Here is the summary of your thoughts on goals beyond graduation.
Summary of Blog 11
1. Get out in the community and expand my contacts and network to help in the job hunt.
2. Get a residency/internship/post-doc position but find a good on that fits your goals
3. Adjust your goals as conditions change
4. Keep your plan over your desk and update it weekly
5. Use your time in grad school for more than just completing your classes. Use all the resources available to benefit your future goals.
6. Align your graduate projects, thesis, dissertation to your future goals; plan your activities in graduate school to benefit you beyond your diploma.
7. Enter your goals into your time management system and give them priority in your daily actions
8. Collaborate with others and let them help achieve my goals
9. Focus! on what is really important and spend time on that.
10. Have a backup plan that is attractive to you as well, just in case things don’t work out.
11. Do things during graduate school that you want to do after graduation; it will help you learn whether that is really what you want to do; if so, it will give you valuable experience.
12. Get involved in something you are really passionate about, it makes everything more worthwhile
Friday, November 13, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Resources at UTEP
Thank you for the many ideas on resources available on campus that have helped you. These suggestions will help others as well, I'm sure.
1) Electronic databases such as ISI Web of Science and Pub Med are wonderful. Learn how to search effectively using these database tools and they can be very helpful. The librarians will teach you how.
2) Career Services will work with you on your resume.
3) Check the “Job Mine” website
4) Learn how to use RefWorks or EndNote to create literature databases for each of your research projects. Check the UTEP library website or Endnote’s site, http://www.endnote.com/ because if you are not using these tools in your writing, you are wasting a lot of time.
5) Going to the library to make copies of articles is inconvenient; not all articles have full-text online copies. The UT-TeleCampus digital library is a much better resource for online copies.
6) You have to pay for the interlibrary loan service, but it’s not too expensive. Just make sure you really need the article.
7) If you want to survey your class use Survey Monkey. The free version allows 10 questions and 100 responses and it’s easy to set up, http://www.surveymonkey.com/Home_Pricing.aspx
8) Mspace is a useful place to store documents you may need when you are away from home or campus.
9) Check into Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) and attend their conferences on preparing future faculty.
10) http://www.pubmed.gov/ is a helpful tool as are other niche sites within your discipline such as http://www.diabetes.org/ and others.
11) Don’t forget Google Scholar, Bing, and other discipline specific sites such as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ to get started with your searches.
12) The UTEP Writing Center is a place you should definitely visit.
13) The Disabled Student Services Offices can be of great help, and can set you up with helpful software such as Dragon speech recognition software http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/
14) A few more databases: WorldCat (World Catalog), IIMP (International Index to Music Periodicals), Academic Search Complete, ProQuest, and JSTOR (Journal Storage). ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center), PsychInfo and Proquest for dissertations and theses.
15) The CETaL and ORSP workshops have been helpful, especially on how to use rubrics to grade more efficiently and effectively.
16) YouTube has a wealth of science-related instructional videos on topics such as micropipetting, cell cultures techniques, and others. Great tools to help students in lab sections.
17) Build and tap into your networks through attending seminars, workshops, meetings, visiting with colleagues and faculty in your area and outside.
18) Instructional Support Services can help with instructional technologies and supports “i-Peer” which allows students on teams to evaluate each other’s team work behavior anonymously
19) The UTEP-VPN login allows you to access your UTEP computer and resources from off-campus sites.
20) Goldmine has been a great resources to make registering and paying for classes online easy.
21) The UTEP license for Turnitin (turnitin.com) is helpful in allowing students to submit their papers to check for plagiarism before they turn it in for a grade.
22) You may also want to check into the support program Human Resources offers. You will be surprised. http://admin.utep.edu/Default.aspx?alias=admin.utep.edu/hr
1) Electronic databases such as ISI Web of Science and Pub Med are wonderful. Learn how to search effectively using these database tools and they can be very helpful. The librarians will teach you how.
2) Career Services will work with you on your resume.
3) Check the “Job Mine” website
4) Learn how to use RefWorks or EndNote to create literature databases for each of your research projects. Check the UTEP library website or Endnote’s site, http://www.endnote.com/ because if you are not using these tools in your writing, you are wasting a lot of time.
5) Going to the library to make copies of articles is inconvenient; not all articles have full-text online copies. The UT-TeleCampus digital library is a much better resource for online copies.
6) You have to pay for the interlibrary loan service, but it’s not too expensive. Just make sure you really need the article.
7) If you want to survey your class use Survey Monkey. The free version allows 10 questions and 100 responses and it’s easy to set up, http://www.surveymonkey.com/Home_Pricing.aspx
8) Mspace is a useful place to store documents you may need when you are away from home or campus.
9) Check into Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) and attend their conferences on preparing future faculty.
10) http://www.pubmed.gov/ is a helpful tool as are other niche sites within your discipline such as http://www.diabetes.org/ and others.
11) Don’t forget Google Scholar, Bing, and other discipline specific sites such as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ to get started with your searches.
12) The UTEP Writing Center is a place you should definitely visit.
13) The Disabled Student Services Offices can be of great help, and can set you up with helpful software such as Dragon speech recognition software http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/
14) A few more databases: WorldCat (World Catalog), IIMP (International Index to Music Periodicals), Academic Search Complete, ProQuest, and JSTOR (Journal Storage). ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center), PsychInfo and Proquest for dissertations and theses.
15) The CETaL and ORSP workshops have been helpful, especially on how to use rubrics to grade more efficiently and effectively.
16) YouTube has a wealth of science-related instructional videos on topics such as micropipetting, cell cultures techniques, and others. Great tools to help students in lab sections.
17) Build and tap into your networks through attending seminars, workshops, meetings, visiting with colleagues and faculty in your area and outside.
18) Instructional Support Services can help with instructional technologies and supports “i-Peer” which allows students on teams to evaluate each other’s team work behavior anonymously
19) The UTEP-VPN login allows you to access your UTEP computer and resources from off-campus sites.
20) Goldmine has been a great resources to make registering and paying for classes online easy.
21) The UTEP license for Turnitin (turnitin.com) is helpful in allowing students to submit their papers to check for plagiarism before they turn it in for a grade.
22) You may also want to check into the support program Human Resources offers. You will be surprised. http://admin.utep.edu/Default.aspx?alias=admin.utep.edu/hr
Recommendations on Moving Your Research Projects Forward
I read very good suggestions in your blogs on how to get started with your research and keeping it on track. Below is the summary of your thoughts. My suggestion are to
1) visit with your professor(s) on a weekly basis;
2) Manage your time effectively and on a daily basis;
3) Learn how to use relevant databases, websites, and search engines effectively;
4) Learn to use RefWorks or EndNote to build your own database of articles.
5) Finally, and we have not talked about this much, adopt healthy liefstyle behaviors. Instead of going out to lunch, bring your own healthy sandwich and keep plugging along. Take an exercise break around mid-day for 30 min or so. It will keep you in much better spirits during the afternoon. Cook your own dinner on Sunday afternoon/evening. Freeze/refrigerate daily portions so you can just pop them in the microwave when you get home. This save you many hours over going out to eat or cooking each day, and you’ll like the food. It also saves you a ton of money. Stop drinking sodas, they only give you empty calories, a sugar/caffeine boost and then you crash. Drink tea instead.
Here are your suggestions
Blog 9 Summary: Research Success and Expectations
1) Early communication with advisors can be difficult. Going to your advisor with a plan and taking initiative may be one solution.
2) It’s important to have in-depth discussions with your advisor about your topic, but go prepared as best as possible. Narrow down your topics to a few that really appeal to you and you’re excited about, learn how to use databases and search engines well, and then read the relevant literature. Knowing what is relevant and what is not, can save you lots of time.
3) Set up a regular schedule of meetings with your advisors, preferably on a weekly basis especially if you are signed up for independent study, research project, or thesis/dissertation. Insist on it.
4) Get clarity on what is expected of you.
5) Daily planning and managing your time is critical to stay on track with your research. Congratulations.
6) Teaching and grading easily takes over; have to be careful in your time management and adopting efficient grading strategies.
7) Partnering with other grad students on research can be helpful
8) Make sure to live a healthy lifestyle: eat healthy and exercise. It really does help, you’ll be amazed at the amount of energy you gain.
9) Getting into research projects can be very rewarding and exciting: Discovery always is.
10) If you can get on a grant or be part of a group that applies for one, do it. It will be a helpful experience to go through that process. If the grant funds your thesis or dissertation research, even better.
11) Get started with research in your very first semester, even if it is just helping out a more senior graduate student. It would also have been helpful if you had been involved in research projects during your undergraduate years.
12) Apply for graduate scholarship and fellowship. They greatly benefit your resume/CV
13) Research usually takes more time than you think it will; it is easy to get pulled into non-productive directions as well. Keep your focus when looking for resources and don’t get distracted by other interesting topics.
1) visit with your professor(s) on a weekly basis;
2) Manage your time effectively and on a daily basis;
3) Learn how to use relevant databases, websites, and search engines effectively;
4) Learn to use RefWorks or EndNote to build your own database of articles.
5) Finally, and we have not talked about this much, adopt healthy liefstyle behaviors. Instead of going out to lunch, bring your own healthy sandwich and keep plugging along. Take an exercise break around mid-day for 30 min or so. It will keep you in much better spirits during the afternoon. Cook your own dinner on Sunday afternoon/evening. Freeze/refrigerate daily portions so you can just pop them in the microwave when you get home. This save you many hours over going out to eat or cooking each day, and you’ll like the food. It also saves you a ton of money. Stop drinking sodas, they only give you empty calories, a sugar/caffeine boost and then you crash. Drink tea instead.
Here are your suggestions
Blog 9 Summary: Research Success and Expectations
1) Early communication with advisors can be difficult. Going to your advisor with a plan and taking initiative may be one solution.
2) It’s important to have in-depth discussions with your advisor about your topic, but go prepared as best as possible. Narrow down your topics to a few that really appeal to you and you’re excited about, learn how to use databases and search engines well, and then read the relevant literature. Knowing what is relevant and what is not, can save you lots of time.
3) Set up a regular schedule of meetings with your advisors, preferably on a weekly basis especially if you are signed up for independent study, research project, or thesis/dissertation. Insist on it.
4) Get clarity on what is expected of you.
5) Daily planning and managing your time is critical to stay on track with your research. Congratulations.
6) Teaching and grading easily takes over; have to be careful in your time management and adopting efficient grading strategies.
7) Partnering with other grad students on research can be helpful
8) Make sure to live a healthy lifestyle: eat healthy and exercise. It really does help, you’ll be amazed at the amount of energy you gain.
9) Getting into research projects can be very rewarding and exciting: Discovery always is.
10) If you can get on a grant or be part of a group that applies for one, do it. It will be a helpful experience to go through that process. If the grant funds your thesis or dissertation research, even better.
11) Get started with research in your very first semester, even if it is just helping out a more senior graduate student. It would also have been helpful if you had been involved in research projects during your undergraduate years.
12) Apply for graduate scholarship and fellowship. They greatly benefit your resume/CV
13) Research usually takes more time than you think it will; it is easy to get pulled into non-productive directions as well. Keep your focus when looking for resources and don’t get distracted by other interesting topics.
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