Achievement

Our IGERT-developed courses are emerging as highly effective practices to help prepare graduate students to collaborate in areas that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. Students report that these are often their only classes to date (during 3 or more semesters per student) where they encounter topics, students, and faculty from beyond their home graduate programs. They value the exposure they obtain to the particular vocabularies and methodologies of fields beyond their own areas of expertise. To assist in this learning process, we ask faculty presenters to assign readings and start their presentations at an “intelligent layperson” level that lays the foundation for the more detailed subject matter they later present. Additionally, to prepare for these faculty lectures, we have in-field students prepare and present tutorials to their out-of-field classmates.