PhD at Akron?
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Peter L
From: What are we trying to achieve?
Date: 8/29/2003
Time: 7:49:21 PM
Remote Name: 130.101.152.38
Comments
Welcome to the Ph.D. forum! There are a few points I would like to initiate discussion on: (1) We all agree that the only way we can get this program approved by the OBR is to prove that we are unique. What makes us unique compared to many other biology programs? (2) I agree with Peter N that the most straightforward way to create this program is to identify criteria for our Ph.D. graduates and then build a curriculum around these criteria. What are these criteria? (3) What is our precise expertise? Cellular or organismal? Physiology or genetics? Evolution or ecology? Reductionism has been useful for dissecting the incredible complexity of life, but now it’s starting to hold us back. We see so much “hybridization” among different biological and other sciences (this process is gaining speed whether scientists like it or not), yet we keep training our students to work within the narrowly defined sub-sub disciplines. So why not train them to be ready for the emerging fields? It would be naive, however, to ignore the existence of specific sub-discipline boundaries. Therefore, the challenge is to keep the balance between very rigorous specific research and the ability to see the big picture. How do we do this? (4) We all participate in multidisciplinary studies and know that finding a common ground may be difficult. Preparing students to think outside their narrow research focus can make them more competitive in multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary environments. Eventually, biologists formally trained to participate in this type of research may be more useful in multidisciplinary teams than traditionally trained reductionists. This does not mean, however, that our students should learn a bit about everything and nothing in particular. (5) Although we want to keep our program biological, I would not shut the doors to other disciplines. We may consider including experts from Chemistry, Geology, Physics, Sociology, and even (please do not get mad) Polymer Science in certain dissertation committees. I think this will be in the spirit of integration. (6) Curriculum should be determined by (a) criteria we develop for our graduates and (b) our existing expertise. For core courses I would consider including Experimental Design (not just statistics), History of Science, and some kind of communication course (yes, psychology) that would train students to work effectively as team members in complex multidisciplinary environments.