"Not A Retreat But A Forward": AGEP Effective Communication Workshop

The 2009-2010 AGEP "Not a Retreat But a Forward" workshop will be held on Saturday, January 16th from 10:00am to 4:00pm at the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU) in the Oak Room. This year's topic focuses on Effective Communication. We invite all STEM and SBES graduate students from both IU Bloomington and IUPUI to attend this workshop. This is a great opportunity to learn how to not only improve your communication skills for daily life, but also for improving your negotiation and persuasion techniques used when presenting your research. Transportation from IUPUI to Bloomington will be provided. Lunch will be on your own at the many eateries within the IMU. Please RSVP through the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X7YH9DM Thank you for taking advantage of the many wonderful oppotunities that are offered to you through AGEP and IU. We look forward to your participation!

Environmental Affairs Graduate Fellowhships

Solicitation: EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowships for Graduate Environmental Study - due October 22 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is offering Graduate Fellowships for master's and doctoral level students in environmental fields of study. Subject to availability of funding, the Agency plans to award approximately 120 new fellowships by June 30, 2010. Master's level students may receive support for a maximum of two years. Doctoral students may be supported for a maximum of three years, usable over a period of four years. The fellowship program provides up to $37,000 per year of support per fellowship. There's good news for green building/infrastructure from this year's EPA Graduate Fellowship program. Although it doesn't match NSF's $67M, 1700 Fellowship program, EPA's $4.5M is up to 120 Fellowships, compared with 32 in 2008 and 20 last year There's a major Science and Technology for Sustainability makeover, with separate categories for Green Engineering/Building/Chemistry/Materials; Energy; and Environmental Behavior and Decision Making. See http://epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2009/2009_star_gradfellow.html for the solicitation. Note that the deadline for application is October 22 .

"Professoriate Prep"...

...is the working title of the AGEP Fall 2009 professional development event for doctoral students. Develop your teaching skills at a day of workshops and seminars offered by faculty mentors including two recent IUB PhD alumni now in faculty positions. Save the date: Saturday, September 12, 2009, on the Bloomington campus. To register early, e-mail agep@indiana.edu.

Summer Astronomy Film Series

Join the IUB Department of Astronomy for the International Year of Astronomy Summer Film Series! In celebration of IYA, the Department of Astronomy is hosting a summer film series every Wednesday night June 3rd through August 12th. These films will be shown prior to the start of each Kirkwood Observatory Public Open House which run 10-11:30 PM. Showings will range from classic feature films to recent, fun documentaries covering a variety of astronomy and space themes! No charge for admission, and free popcorn will be provided! Location and Time: Films will be screened in Room 119 of Swain Hall West on the Bloomington campus (727 E. 3rd St). Each film will start at 7:30 PM and end no later than 9:30 PM. Running times vary from approximately 1 to 2 hours. Consult the schedule to see the approximate running times for each feature.

Getting You Into IU

The IU Graduate School will be hosting the "Getting You Into IU" recruitment program for underrepresented minority prospective PhD program applicants on October 8-10, 2009. Click here to find out more about this all-expenses-paid campus visit.

GEM in the news

Check out coverage of IU's membership in the National GEM Consortium at the IU News Room!

Even more AGEP student profiles!

Graduate students Paul Carey (Chemistry), Jeremy Felton (Chemistry), Pere Jackson (Math) and Rashid Williams-Garcia (Physics) have been added to our AGEP student profiles. Check them out here and here!

Upcoming presentation

“The role of pedagogy courses in graduate students’ socialization as future faculty in STEM disciplines”

Friday, March 27, 2009
10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Ballantine 006

Presented by:
Valerie O’Loughlin, Associate Professor, Medical Sciences
Katie Kearns, Assistant Director, Campus Instructional Consulting

Sponsored by the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) and the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs

For more information, e-mail agep@indiana.edu

Teaching orientation programs, pedagogy courses, teaching certificate programs, and preparing future faculty (PFF) programs provide positive outcomes for the graduate student participants beyond improved teaching effectiveness and self-efficacy. Such programs also support smooth transitions throughout graduate school and socialize graduate students to the numerous roles they will encounter in their future careers. However, many graduate students may not be aware of or be encouraged to participate in these programs, putting them at a disadvantage.

Valerie O’Loughlin and Katie Kearns will share recent research about graduate student development, summarize mentoring strategies presented at the 2008 CIRTL conference on preparing STEM graduate students for faculty careers, and describe results of their investigation into the role of a health sciences pedagogy course on graduate student development. Faculty participants will receive concrete mentoring strategies for helping graduate students successfully navigate research, teaching, and service responsibilities and will be provided with information about campus resources for graduate students.

New student profile up!

Check out our profile of Byron Gipson, first-year Neuroscience graduate student, at the IU AGEP website, and look for him on agep.us as well.

AGEP student profiles!

Check out our latest IU AGEP student profile of first-year Chemistry doctoral student Nancy Ortiz. IU AGEP student profiles are posted on the national AGEP website and our own home page.

New Breaking Grounds Initiatives

AGEP has awarded funds for two Spring 2009 “Breaking Grounds Initiatives” - faculty-initiated projects aiming to recruit or retain underrepresented minority graduate students in the STEM disciplines.

"Attracting More Diverse Students to Research in Psychology, Cognitive Science and Neuroscience through a Partnership with IU Northwest" is a project of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. The project’s goal is to build a strong connection between its doctoral programs and undergraduate students at IU’s Northwest campus in Gary, Indiana, where the 80% of the students are from minorities underrepresented in the STEM disciplines. The project leaders wish to accomplish three goals: 1. Increase the number of underrepresented minority undergraduates who want to do research; 2. Increase their skills and connection to research; and, 3. Increase their familiarity with IU Bloomington’s graduate programs, faculty and broader community. In order to make these three things happen with IU Northwest undergraduates, the awarded funds will support the following activities:
• IUB faculty visits to IU Northwest for research seminars and interaction with students
• IU Northwest faculty visits to Bloomington for research meetings, seminars and potential laboratory collaborations to strengthen the connection between the two campuses
• IU Northwest student visits to the IUB campus so they can be introduced to the doctoral programs in Cognitive Science and Neuroscience and the Department Psychological and Brain Sciences
• Paid summer research internships at IUB for highly promising IU Northwest underrepresented minority students

The Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior (CISAB) proposed "Increasing Student Diversity in Animal Behavior at IU" in order to increase diversity in their graduate program at IUB. They will achieve this in two ways: first, by sponsoring the attendance of promising underrepresented minority students at their annual conference in Bloomington, where the students will be exposed to CISAB’s research. There, students will have the opportunity to experience one-on-one interactions with researchers who are among the world’s leaders in their respective fields. Secondly, CISAB will send their highly successful graduate students to other institutions to serve as ambassadors for the academic program. The goal of the ambassador visits will be to recruit new doctoral students and summer research program participants from underrepresented minority groups.

Breaking Grounds

One major AGEP program at IU-Bloomington is the funding of “Breaking Grounds Initiatives”: faculty-initiated projects aiming to recruit and retain underrepresented minority graduate students in the STEM disciplines. AGEP will soon award the third round of funds for these initiatives since AGEP began at IU in 2004.

Past awards have supported the following initiatives:

- AY 2006-07, and 2007-08: "Bring IT On!", a three-day workshop held by the School of Informatics for historically black college and university (HBCU) computer science students on developing K-12 outreach programs for their schools. The workshop was repeated during the second year of funding for undergraduate students from IU's campuses around the state. The School of Informatics has also sponsored a reunion event for participants to encourage the development of their outreach programs!

- AY 2007-08: The establishment of a chapter of NOBCChE, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers, at the IUB Department of Chemistry

- AY 2006-07, and 2007-08: "Training for Research and Academic Careers in Communication Sciences" (TRACCS), a Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences summer research training program for underrepresented minority undergraduate students studying communication sciences and disorders

- AY 2007-08: Development of a one-week astronomy immersion program at the Kitt Peak National Observatory for Native American undergraduate students facilitated by the IU Department of Astronomy graduate program

- AY 2007-08: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences efforts to generate community within its underrepresented minority graduate students through one-on-one informal mentoring sessions

- AY 2006-07: Enhancement of underrepresented minority (URM) graduate student recruitment within the Department of Geography by funding conference travel, print material production and networking with LSAMP affiliates

The National GEM Consortium

Indiana University was recently inducted into the National GEM Consortium, a collaboration of universities and corporations with the mission of increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in the science and engineering fields. The University Graduate School and Chemistry/Environmental Science Professor Michael Edwards began the process of joining GEM early in the summer of 2008. With IU as a member of the GEM Consortium, GEM fellows (who are selected from underrepresented minorities in the STEM disciplines) can use their GEM funding to fund their first year as a graduate student here. GEM fellows are also guaranteed an internship opportunity at a sponsoring corporation (which provides the fellowship funding). IU was officially welcomed into GEM at the September 2008 national conference in Washington D.C. We were presented with the certificate shown below, which now hangs in the Graduate School office. Look for a profile of an IU GEM fellow on this blog at a later date!

Not a Retreat But a Forward 2009: Grant Writing in Tighter Times

About 40 graduate students and faculty turned out for "Not a Retreat But a Forward: Grant Writing in Tighter Times" at IUPUI on January 10. This annual AGEP-sponsored workshop instructs participants about obtaining grant funding for research. The following pictures illustrate the day's events:

Participants get a hands-on lesson in searching for funding sources

A writing exercise gives particpants some grant writing practice

Lunch discussion with IUPUI Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Kathryn J. Wilson (center left) and IUB Graduate School Assistant Dean Yolanda Treviño (center right)

Participants break for discussion during a presentation

Comments from participants included:
"Very informative"
"I really enjoyed this workshop. I learned a lot about grant writing and that there is a way to continue studying what you are passionate about."
"Thanks for this valuable and enjoyable workshop!"