Category: Succeeding in Graduate School

Articles about professional development and seminar announcements.

Graduate Peer Groups – support for success

Finding support and taking responsibility for your graduate education are key to being successful in graduate school. This interesting article written by graduate students describes the formation of a peer support group, activities they found useful, and some of the challenges they faced.  They also talk about how to “manage up” to get what you need from your advisor.

What have your experiences been with finding support among fellow students? Let us know in the comments!

The Laws of Herman – advice for graduate students

Written in a (slightly) humorous fashion, and recommended by Dr. Andrew Storer, these “laws” for graduate students provide an overview of some of the guiding principles of being a graduate student.

For example, “Your vacation begins after you defend your thesis,” and “Your adviser wants you to become famous, so that he/she can finally become famous.” remind me that it is hard work to complete a thesis, and that your advisor really does want you to succeed – even if it might be for selfish reasons!

Tips on interviewing with administrators

Students interested in academic careers will find this article filled with helpful tips about interviewing with administrators.  It discusses what to expect and how to prepare.

Companion articles discuss how to interview in general, and how to conduct a teaching demonstration.

Faculty interviews often take place over one or two days, and contain multiple components. Preparing for the interview properly and knowing what to expect can help you be more successful and less stressed.

Tips for a Winning Research Proposal

The American Society of Engineering Education recently published a short article, “Tips for a Winning Research Proposal.”  This clear article gives concrete tips and additional resources for common pitfalls to avoid when preparing a research proposal. For example, did you know that for some agencies, half of the research proposals are rejected simply because they didn’t adhere to the proposal requirements? These tips could help your proposal be funded. These tips can be applied to fellowship proposals as well as research proposals.

PhD students co-authored paper in Journal of Applied Physics

PhD students Ankit Vora (ECE) and Jephias Gwamuri (MSE) co-authored a paper with Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE), Paul Bergstrom (ECE) and Durdu Guney (ECE) titled “Multi-resonant Silver Nano-disk Patterned Thin Film Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells For Staebler-Wronski Effect Compensation,” in the “Journal of Applied Physics.”

Published in Tech Today.

EndNote workshops announcement

The J. Robert Van Pelt and John and Ruanne Opie Library is offering introductory EndNote workshops. EndNote is a citation management software that helps you easily create and manage bibliographic information and incorporate references into your writing.

Upcoming sessions will be held:

EndNote Basic I – Tuesday, September 16 , 5:00 p.m.

This workshop will introduce users to creating and managing references using the citation management software EndNote. No prior knowledge of EndNote is necessary. In this workshop participants will learn how to construct an Endnote Library in order to effectively organize references and create custom and smart groups to efficiently manage references.

EndNote Basic II – Thursday, September 25, 6:15 p.m.

This workshop will introduce users to incorporating EndNote Library citations into a written document (MS Word). Attending EndNote Basic I or prior knowledge of building and managing an EndNote Library is recommended. In this workshop participants will learn how to successfully incorporate Endnote Library references into their writing process (MS Word), and locate, identify, and import specialized output styles.

Seating for these workshops is limited and registration is required. To register please visit the library’s Workshops calendar.

Our instruction rooms have EN X7 on Windows workstations. Attendees may bring their own laptops with EN X7 downloaded prior to the session. Visit the library’s Citation Support page to download.

Middle, High School Students: Sign Up for Free Computer Programming Lessons

The Department of Computer Science is offering local students free, hands-on instruction in the basics of computer programming and computer science.

Starting Sept. 13, Copper Country Programmers meets from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays during the academic year at the Van Pelt and Opie Library.  Computer science faculty and students will teach the fundamentals of programming, starting with simple languages like HTML and BASIC and progressing to the well known and widely used Java language.

Grad students co-authored research published in Scientific Reports

Graduate students Ankit Vora (ECE) and Jephias Gwamuri (EMSE) co-authored “Exchanging Ohmic Losses in Metamaterial Absorbers with Useful Optical Absorption for Photovoltaics, in Scientific Reports” with Anand Kulkarni, Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) and Durdu Güney (ECE). It is available online at Scientific Reports.

Published in Tech Today.