Recruitment and Retention 

Mentoring

A mentoring program will be generated in which, in addition to faculty mentoring, senior graduate students will mentor new graduate students.  Moreover, interviews and surveys with students will be used to investigate what is needed to ensure student success, e.g. travel grants to professional conferences, professional development etc. 

The doctoral thesis research of each student will be evaluated semi-annually by five faculty committee members, of which at least three are members of the IGERT program, to ensure adequate progress toward the research objectives. The students will have the opportunity to provide feedback to the faculty through a semi-annual evaluation of the program. 

Phasing in of new Students

Students will be paid from IGERT funds during the first three years of their Ph.D. study and will be subsequently supported by research and teaching assistantships.  However, to facilitate this program to be successful and to use existing students that can contribute to this program immediately, we will stagger the funding of students as shown in Table 3.  Specifically, we are supporting 16 students per year.  In the first year, we will accept six students with an offer of three years of support, five students to be supported two years and five students to be supported for one year.  The students to be funded for two and one year, respectively, will be students that are already at the University at Buffalo.  These are students that we feel can contribute immediately to the research efforts of this program.  Moreover, these students will not be obligated to complete all required courses.  In addition, in the fourth year of this funding, we will accept 6 additional students to be funded for three years.  These six additional students will be funded in year 6 by faculty involved in the program.  Similarly, the five students admitted in year 5 will be supported for two years.  This staggered format allows us to admit new students each year of this program.

able 3: Phasing in of new Students

^* Fellow supported for 3 years; ^† Fellow support for 2 years; ^° Fellows supported for 1 year;

Outreach to Underrepresented groups

An outreach program to focus on sharing research experiences with the general community and to specifically target minority high school students and teachers, and women and minorities in science, mathematics, and engineering (SME) will be implemented. Faculty in this IGERT program are already participating as mentors for the Buffalo-Area Engineering Awareness for Minorities (BEAM), and the SUNY Alliance for Minority Participation (SUNY AMP), and in a new curriculum for High School Science Teachers in NY state. These programs will be expanded through formal agreements to provide internships in our research laboratories.

In addition, we will invest significant energies recruiting and retaining underrepresented groups in this Biophotonics IGERT. We will actively recruit at the historically black colleges and national minority meetings. Most importantly, we will make a concerted effort to make personal contact with potential underrepresented graduate students by phone calls or through recruitment trips to various colleges.  We will encourage faculty members involved in the program to make at least one visit per year to a University that is listed as Historically Black Colleges and Universities or as Hispanic-Serving Institutions or to a national minority meeting. This active recruitment will involve sending materials for recruitment to these schools electronically and physically.  Moreover, we have existing graduate materials for recruiting that includes videos of various University assets. 

Retention of Students in the IGERT Program

The faculty members participating in the program do not have a history of problems in student retention.  Students that have left early have typically left for high paying industrial positions or have transferred into a different degree program (e.g., a number of students have transferred to computer science from various programs).  It is anticipated that Biophotonics graduates will be in high demand in industry.  This should minimize the transfer problems. 

However, many of the students that have left for industry have chosen to look for industrial positions because they were unhappy with the present working conditions for their research.  Therefore, we will have to make a concerted effort to intervene in problem situations before these problems become irreversible.  Students will be explicitly directed to notify the Executive Committee or the Program Director immediately in the event of any conflicts with other students or other faculty members.  Moreover, the PI of this grant has a history of being extremely personable and approachable to students and will welcome any student with problems.

Other students that have left for industry have left due to their financial situations.  We feel that the level of funding for the IGERT program is attractive for students studying in a low cost of living area like Buffalo, NY. Therefore, our IGERT fellows should not leave for financial reasons.