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