself!) etc.