Eigen

Will this be free, or are they charging? There are a ton of great resources out there for teaching development that are free, but nothing substituted for time in the classroom. Spending 12 credits of time seems like a lot relative to doing some workshops and online classes (check CIRTL), and then teaching some.

This is from last year, so I doubt the OP will be freezing- last winter was pretty mild! Also, I doubt someone would fly into DSM if they're going to Iowa City, when the Cedar Rapids airport is right there, and not usually much more expensive to fly into. Des Moines and Iowa City/Cedar Rapids are about the same size, with pretty similar variety in available stuff to do, in my experience.

Taking easy classes to boost GPA is a horrible idea in grad school. It's a waste of your time and effort. Take fewer classes, and then just don't worry about the GPA much. Taking professors because they're easy (rather than because they'll be good, knowledgable faculty who can be future colleagues) isn't a good thing. Taking electives that aren't in line with your research interests is just a waste of your time and effort, even if they're easy.

Grad school is a whole different ballgame than undergrad and the transition can be rough. Especially if you're changing programs! Going into synthetic organic with just sophomore level OChem background would be rough. Keep up with the therapy, realize that imposter syndrome is very normal, and focus on where you are now. Grad school is all about he research- classes are just something you do at the start and have to get through. Don't let bad coursework early stop you from doing well where you are now! Several of my colleagues (who are now faculty) were on and off academic probation all through grad school. They didn't let it shake them, focused on the work, and did fine.

The start of the school year you applied for? Generally, rejections fall into two categories: early rejections that mean they wouldn't consider you as a candidate, and late rejections that mean you weren't competitive with the rest- but they would consider you if space opens up. The latter category can go on to the start of school in the fall. Some in this latter category just push the task off until summer when there's more time. There are also schools from which you will hear nothing ever, just like jobs.

The other good approach I see is a sliding scale based on event size that delineates profit vs. non-profit. This lets you have base prices that scale for, say, the 4000 person gig and the 50 person gig. It also lets you charge a non-profit differently than, say, a company retreat. I agree with TakeruK that I wouldn't advertise a price- I'd work out what you feel comfortable with and then have that on hand. The other thing you need to decide is if you want to go flat or itemized- and how you want to deal with this for tax purposes. Do you want to set up a business and bring the income through that? Or deal with it as contract income? These all have different outcomes in how you can deduct related expenses on your taxes.

I'm in Chemistry. If you want ideas for a similar blog, maybe check out ChemJobber, since it's the central resource for jobs and job analysis in chemistry. Biology is hugely Postdoc focused. What gets you shortlisted depends a lot on where you're applying- pedigree matters more for MIT or Yale, but there are plenty of R1s (and R2s) where it matters a lot less. Publications and grants are what I would say are dominant in making a shortlist, as well as a research area that meshes with the existing department. For PUIs, you can add significant teaching experience to the above. I'm more familiar with the academic route- my knowledge of industry comes from ChemJobber and my friends who went to industry.

Pretty much all of your focus on pedigree is much less important in my field than your work. Maybe just field specific, but leaving the US for, say, Qatar and then trying to come back isn't a great proposition in my field. With respect to "teaching colleges", in their own way good LACs are as competitive as R1s in many fields, you just need a different portfolio to get there. Just some notes. Due to the breadth of STEM, it's harder to give general advice. I think focusing on computational sciences might be more realistic. Also field specific, but in mine you don't (or shouldn't) do a Postdoc if you don't want to go into academia (and I include DOD and national labs under that umbrella). If you want to go into industry, you go straight from the PhD, and a Postdoc is considered almost completely lost time in terms of career progression.

Closing a thread implies ending a discussion, which as I mentioned might still be useful to other people.

So FWIW, you target that blog to all STEM PhDs, but I think you're painting the advice with a pretty wide brush to generalize that broadly. It seems like you might be falling into the same trap you complain about with respect to your advisors, but being based on field rather than time since PhD.

As mentioned in the board policies, threads are permanent once started. Just because you aren't getting what you want out of this doesn't mean other people might not find the discussion useful.

Just to be clear, you don't "own" a thread, or get to tell people that they aren't posting on the topic you want. That's not how discussion forums work. Lemma has suggested how you might charge for expenses, and mentioned why they don't. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to share their experiences even if they aren't exactly what you wanted when you made the thread.

From the faculty side, we don't talk amongst ourselves about specific students, and we don't generally ask about the whys. I do generally set aside some time to sit down with each student that has accommodations and make sure that we're on the same page about what they need from me. I have a good many students who notify me of accommodations they may need. We talk about what they might need, and how they will let me know, and we schedule time to check in during the semester.

You can't just switch programs, no. Sometimes you can work in an affiliated lab, but it sounds like that's not the case with the two people you want to meet. And sometimes departments can work something out in the case of unusual circumstances. And yes, it's no going to look great if you only want to meet one person in the department.

I mean, you decided to lie in your interview and screw the company over already.... So yeah, I'd say there's a pretty good chance your boss will be upset when you tell them. People don't like to be lied to, especially when they feel like you did it purposefully. If you hadn't originally intended to apply, but then decided to you could tell them gracefully but given the timeline you've been setting yourself up to leave since you started. It may well blow back on you when you tell them or down the road, and you need to be prepared for that. Here's my question: are you sure you want to give up what you have for grad school? You want to go back into industry long term, if I recall, and this is a bridge that may make doing so harder if you burn it. Its hard to find good jobs in this industry even with a PhD, and I'm not sure it's wise to leave a good job with an eminent promotion to go to grad school.

I can't really see how you could get a solid background in PChem without multivariable calculus. Is this a full 2/3 semester PChem series, and is the degree ACS certified?

So the 2010 solicitation is missing from the website (directs to 2012), but the language change more subtle than I remembered. I just asked directly and was told no, then didn't check back when things changed Fellows are required to devote full time to advanced scientific study or research during their tenure, including a reasonable amount of such teaching or similar activities as are in the opinion of the faculty of your institution contributory to academic progress. Fellows may, therefore, engage in teaching or comparable activities only at the affiliated institution without NSF approval. Furtherance of your educational objectives and the gain of substantive teaching experience, not service to the institution, should be the purpose of these activities. If you teach or engage in similar activities, all decisions regarding augmentation of your stipend within the limits outlined in Sec- tion 8 will be made by your affiliated institution. NSF permits institutions to require appropriate service of Fellows by appointment to positions that can generate additional income to cover any difference between the cost-of- education allowance and tuition. Any such required service must contribute to the progress of the Fellow toward an advanced degree and must not adversely affect a Fellow's fulltime study. Fellows are strongly encouraged to determine the requirements for any service of their proposed fellowship institutions before committing to enrollment.

Huh, ok- that must have changed after I got my award, because I was allowed to teach but not be paid for it when I got mine. I know people raised a fuss, so it looks like it changed which is good. I will not that the text is changed that much for. The earlier solicitations, under which the teaching was allowed but had to be certified by the advisor in yearly reports as a necessary part of graduate training.

Pretty sure NSF won't allow TA/RA funds on top of the fellowship. The department isn't allowed to require service from you if you have one, last I checked.

MLA is one of a very large number of academic writing formats. Different standards require different things.

You should always have senior mentors, but I generally encourage my students to choose a junior faculty for a committee chair if they have the option. You can have *bad* mentors that are junior or senior, but when you're picking a committee chair or primary advisor, my experience biases towards the better experience with the junior. Taking this point by point: No junior faculty member at an R1 has no experience as a mentor. You don't get to that position if you don't. Generally, getting tenure at most schools will involve successfully graduating students. For senior faculty, they don't really care if you finish or not- it's incredibly important that you finish successfully for a junior faculty member. It's unlikely that a junior faculty member is going to move, but my statement qualified "new" assistant professors- the first likely move would be at tenure, by which you'll likely be either graduated or OK to stay on your own at the old institution. New professors don't necessarily have smaller networks- and they have a lot more sway with the networks they do have, imo. Older faculty can, if they socialize well, keep extensive networks- but they can also fall into the rut of just associating with the same old group while new faculty are aggressively and broadly networking. No faculty member, old or new, is going to have a poor grasp of the broader field. Similarly, you aren't going to get a faculty position at an R1 without a strong track record for (or potential for) publishing. Newer faculty are much more dependent on getting work out, which is why they're good to work with. Senior faculty can pick and choose what they want to work on, and can afford to take years perfecting a single work- new faculty can't. Anyway, you seem to have an interesting view that in no way matches my experience with reality- you also seem quite arrogant in your assumptions of junior faculty, most of whom are exceptionally successful in their field or they wouldn't be there. There's a reason many senior faculty say they would not be competitive for the positions they're currently hiring among new faculty. As said, overall fit with the mentor is the most important property, but taking out obvious red flags (interpersonal issues, major funding problems) and aligning research areas (both are fields you want to work with), I think the better bet is usually going to be the junior faculty member. It might be a bit of a higher risk/reward proposition, but down the road being one of the first graduates of a well-known faculty member will continue to serve you very well as you progress through your career, much more so than being one of many graduates they've had over the years. And the negatives of that position balance out by finding experienced senior faculty members to act as mentors- they can provide the insight and experience a young committee chair may lack. Most of us give advice based on our personal experiences- we don't do multiple PhDs to be able to comment on parallel experiences with different areas. But in the programs I've been in, this has held true- as with the career trajectory of myself and my colleagues, so it's advice I continue to give to my students. Regardless, as mentioned, fit is the primary factor- choosing a senior person who's a worse fit for your research interests over a junior person who's a better fit (as is the case in the instances discussed in this thread) just because the person is senior isn't a great idea.

There really is no average student- or rather, you can average things out but you get a useless answer. It mostly comes down to fit- can you convince them that you'll be successful in an area in which they need success, and that you will be more successful than everyone else applying in that area. There's no helpful or useful way to boil that down to averages. In my program we had people with 4.0s and sub 3.0 undergrad GPAs, but averaging it to 3.5 is pretty worthless.

Eh.... Wanting to work with senior faculty isn't always the smart move, especially when the junior faculties research much more closely aligns with your research. Most of the time the absolute best bet is to work with a recently hired assistant prof. They're going to be much more engaged in the work and their first students, and you'll graduate before they're up for tenure. And to be honest, you should show strong interest in any faculty member reaching out to you, especially one in your area of interest.

On the plus side, I view this as "the system working". I drill into my students heads the importance of soft skills and being decent human beings, and it's nice to see confirmation that it actually matters.

Because the house and senate passed different versions. The house removed the exemption, the senate did not. Now the bills have to be reconciled,mans no one is sure what direction that will go in.