Spring 2018

Monday 2:40-3:45 p.m. in ISB 455

Instructor: Weixin Cheng

Office hours: Tuesdays at 9.30-11.30 am or by appointment, ISB 416

Email: wxcheng@ucsc.edu; Phone: 831-459-5317

Course Expectations:

As designed by our graduate program, 290L in the spring quarter gives the highest priority to QE practice talks. The remaining time slots are allocated to improving pedagogy, developing professional skills, fostering effective communication among peers, and/or other topics.

Readings: All reading materials are (will be) posted on Canvas/files.

Reflection and Discussion of ENSV Department Talks:

Considering that our departmental seminar talks finish at 90 minutes before this graduate seminar, a brief period (≈10 minutes) of reflection and discussion on <relevant skills> will be good for us.

Feedback and Critique on QE Practice Talks:

Each participant is required to submit written individual feedback and critique on each QE practice talk. This part includes (1) a fixed form (taken from <Presentation Skills Protocol for Scientists> by Richard A. Tankersley; and (2) a free-format feedback.

Mini-lectures:

Two sessions will be devoted to mini-lectures. Each student will present a 5-minute mini-lecture on the (environmental) topic of each person's choosing. Please sign up for a slot on the class schedule. The same kind of feedback and critique as for QE talks will also be used here for the mini-lectures

TA Observation for First-year Students:

As part of mandatory TA training, first-year students are required to observe a section of ENVS 100L. Options are:

Tuesday 1:40 PM-3:25 PM ISB 431 -Daniel Hastings (dhasting@ucsc.edu)

Tuesday 3:40 PM-5:25 PM ISB 431 -Daniel Hastings

Friday 9:20 AM-11:05 AM ISB 431 -Halie Kampman (hakampman@ucsc.edu)

Friday 11:15 AM -1:00 PM ISB 431 -Halie Kampman

Sections are held in ISB 431. You must observe a section before our discussion about effective TA'ing on April 30. Please contact the relevant TA in advance so that (s)he has some warning, and can advise if a particular section would be a bad choice or already has too many observers.

Grade Evaluation:

In-class preparation & participation: 100%

Course Schedule:

Date                Topic

April 2:           Introduction and Planning

                        (Read and discuss <A Primer of Critique for Graduate Students> by Greg Gilbert)

April 9:           Parsing Data Analyses (Guest: Professor Kai Zhu)

April 16:         Prepare for pre-quals and Quals (Guests: John Armstrong and Kate Ross)

April 23:         2 QE practice talks—Andy Kulikowski & Alejandro Artiga-Purcell

                        (20 minutes each + 5 minutes discussion)

April 30:         Effective TA'ing (guest: Pam Rittelmeyer)

May 7:           Mini-lectures (Chris Lang; Azucena Lucatero, Jon Detka, Allyson Makuch, Justin Luong)

                        (5 minutes each + 5 minutes for discussion)

May 14:          2 QE practice talks— Rachel Shellabarger & Anna Nisi

                        (20 minutes each + 5 minutes discussion)

May 21:          Mini-lectures (Nazanin Rezaei, Ruihua Wang, Taryn Farber, Aysha Peterson, Allison Skidmore)

                        (5 minutes each + 5 minutes for discussion)

May 28:          No meeting, Holiday (Memorial Day)

June 4:            Part-1: A primer for designing your research projects (Weixin Cheng)

                        Part-2: Feedback on 290L