13  Graduate timeline

Progress in graduate school is often nonlinear, and are never the same for any two students. (This is why we do self-evaluations/checkins! To ensure that everyone is clear about their own unique paths).

Nevertheless, the entry, progress, and exit checkpoints of graduate school can impose a considerable mental burden on students, and to help address this burden, this document lays out some guidelines to keep in mind as you progress through the years.

13.1 First year

Your can expect your first two semesters in grad school to revolve around a few goals:

  • Develop your “graduate student identity”. This means I will be asking you to do a lot of thinking and writing about your values as a person and scientist, what kind of work you want to do, how you want to do it, and what intellectual muscles you want to develop during graduate school to prepare you for a fulfilling life on this path.
  • Become comfortable with your “required” duties as a graduate student, e.g. completing graduate level coursework, working as a teaching assistant, participating as an active member of the lab.
  • Start establishing your research interests and domain-specific knowledge, e.g. start identifying the overall scope of work in your dissertation, read classic and cutting-edge literature in your chosen field, propose ideas for specific studies that you might conduct as dissertation chapters.
  • Start developing skills that you will use throughout your dissertation (and beyond), e.g. learning the essentials of mathematical modeling in ecology, learning how to identify plants in your field site, building your computational toolkit for reproducible research.
  • Take 2-3 courses in topics like population ecology, community ecology, quantitative ecology, bayesian statistics, or one of many course focused on computational skills

In the summer after your first year, you will have regular (at least weekly) meetings with Gaurav to start defining your dissertation studies. Depending on the scope of your research, you can also expect to start pilot studies in the lab or nearby field sites to help inform the details of your larger studies. During the summer, you should also start contacting other faculty in the department who you think might be ideal committee members.

13.2 Second year

13.2.1 First committee meeting (Typically Semester 1 of Year 2)

You should aim to have your first committee meeting during your third semester in graduate school. This meeting is what the department calls the “Qualifying Committee meeting”.1 The goal of this meeting is to share your overall vision for a dissertation with your committee, as well as the general approach you plan to take towards achieving this vision.

1 I often confuse this with the what the department calls its “general exam”, which I simply call the “second committee meeting”.

2 As of Summer 2024: navigate to the link; expand the “Forms” section, click on “Request for Degree Audit/Qualifying Exam”

Committee composition: This committee should comprise at least 3 faculty members, at least two of whom are full-time members of Biological Sciences. You will need to file an official “Request for Degree Audit” form to the department at least 1 week prior to your scheduled Qualifying Exam; please visit https://www.lsu.edu/science/biosci/programs/graduate/student-resources.php for the form.2

To ensure that you are ready for this meeting, I will ask you to:

  1. Write a ~5 page (single spaced) document that acts as an informal dissertation proposal. This document should start with an overall introduction that explains the overarching theme of your dissertation, explain the questions/hypotheses that you will address in each of your chapters, and explain how you will address these questions (e.g. schematic of experimental design, etc.). You should send this to your committee at least 1 week before your scheduled committee meeting, and should aim to have a few rounds of feedback from Gaurav before this point - so please start early! 3

  2. Prepare a ~20-30 minute presentation for your committee that goes over your dissertation proposal.

3 You can look here for a similar document that Gaurav wrote during grad school, but note that Gaurav wrote this after his second year of grad school, so the document is substantially more advanced than what is expected of you at this stage.

You will be encouraged to lead a lab meeting this semester where the goal is to give you feedback on your written proposal and presentation. Please give all lab members at least one full week to read your dissertation proposal and provide feedback.

13.2.2 Department entrance seminar (Typically Semester 2 of Year 2)

You should enroll in Biol 7921 and aim to present your department Entrance Seminar during your fourth semester in grad school. The Entrance Seminar typically lasts ~25 minutes, during which you present your dissertation overview, specific chapter, and progress to date.

As above, you will be encouraged to practice your entrance seminar in lab meeting at least one week before presenting to the department.

13.3 Third year

You should plan to complete your second committee meeting (AKA General Exam) in the first semester of your third year (i.e. fifth semester in grad school). To prepare for the general exams, each student will be asked to revise/update the research proposal that was written for the first committee meeting. In addition, the general exam will entail an oram “exam”, the agenda for which will be determined by the committee as a whole. Students should arrange individual meetings with each committee member to get a sense of the scope of knowledge they expect the student to demonstrate in this exam.4.

4 Ideally, these one-on-one meetings with committee members should happen immediately after your Entrance Seminar or in the summer between the second and third year; that way, you will have enough time to complete any readings etc. that committee members may ask of you

This General Exam step can sound daunting! But remember that Gaurav and the lab are here to support you through it. One of the best ways to ensure success at this stage is to regularly check in with all committee members to ensure that we are on the same page about your progress and ideas.

The General Exam step also entails completing forms with the department and graduate school; please contact our departments graduate office at least 1 month5 in advance of your general exam.

5 ideally longer!

13.4 Fourth year onwards

I ask that you have a formal meeting with your entire committee at least once a year after your general exams. Use this time to get feedback from committee on your progress, advice on career progression, and anything else you might need.

In addition, you will likely have to take one-off courses/seminars as appropriate opportunities arise.