Part IV.  Professional Development and Social Programming

 

a.  Required Training.

  1. EHS training: All students going into labs for the first time need to take the EHS training. (It can be done on line, but may be more effective to have them sit down at once for it.  In 2007, it was coordinated by Yung Morgan.  I tried to coordinate somewhat –so there was one room reserved and one presentation attended by folks from different programs.
    1. Plan to devote a 2 hour block the first day to it.

 

2. Animal protocols. Projects that handle live animals can get training from  Research Affairs, Hilary Woodcock.   hilaryw@ora.umass.edu  545 0668

 

3.  Human Subjects Requirements

 

In general, undergraduate research will be under the umbrella of established projects, so that the individual student projects will not have to apply for IRB approval.  However, all students who work with human subjects must complete the training module on line at http://www.umass.edu/research/comply/respcomp.html.

The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) has developed a course on the responsible conduct of  research (RCR) that is available on-line.  The course covers the core RCR instructional areas including data management, conflict of interest, publication, authorship, peer review, collaboration, mentoring and research misconduct. The course of instruction may be tailored to the needs of specific institutions.

Responsible Conduct of Research can be found at:
https://www.citiprogram.org/rcrpage.asp

Courses for the use of Human Subjects can be found at: http://www.umass.edu/research/comply/hstraining.html

and for the use of Animals at: http://www.umass.edu/research/comply/recertification.html

Contact Margaret Burggren at burggren@ora.umass.edu for more information.

 

b.  Professional development meetings.  Most programs put together a specific set of programs for their students, including research ethics, how to apply to graduate school, etc. 

1.  Weekly programs.  In some cases, it may make sense for students from one program to sit in on the meetings for another, for example, a SPUR student in astronomy could attend the astronomy REU weekly meetings; ICE students participated in the weekly Seminar with the College of Engineering programs.

 

  1. Final presentations:  Many groups have students do a final powerpoint or poster.  For smaller groups especially, it makes sense to take advantage of the larger audience of another group. For example, the SPUR poster session included the HHMI (Bio) program.  It meant a few extra poster boards and extra food, but the HHMI program chipped in to the SPUR program for it.

 

c.  Social events:

Pizza Fridays (or Tuesdays) was a popular activity—where two groups could get together.

 

Habitat for Humanity: two sets of groups went to

 

Barbeque: Spur has a barbeque the second weekend of the program.  They invited the Linguistics program to join them.

 

Videos: in the dorm common rooms (by the dorm assistants); can look into using an auditorium on campus with sound system etc. (It’s doable, just needs planning.)

 

Next year: I propose to try to do an “outing club.”  A newsletter from all of the programs plus I’ll schedule hikes, swims, (and other free things).  Jazz in July is on campus etc.

 

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