Achievement

The IGERT faculty put larger emphasis on the initial research lab rotations for incoming IGERT students. These rotations begin the summer before the start of their Ph.D. program and continue during the first semester. These rotations are valuable for several reasons: 1. They provide immediate exposure to research and publication, with many of the rotations providing a conference paper for the students. 2. We believe having Trainees publishing in their first year in graduate school is a powerful recruitment tool as well. We were very successful in recruiting new IGERT Trainees this year and some of that is attributable to measurable achievements by the current Trainees. 3. Trainees are more quickly finding dissertation topics and are more likely to attract follow-on funding with published results backing their projects.