Attempting to alter the traditional model from one of teaching students to be experts in a narrow sub-discipline to one emphasizing integrating ideas across disciplines requires a relaxation of the conventions that most academics have been operating under for most of their careers. To effectively confront the emerging biologically-based research questions of the 21 st century, we must train students to both be experts in their respective disciplines, but also to be able to “think outside the box” of these traditional fields by considering traditional research questions in a larger conceptual framework that includes hierarchical levels above and/or below those that have been traditionally considered. Such a fundamentally new approach to research will eventually require a reorganization of teaching methodology that will reach down into undergraduate and even the high school levels to train students to view scientific questions from a more holistic, integrated perspective.
However, merely waiting for these larger scale pedagogical changes to occur before we produce students capable of dealing with these emerging integrative issues abrogates our responsibilities to both our students and to industries that rely on our Universities to produce employees that can meet the research challenges that lie ahead of us. Thus, we have devised a Ph.D. curriculum that acknowledges the fact that most students will enter the program having been taught in a traditional, discipline-based framework and we will expose these students to the broader perspectives needed to effectively confront the bioscience questions beginning to emerge in this new century.
Our curriculum is not designed to make students “experts” in a field that they have not been traditionally trained in (e.g., a polymer chemist will not be an expert in biology after being in this program). Such an approach is not feasible at the graduate level, wherein coursework in minimized and research projects are emphasized. Rather, the main thrust of our program is to allow these students to integrate information from other disciplines into their approach to research on one or more complex bio-problems. Given students from a more traditional, single-discipline educational background, we need to train the PhD students how to co-opt experts in other fields to work as teams to approach these research problems. To do this effectively, integrated bioscience researchers must communicate their ideas efficiently with these experts to address these larger-scale bioscience problems. Our program accomplishes this by (1) introducing the students to the range of bioscience research techniques available for assessing bio-related problems, (2) training students from diverse disciplines to communicate with one another and begin thinking about how they can combine intellectual resources to approach bioscience questions, (3) introducing students to established integrated bioscience researchers (through an integrated biosciences seminar series), and (4) have these students work in teams and individually on one or more bioscience research projects, through a course and for one of the chapters of their dissertation, respectively. Combining these with a broadly-based Ph.D. advisory committee begins the process of “thinking outside the box” that will then continue as these students enter the challenging field of bioscience research.
Seining for fish in Lake Erie
Graduate Assistantship/Fellowship
Full-time graduate students pursuing dissertation research may be supported with graduate assistantships, either teaching or research assistant, by the appropriate Department, generally for a period of five years. Full-time teaching assistants are expected to work 20 hours per week and must enroll as full-time students (currently 9 or more credit hours per semester, including research).
Grading
A minimum GPA of 3.0 is required to remain in the Ph.D. program. The student's GPA will be computed for the degree based on grades in courses in the student's approved program of study. A student receiving one grade of F or 6 credit hours of C or below can be dismissed from the Integrated Bioscience graduate program.
Committee Hierarchy
- Ph.D. Advisory Committee – oversees the immediate aspects of the student’s coursework and research
- Participating Department’s Graduate Committee – oversees departmental aspects of student’s involvement in program (e.g., TA assignments)
- The Integrated Bioscience Program Committee - oversees programmatic aspects of student’s program
Course Requirements
Before registering for courses, all newly admitted students should arrange a meeting with the Integrated Bioscience Graduate Committee Chair. The Integrated Bioscience Ph.D. requires a minimum of 80 hours divided between formal courses, colloquium, and research:
- Core courses (minimum) 9 credit hours
- Electives (minimum) 12 credit hours
- Colloquium 4 credits
- Research up to 55 credit hours
Total - 80 semester credit hours
Elective courses that satisfy particular areas are listed here
Plant/pollinator interations are the focus of Dr. Mitchell’s lab.
Three core courses (Research Techniques in Integrated Bioscience, Communicating in Integrated Bioscience and Problem Solving in Integrated Bioscience, as described below) are required for all Ph.D. students. The Research Techniques in Integrated Bioscience course will introduce and familiarize students to various bioscience laboratory techniques, such as PCR, DNA sequencing, cloning, gene expression, etc. (see below for more details). The second core course, Communicating in Integrated Bioscience, will be designed to introduce all the participating students to the major tenets of each participating sub-discipline. With the guidance of faculty mentors, each graduate student will be responsible for conveying the major tenets of his/her sub-discipline to the class. This will include lectures, discussions and reading of primary literature (papers designed for a broad audience, such as Science or Nature articles). In the final portion of this class, the students will group together into research teams to begin developing ideas on how to solve a complex bio-problem. The third course, Problem Solving in Integrated Bioscience, will then further develop the interdisciplinary groups organized in the previous course by forming teams to solve the complex bio-problem previously outlined (see below for more details).
In addition, students must take a minimum of 12 credit hours of elective courses (to be determined by Ph.D. Advisory Committee), and 4 semester credit hours of Integrated Bioscience Colloquium. The Integrated Bioscience Colloquium series will host seminar speakers that specifically use integrated approaches to bioscience research. No undergraduate course may be used to satisfy the Ph.D. course requirements. A maximum of 6 credit hours of 500-level courses can be applied to the Ph.D. degree course requirement.
Core Courses
Integrative Training
After the three core courses, the students will then take a minimum of ~4 elective courses (that their Advisory Committee will tailor to their specific needs) and thus will be again taught in the more traditional Ph.D. framework, their integrative training and interdisciplinary interactions will be strongly encouraged to continue. They will meet regularly for the Integrated Bioscience colloquium, which will continue their interpersonal connections outside of traditional departmental boundaries. They are required to devote at least one chapter of their dissertations to an Integrated Bioscience question, which again encourages continued contacts. They will attend receptions and other social events within the program, again continuing collaborations. But most importantly, they will have actively worked through a complex bio-question with a group of colleagues across diverse disciplines and will thus be emboldened to continue to take on such projects throughout their tenure in the Integrated Bioscience program. The intellectual stimulation of such interactions, combined with the realization that these types of interactions are paramount to their future success in bioscience-related careers, will motivate these students to pursue these research relationships throughout their Ph.D.
Breast Implant
The important difference between the Integrated Bioscience and the "traditional" PhD program is that we are not relying on simple coursework to train students to be “Integrated Bioscientists.” Rather, we are developing a new research framework that will mimic what is emerging in bio-science related fields: interdisciplinary interactions among researchers drawn from traditionally isolated research disciplines. What makes our program truly integrative is not only the courses, but also an Advisory Committee composed of faculty across 9 departments and 3 colleges, an explicit integrated component of the dissertation, and common participation in colloquia, symposia, defenses, and social events. The entire program will be devoted to establishing a different type of culture among incoming students that encourages interdisciplinary interactions from the base of their training and stimulates problem solving by drawing on intellectual resources of colleagues from disparate disciplines. It is this culture that allows us to produce functional Integrated Bioscientists which can adapt to the ever-changing world of bioscience.
