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Graduate Student Input
2006 Bonanza Creek LTER Symposium
Graduate Students - Activities • 5 Students Graduated (M.S. and PhD.)• 10 New students started Fall, 2005• BNZ LTER Graduate Student Webpage (ongoing)
Graduate Students - Activities
• Held weekly meetings to develop cross-site synthesis ideas
• Obtained funding from LTER to facilitate development of our synthesis idea
• Site reps attended Graduate Student Collaborative Research Symposium in Oregon
– Presented an overview of BNZ grad research– Ran a workshop proposing the synthesis project on
understanding patterns of watershed nitrogen retention across biomes
Graduate Students - Activities • April 2005 – Grad Conference, Blue River, Oregon
• 4 day conference at Andrews Experimental Forest• 66 students, 25 US LTER sites and 7 ILTER sites• Site overviews, training sessions, student led workshops,
research presentations, a poster session and fieldtrips
Grad Conference - Outcomes
• Obtained support for our synthesis idea from workshop participants
• Led to a 2 day meeting in November in Fairbanks – 9 students from 4 sites: BNZ, AND, KBS and
SEV– Consolidated data sets– Outlined synthesis paper– Follow up meeting at NABS– Poster at NABS
Graduate Conference - Outcomes • Conference was found inspiring and brought a sense of
community to all who attended
• There was a general feeling of research isolation, within and between sites
• Became aware that BNZ grads were an ‘outlier’ - a cohesive graduate community (6 active members)
• How did this come about:– Common research interests– A goal to work towards
• Is it worth trying to keep the grad community active and inspired?
– Broadens scientific knowledge and research interests and maintains enthusiasm
– Helps guide future career path decisions
How do we perpetuate a feeling of community and collaborative research
for grad students within BNZ LTER?
Current Life of an LTER grad student
• You arrive and take classes write a proposal and the whole time you don’t even know what the LTER is or that you are affiliated with it.
• Your first field season arrives and suddenly you realize where the LTER sites are.
• You collect your data and then realize that some of this data has already been collected by other students or as a part of ongoing LTER research.
• You are madly trying to write up your thesis and don’t have time to expand your project to include these other data sets or to add a synthesis component.
• You move on to another graduate program or out into the real world and forget to ever submit your data to the LTER database.
Graduate Involvement in LTER
• Graduate students are transient in the LTER community
• PI’s are the backbone of LTER and coordinate the ongoing, long term research and can assist in placing individual research projects within the overarching goals of LTER
• Any permanent change in grad student research and participation needs to come from the researchers who are involved with BNZ LTER for more than 3 years
• Need to define the role M.S. and PhD. Students play in synthesis
Graduate Involvement in LTER
• Grad orientation – September every year– Meet and greet (potential collaborators, committee members)– Introduction to LTER (also expectations and perks)
• Site and Network Meetings– Continued involvement in site and network wide research
development and presentations – Education about available opportunities (ASM, ESA etc.)– Outreach opportunities (e.g. LTER Schoolyard)
• LTER grad student proposal development– A concerted effort to couch LTER grad research within the
proposed site hypotheses and research agenda
Workshops
• Data formatting workshop– In the first term of study with an accompanying document outlining how
to submit data to the database
• LTER Field support workshop– In the second term of study to introduce field support resources: ATVs,
boats, vehicles, safety courses, sat. phones, GPS, study site coordination, clean up responsibilities, etc.
• Lab, field resources– Vehicles, sat phones, GPS units, lab gear, check in person during field
season, etc. (similar to the AKCFWRU model)
• Computer and Database resources– Assistance and training in accessing long-term data sets– GIS resources, etc.
Funding
• LTER graduate fellowships– Formal funding provided to one or two students a year working
at the LTER– Potentially with the specific dissertation goal of within site
synthesis– Travel grants to collaborate with students at other LTER sites
• LTER post grad synthesis grants or thesis improvement grants– 3 months of stipend to encourage in site and cross site synthesis
(one paper) after submission of thesis
Grad student involvement
• Graduate students need to be aware of both the privileges and responsibilities of affiliation with the BNZ LTER
• This will allow for more participation from grad students and will improve grad student research and access to LTER resources and to contribute to scientific understanding in return