Research Experience for Teachers Reflections

I enjoy "Sharpening my Sword" during the summer.  For the last five summers I have been fortunate enough to be able to work with science graduate students at the University of Notre Dame.  These have been National Science Foundation (NSF) funded. Projects I've worked on include...

1.) Groundwater monitoring and protection. (NDeRC)
2.) Zebrafish eye development. (NDeRC)
3.) Biomass to biofuel catalyst research. (ND Energy RET)
4.) Optical trapping of nanoparticles. (ND Energy RET)
5.) Radionuclide interactions with the mineral environment. (ND Energy RET)

Each of these summer research experiences has been (or will be) translated into improving my curriculum and day to day teaching practices.  For other RET opportunities visit here.  

Being a part of these projects has broaden by science knowledge and made me much more confident in teaching a variety of scientific concepts, while gaining in my lab skills and exposure to different instrumentation and means of data collection.  While I find learning the content renewing, I am very interested in the graduate student-advisor relationship and communication.  It is enlightening to me to observe the processes of scientific inquiry in real time.  I wonder if there is such thing as "best practices" when it comes to grad student-faculty advisor interactions.

Here are some of my predictions of best practices of an advisor/grad student relationship...

1.) The advisor has a general awareness of what is going on in the lab. (Communicates with grad student 3-5 times a week).
2.) Having an experienced grad student in the lab (to help remove any small unnecessary obstacles).
3.) Advisor and grad student offices are physically near each other (to facilitate #1).
4.) Graduate students are encouraged to think out loud and describe the confidence they have in their data and experiments.

These would be some of the things I'd look for if I were to do a study on the advisor/grad student relationship.  This enlightens my teaching because I can use these ideas to enhance the scientific culture of my classroom.

I am trying to post to twitter daily with #ndret to give an overview of what I am doing.