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JeffREY L. REINKING, PH.D. |
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Biology Department |
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Junior Biology Faculty FAQ |
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Below are a series of Frequently Asked Questions and answers compiled by Biology Junior Faculty |
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Q: How do I get involved in Independent Study (Research)?
A: (JR) Short answer: Fill out a UARB
Long answer: Independent Study is a lot different than taking a normal class. You can’t just add the class after looking through the course catalog. Rather, it is a one-on-one arrangement with a faculty member where you work on a project. Although many different forms exist, I’ll primarily address the concept of undergraduate research projects. We believe it is very beneficial to do student research. Student research appears to be a current focus of the administration of the College as well. The projects will reinforce concepts you have learned in class, develop your trouble-shooting and critical thinking skills and very often results in an outstanding letter of recommendation. If you are interested in research, you will need to establish a relationship with a faculty member. Familiarize yourself with their research (typically available on the faculty profile). You will want to initiate contact with the professor and let them know about your interest. To get a better idea of what you are looking for, the faculty member may ask you to fill out a UAURB. If your application is successful they will let you know what kinds of projects they are working on that you might be able to work on. To begin working on your research you have a couple of options:
Summer research
Every summer, there is a community of undergraduates performing research at SUNY New Paltz. There are a handful of programs available that provide a summer stipend for a student (your faculty research partner can help you figure these out). Commitments range from 5-8 weeks, depending on the program. All of these are considered full-time employment , you should not be taking classes or be otherwise employed if you are in one of these programs.
Academic year research
You can also do research and receive credits toward your degree. Course options include:
BIO475 Biology Research Project 1 BIO476 Biology Research Project 2 BIO491 Senior Research in Biology BIO494 Fieldwork in Biology BIO495 Indep Study Biology Work study
Work study is not really intended to be for independent study. However, it is a great way to get your foot in the door and establish relationships with professors. The Biology Department hires several work study students every semester to support our laboratories (teaching and research). Please inquire if you have been approved for work study and are interested.
Research for Pay
Aside from the summer programs or work-study previously mentioned, the Biology Department does not currently have access to any excess funds that we can pay students (or graduates) to work for us in support or research capacities.
Q: What is the deal with the UAURB?
A: (JR) The UAURB is an acronym for the Unified Application for Undergraduate Research in Biology. This is a very simple application we are now asking students to fill out when they express an interest in participating in undergraduate research. The rationale for adopting the UAURB is two-fold:
1) At any given time, the Biology Department has ~200 majors. We have less than 10 full-time faculty. Obviously, this means we cannot possibly accommodate every Biology major that might wish to participate in undergraduate research. The supply-and-demand equation means that we sometimes have to be selective about which students we choose to do research with. The UAURB allows us to go about this in a way that is fairer than a simple first-come first served manner. For more insight into what makes for a successful UAURB, see below
2) Part of the UAURB asks that a student author a letter that basically states why they wish to do research. This is very similar in nature to the student-authored statement required whenever internal awards are applied for as part of the Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities (RSCA) Program. These awards include the Academic Year Undergraduate Research Experience (AYURE) awards as well as the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) awards. The deadlines for these awards tend to sneak up and often the student has to scramble to write their student statement during busy periods of the semester. If you have already filled out a UAURB, writing this statement becomes greatly simplified.
A: (JR) This is what we consider when we review your UAURB:
You are interested in research. We are most interested in students that are considering a career in research. We are less interested in students trying to improve the appearance of their resumes. We are not at all interested in students in desperate need of credits, or that are trying to avoid lab courses to graduate.
You have time to do research. Independent study requires 3-4 hours of work per credit hour per week, i.e. as many as 12 hours per week for 3 credits. If you have an overloaded semester or a part-time job, you will have periods during the semester where you do not have enough time to fulfill all of your research obligations. While the flexible nature of research allows you to invest time into research when time is plentiful, if you are constantly in a time crunch it rarely leads to thoughtful attention to your project.
You are available physically available to do research. Seems like a stupid thing to put in a FAQ, right? How can you do experiments if you are not in the lab? If you are carefully arranging your schedule so you only have to come to campus three days a week, this severely limits the time you can be in the lab Good scientists are “lab rats”, they seem to spend a lot of their free time in the lab.
Research will not put a strain on your other classes. We look for strong students to do research – students that have shown they can do well in their classes at SUNY New Paltz and also have the capacity to continue to do well with the added workload of a research project. In particular, students that do well in the laboratory components of classes and have shown the ability to read and follow protocols (essential for experimental research) . We do not want your other classwork to suffer as a result of doing research.
You are available for long-term research relationship. It takes a significant investment of time on the part of the faculty to train a student to work on our projects. Often it is not until the end of the first semester that a student is able to work semi-independently, and progress is much more rapid in subsequent semesters. Therefore, we are most interested in students that have the potential to work with us over the several academic semesters. What does this mean for you? If you are interested in research, begin inquiring early in your career at SUNY New Paltz. We are much less interested in students that wish to begin research in their last semester at SUNY New Paltz.
Q: What do I need to do for registration/advisement?
A: This stuff is all in the student Advising Handbook: http://www.newpaltz.edu/advising/handbook0708.pdf see page 34
Advance Registration for the next semester usually occurs at the end of the semester, typically in November for the spring semester, in April for the fall. Registration windows are based on seniority: students with higher amounts of accumulated credits get to register earlier in the week than students with fewer credits. Most of registration occurs online. You will not be able to register electronically without your PIN which you receive from your advisor, this is to make sure you meet with your advisor. It is HIGHLY recommended that students attempt to register as soon after your registration opening as possible. Available classes can disappear very quickly as new cohorts come online.
You will need to arrange a time to meet with your advisor. Advising season seems to open when the schedule for the following semester is released, typically a few weeks prior to the beginning of advance registration. Biology faculty have as many as 50 (or more) advisees. We typically place advising sign-up sheets outside our office doors to help accommodate students. It is not advisable to wait until the last possible moment to arrange advising, since this is a very hectic time for everyone. Unfortunately, it is eminently possible to lose out on your preferred classes if you are not sufficiently organized.
In advance of your advising session, the best possible preparation is to create a mock schedule, including a few alternate classes. This will act as a great starting point as you and your advisor map out your career. (JR)
Q: Why are Biology classes filled up by the time I am able to register?
A: (JR) The short answer is that as a department we are understaffed for the numbers of students that we service, essentially all of our courses (majors and non-majors) are filled to enrollment limits every academic semester. We have eight full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty in the Biology Department. Two of those have significant administrative duties and do not teach full course loads. This only allows us to offer so many courses and sections in a semester. We try to fill the gaps with lecturers, adjunct faculty and graduate TAs, but for many courses we do not have substitute teachers that are qualified.
Since pre-registration is based on the accumulated credits of the students, sometimes sophomores and freshmen are left with limited choices of courses that have not yet been filled when their pre-registration window is available. This is an incredibly frustrating situation for all parties involved. The long term solution to this problem is to increase the size of our Biology faculty – a request that we make to the administration every year. Feel free to put in a good word for us with either the Dean of the School of Science and Engineering and/or the Provost of the College so they are fully aware of the situation from the perspective of the students.
Q: I want to add a laboratory class that is fully enrolled. How do I get in?
A: (JR) We typically set enrollment in our teaching laboratories to full capacity to accommodate as many students as possible (see above). These are hard caps, there are no additional spaces left and we are typically at the fire code limit for the laboratory or at a limit based on available equipment. We cannot issue Permission of the Instructor (P/I) for these classes.
There is very little the faculty member can do for you in this situation, our hands are tied. Keep an eye on the class electronically, slots sometimes become available briefly as students rearrange their schedules. Another possible strategy is to attend the first class and let the instructor know that you wish to add the course. If anyone that has enrolled in the class officially drops before the add deadline, you may be able to get in. This is by no means guaranteed.
Failing this, you will need to try to take the class the next time it is offered, or work with your faculty advisor to see if there is a viable alternative.
Q: Do I need to buy the textbook for your course?
A (JR): First of all, if the instructor (either verbally or through the syllabus) says something like Students will be responsible for material from reading assignments or The textbook is required then you should definitely buy the text and read it!
Some upper division courses are pulled from multiple textbooks. We do not think it is fair to ask you to buy all the texts, so we typically list just one as the primary text. We also typically post our lecture slides on Blackboard. When we have extra copies of the text available, we place it on reserve at the library (and often solution manuals as well). Students that attend and pay attention in classes, take good notes, use powerpoint and library reserve resources and utilize faculty office hours to ask questions have been known to do very well in our classes using a previous edition text or even no text al all.
If you are not willing or able to utilize all of the above resources, have trouble following or attending the lectures, or need additional problems for practice beyond what is provided, then you should definitely get a copy of the text. I post text information on my faculty profile web page as soon as I make a decision about a course for students that wish to purchase texts online or through other sources. If you can’t find this information easily it never hurts to ask. When possible, we use the same text for multiple classes. If you immediately sell back your text when the class ends, you may have to buy it back later. For example, Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts et al. will used in both Basic Cell Biology (Waldo) and Basic Molecular Biology (Morrow)
A (JR) Here are some tricks that students try to employ that DO NOT WORK:
Retake a class that you passed to try to improve your grade. You got a D in Genetics with Waldo and decide if you retake it later on with Reinking, you’ll inevitably improve your grade, right? Wrong. We recently looked over the performance of re-takers in Genetics over the last several years. One third of the students actually received a lower grade, often failing the second time. Those students that did re-take the class improved on average by 0.4 of a letter grade. Averaged into a 120 credit degree, this improved their GPAs by 0.013 points. Not a dramatic improvement. This will certainly not offset the fact that a U now appears in your transcript. Graduate, Medical and other professional schools and employers will assume the U means you failed it the first time, and will often re-calculate your GPA using that assumption. If re-taking classes lengthens the time it takes to graduate or impacts your performance in other classes taken at the same time, then the devastating impact is multiplied further.
Register for more classes than you actually intend to take, attend them all for a few weeks and drop the one that you will anticipate doing poorly in. Cherry picking the easiest classes in this manner may seem like a good idea, right? Be Careful! If you drop the class after the first week, a W will appear on your transcript. A W is often treated the same as a U and assumed to actually be an F by schools and employers you may be applying to.
Maintain a required class where you did poorly as S/U status on your transcript and then switch back to a letter grade just prior to graduation. You got a D in Organic Chemistry and used the S/U option. You don’t want it to impact your GPA when applying for schools/jobs, but also need it to graduate. So, you wait until after you get the job or acceptance letter and then switch your grade to a letter right before graduation. Seems like a good trick, right? Wrong. Although you have temporarily inflated your apparent GPA, admission and Human Resources types will always look at your transcript in detail. They may assume the U is an F as above. They may also recognize that Organic Chemistry is a required course and realize you are trying to deceive them, which is even worse. Many professional schools will not even consider your application if you do not provide letter grades for core courses that are expected to be completed by your third year.
All of the above strategies work on the assumption that employers/admissions will only look at your GPA and not in any detail at your transcript. This is not the case, and the impact these strategies will have on your future is detrimental. Similar strategies that result in an S on your transcript are similarly frowned upon. Focus on your classes rather than try to play the system and it will serve you much better. |
