JHU Department of Biology Graduate Student Representative Council
May 16, 2006 Meeting
Attendance: Alex Ebie, Anna [Krueger] Allen, Aaron Stephan, Megan Mayerle, Jill Weyers
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Hooding Ceremony – Alex
Joan and Allen met last week with regards to the Hooding Ceremony planning. Alex met later with Joan since she missed the meeting due to illness. Joan and Alex talked about: o layout of the programs : include: list student names, thesis title and current preoccupation o handing out of the hoods:. the reps talked about these and suggested that the students actually be hooded (although they will not be in robes; this is in case some students opt to come to the hooding ceremony but not to walk for graduation) rather than handed their hoods. For the faculty to the students isn’t very ceremonious.
We also discussed whether the faculty had been told what they would be doing at the hooding ceremony and whether this was necessary. We agreed it couldn’t hurt to make sure. Alex will talk to Joan about this as well as determining if anything needed to be done that the reps could take care of…passing out programs, putting signs on the faculty and PhD student designated rows.
Email to students: each rep will send out a specialized email to their specific class reminding them about the hooding the ceremony next week tailored to each class. This email will include: (1) time and location with emphasis on short commitment, (2) include student list, and (3) plea for attendance to ensure continued tradition.
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Elective Courses – Megan
Meeting with Allen – Mentioned a Howard Hughes program for funding postdocs to teach undergraduates (something that falls outside the realm of grad rep interests).
Meeting with Karen Beemon – Karen’s looking into what the budget will allow for Postdocs to teach graduate courses. This will determine the marketing of the positions. Current thought: probably 1 class a semester seminar style possibly team taught for a couple thousand or so (ball park speculation figure, no basis for this amount).
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New Art in the Lobby – Anna
As mentioned in previously, Allen has been very supportive of the biological art contest.
Currently it’s looking like we’ll call for image submission in September and a winner announcement in October at the retreat.
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New Suggestion
It has been suggested from outside sources that our program doesn’t seem to effectively identify and help students who struggle in core courses. To break this down, these students need to be identified, given possible ways to improve, and encouraged to use these methods. o Identified: Probably the best and most likely would be self-identification.
Therefore, this was not discussed at length.

o Given possible ways to improve: It was brought up that it has been suggested students sit in on the undergraduate equivilant of the course they are struggling with. In some cases, however, these classes overlap with core courses, making it impossible to attend them. Making sure this doesn’t happen is an easy way to give possible ways to improve. Having a course book suggested allow with professors referring to sections in it for material review.
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Another way to create possible avenues of help: create a list of upperclassmen interested in providing one-on-one help as needed which students can contact for assistance. Megan, Aaron and Alex will look into developing this further. o Encouragement: There seems to be a stigma for students who sit in on other courses, and it shouldn’t be. First year students should be quickly encouraged to help themselves as though it’s commonplace. This can potentially be addressed by the Big Bros/Sis program Alex and Megan are working on.
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Class Meetings – Megan and Aaron
For notes for those meetings, see Appendix A & B
Next Meeting: June 6 th , 2006 at 1pm in the Mudd Grad Lounge.

Appendix A: Notes from 1 st year meeting with Allen Shearn and Karen Beemon
Suggestions from the 2005 First Year Biology Graduate Students
Molecular Biology:
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Having a book helped us understand each of the lectures better
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Having only one lecturer allowed us to expend less time adapting to teaching styles and more time learning the material
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The practice exams helped us know how to prepare for the exams
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We request that valid alternative solutions to exam questions be more readily considered in order to foster diversity in thought and scientific creativity.
Cell Biology:
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Most of the exam questions were good at testing our understanding rather than memorization skills.
 The “cheat sheets” did help us to review the material, but should not be necessary for use on the exams.
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Communication between professors could be improved. Their expectations of us varied greatly from professor to professor. Mainly, we received conflicting expectations about the level of details we should focus on.
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There should be at least a full day allotted between when homework is given out and when it is due.
Developmental Biology:
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The grants were the most helpful part of the class.
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Rather than receive a typed feedback from the professors on our abstracts and specific aims, we suggest organizing a meeting between the professor and the student to discuss the project in its early stages.
 It would help us to keep the professors teaching all in one block so that we don’t have to keep adapting to teaching styles
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The slides were much too detailed, and usually didn’t list the main conclusions from the figures. If the slides were less detailed our retention would be greater. At the end of the lectures, a slide with “5 main points” or “5 questions you should be able to answer” would help us to sort through the details to get the bigger picture.
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Having only one comprehensive exam did not work well for us. We suggest assigning homework on every paper, and discussing them in class.
Biophysics:
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We all agreed it was helpful to learn Chimera
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PowerPoint slides are very hard to learn from in this class. If they are needed, we ask that main point headings and captions be added so we can go back later and understand the slides.
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We need a clear application of each subject to biology. This was done sometimes very well, but was neglected other times.
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It helped us immensely when the professor would refuse to continue until we understood the concepts.

Appendix B: Notes from 2 nd year meeting with Allen Shearn and Karen Beemon
Teaching Responsibilities
Changing time of teaching: People brought up maybe teaching 2 nd semester 1 st year and 1 st
semester second year or some other variation to spread things out so a whole year isn’t totally shot. Karen seemed receptive, Allen discussed how hard it would be to implement the plan due to the overlapping semester with either too many or not
enough TAs.
Revisions to cell bio lab: The fact that the labs don’t measure anything and aren’t hypothesis driven was brought up, as was the point that the grading scheme doesn’t really sort out bright students from slower ones. In a nutshell, more thinking less drawing is needed. Beverly has expressed interest in helping to redesign the labs.
Also, changes to the format of the practice labs were discussed to make them more useful to the Tas.
Progress Reports
Attendance: People expressed frustration over the lack of faculty and upper level grad student attendance. Apparently there’s supposed to be some sort of penalty to the faculty if they don’t attend… Allen said he’d bring up the attendace issue at the
next faculty meeting. Poor attendance of Carnegie students was also mentioned
Order: There was talk of mixing up the order and changing things so people arent’ in alphabetical order by class. People thought it would be better and more varied if the
post-docs were interspersed with grad students
Feedback forms: I tried to pass off handing out forms to the faculty since we’ve had trouble getting people to take a form and fill it out. Overall, people seemed to think the forms were a good idea.
Taping talks: discussed and in the works -
Courses
Lack of Options: People discussed the lack of interesting courses and how there seem to be semesters where all the courses seem to focus on a single topic such as neuro or biochem. Allen mentioned that one of the main issues was a lack of competent to teach faculty members. Work done by the bioreps was mentioned.
Post doc courses: Was brought up and both Karen and Allen seemed to think it was a
good idea.
Core courses: Splitting biophysics and development into a basics and advanced level course was mentioned. Reworking other courses to make them more relevant was also mentioned
Other random things
Stipend increases: People expressed concerns about rising gas prices and BGE bills.
Most people seemed to think the stipend increase was totally adequate.
Procedure for bringing up grievances with your PI: There is a formal procedure for this that is detailed in our handbooks. Usually Allen has been able to resolve all
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conflicts without implementing the protocol in the handbook
It was suggested that Carnegie and Biophysics profs be included in the colloquiem series. This received a lukewarm response overall. Currently, Mudd faculty present
every 3 years or so
Systemitizing choosing a lab was discussed. For example, all students interested in a lab alrert the PI on Monday, final decisions are made on Friday. This way the PI

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would know how many students are interested in her lab and would take away the racing aspect to deciding to join a lab
Some procedural questions about GBOs were brought up and clarified
Updating the webpage was brought up. Putting the seminar schedule in an obious place was mentioned