Getting an IGERT begins with getting
your Group Together
“Any program we support must sacrifice.”
Yes, but if your university has any
program development funds, tell the
potentates in charge what you will
do for them.
Organization is free!
A group that gets along well
together is intrinsically valuable.
Students are better beggars than
faculty.
Peter Rabideau
LSU’s Macromolecular Studies Group was 15 years old when IGERT was written.
Try to get on a pre-proposal panel.
See if someone else from your team can
get on a full proposal panel.
Jelinski: “Good, now you will see all the
annoying things people do so you will know
how to avoid them when you write your own
proposal.”
Initial Impressions
• Huh? Training? Integrative?
• Another big science program
to suck money away from the
little guy.
• More $$$ for those fat cats at
Northwestern, UCLA & MIT.
• More social engineering.
• Wow! Only 8% indirect!
L U
Beginning to see the IGERT possibilities
Increased time for teaching research
Encourage high-risk research
Ameliorate risk by working in teams
Keep “small science” flavor in a big impact project
Increase exposure of our program
Provide a gentler learning curve for the difficult
subjects American students avoid…thus tapping a
huge pool of talent (a.k.a. bait and switch, but with
a purpose)
Fun
Does Grad School Need Change?
1970’s
Wilmer Miller
A person (and period)
worth considering.
“What’s an allen wrench?”
25 years later
Mission-oriented research.
“I don’t want to be like you.”
Apprentice-Artisan-Craftsperson Ladder
New craftsperson
Finishing school, or “predoc”
Community service
Minigrants
General exam
Artisan
Old craftsperson
New apprentice
Other Central Ideas, Some learned Post-Award
Faculty as active scientists.
Better than a bootstrap.
State schools often have a big advantage in IGERT!
Curiosity-driven science is OK!
Vector cross products of capabilities: what new
direction will the team go into that faculty
participants and their groups could not do
separately? The students become the agent
(arrow) of that vector cross product.
Research is a fun life, even for professors.
Creativity development.
Formative & summative evaluation.
In summary, IGERT’s Must Have:
1. Scientific Focus
Well….we barely have one. Encouraging anything
macromolecular worked for first round of funding, but
may not be good enough for a renewal.
2. New Graduate Educational Model
Draw on your own experience…but consider carefully other
organizations that train people well. Afterall, really
outlandish proposals place living students at risk.
3. Evaluation & Dissemination
Operating an IGERT
Getting students
Launching Students
Getting professors to change
Devising solutions to idiotic regulations
Writing nastygrams and love letters to administration
Managing 13 accounts
Hosting visitors
A larger role in university and state affairs
Creating Interdisciplinary Technology
Stepping aside gracefully
Recruiting: Three Initial Sources of Students
1. New arrivals to your department
2. Summer interns who maybe are or maybe
are not interested—no strings attached.
No summer intern program?
Write an REU site proposal!
3. The occasional new and fabulous applicants from
peer or better institutions—these will often leave you
for Florida, UCLA, etc.
4. A lot of first-generation college students tend not to
go so very far from home. You can get these, but …
More about Recruiting
Graduate student
recruiters with REU
student at
undergraduate fair
Rent Booth at National Meetings
Win National Football
Championship
All these help, but the most important thing is……
Feeder Schools: Better Sources of Students
Courtesy of our Advisory Panel
(copying the recruiting experts at USM)
Info
Minigrants work (sometimes)
Subject
Outcome
Grant-writing workshop
“PolyCommunity” non-profit corporation???
Langmuir imprinting
Supports NSF-CAREER grantee in new direction
Preliminary data for new grant at
Dupont/Univ. of Delaware
Grant submitted
Summer at NRL
Student quit graduate school !!!
Experimental flow test apparatus
Simulation expert built apparatus with own hands
Set of tools like that at SAXS line
Real tools in that lab
Manifold for organic synthesis
Badly needed manifold for organic reactions in a lab
where synthesis equipment was dated
SAXS at Tsukuba
2 students to Tsukuba, Japan
Travel to NIST for SANS
Students learn contrast matching—new capabilities
for that research. Survive the drive home after
snowstorm.
Build machine not commercially
available.
Still under consideration—likely will require cost
sharing plus teaching/outreach component.
Virtual Infrastructure is Better than None at All
Interdisciplinary Technology Example:
Database-driven Student Tracker
To-die-for IT Example: Internet Scheduler
Web Seminar Sign-up With
Negotiation & Adjustable Talk Length
Speaker
Day
Friday
Friday
Friday
Date
2/20/2004
2/27/2004
3/5/2004
(Enter your
Name:
First & Last
Names)
Research
Group
Type of
Seminar
Michael
Baylis
Russo
CT
changde
Zhang
Daly
CT
Elena
Loizou
Schmidt
CT
Erick Soto
Cantu
Russo
CT
Jianhong
Russo
CT
Derek
Dorman
Russo
CT
Hyuk Yu
Russo
FT
Title or Subject
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
Lipids and Dendrimers
Email
Polymer Scaling
Email
Current Trends at LSU
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Enfranchisement: involve young faculty more deeply.
Dissemination begins at home: developing other LSU IGERT’s
Strategy IS execution.
Student-led IGERT.
Cohort teaching.
Interdisciplinary Technology
–
–
–
6.
7.
Computer tools (some progress)
LSU administrative infrastructure (well…)
Staff support (well…)
Economic development.
Planning renewal with sharper scientific focus (with someone
else as PI, because dissemination begins at home).
IGERT Fellows—the next generation of IGERT PI’s—
practice running the show…in consultation with “old”
people. Leaders earn some special opportunities.
No, not West Point. West Point is for Weenies.
Impressions
How it
sometimes
seems students
want us to
teach them.
Leuven, Belgium
What they get from us instead
cavorite-lis
n
-fGET
tg/stores/d
communit
rate-item
cust-rec
just-say-no
true
m/justsay
1. “Well, I never thought I’d see a
professor weigh something out.”
2. Influenza minithesis, synthetic
polymer thesis.
3. Quitting graduate school with MS!
Mechanical Engineer and High School
Science Fair Judge…in Chemistry
1. Scope on a Rope school demos….now
going beyond that.
2. With a teammate, spent a 2 hours trying
to load tiny cell with high-surface tension
fluid. A craftsperson showed her how in 5
minutes.
Science & Technology in Service to the
Community
http://macro.lsu.edu/stsc
STSC class.
Teamwork meets its limits.
Problem 4. A few weeks ago, Professor George Newkome of the University of Akron
lectured on self-assembling hexaruthenium terpyridyl clusters. A sample molecule
appears below:
Shortly after his return to Akron, Dr. Newkome sent a related sample that we took to
Laboratorio Nacional Luz Sincotron (LNLS) in Campinas, Brazil, where small angle Xray measurements were made. You can download a typical SAXS data file at:


Does the presence of Ruthenium aid or interfere with SAXS?
Guesstimate the size of the molecule from the drawing above, using what you
know about C-C bonds, the diameter of benzene rings, etc.
 Analyze the SAXS data by the method of Guinier to obtain the radius of gyration,
Rg. There are 3 columns of numbers: q in inverse Angstroms, intensity I, and
uncertainty in I. For the present purpose, you can ignore the uncertainty.
 How does the Rg value compare to the "ring" diameter for this self assembly?
 Would you expect Rg from SANS to be the same, larger or smaller?
 Estimate the translational diffusion coefficient of the molecule.
 Do you think the real translational diffusion coefficient will be larger or smaller
than your estimate?
 Estimate the rotational diffusion coefficient of the molecule.
 Would it be possible to measure Drot by polarized (as opposed to depolarized)
light scattering?
 Would it make sense to do zero angle depolarized dynamic light scattering on the
molecule?
These data on a novel synthetic material are less than one week old so this problem
provides, just in time for summer, a natural transition to real research.
Integrative Training
•Visitor’s seminar
•Collaboration established
•SAXS trip to Brazil
•Analyze data for team exam
•All in one month
Integrative Training: Semester-long programming
assignment for inter-group research
Macromolecular Systems II, Homework #3 (shortened)
Our group and some others here are getting into DOSY and Prof. Butler
wants a friendly CONTIN, like our ANSCAN. Some translation is
needed, but of course the two programs are totally unconnected. Butler's
program is on a Mac (what else?) and gives output that looks like this:
PS2150_500_31_2
7.2122 ppm
Polystyrene containing MW standards of 500 and 2150
298 K
1.00000000E-03 % little delta (seconds)
1.00000000E-01 % big delta (seconds)
g(gauss/cm)
q^2(big_delta - little_delta/3)
expt_signal
6.65000000E-01
4.40750917E-02
1.00000000E+02
1.66200000E+00
2.75303652E-01
9.88369747E+01
2.65900000E+00
7.04671340E-01
9.57348015E+01
Some
header information (7 lines)
3.65500000E+00
1.33144949E+00
9.25603053E+01
Then: row after row of
4.65200000E+00
2.15689670E+00
8.80876912E+01
G (gauss/cm) Something
y(x)
(etc. you can download the whole file later)
Write a limber, easy-to-use program (a high school student should be
able to use it) that converts Butler's DOSY output to ANSCAN input.
Turn loose!
“If this is true, he is indeed
the greatest of men.”
King George, on hearing
that Washington had
voluntarily stepped down
from his position as
Commander in Chief at
the end of the War of
Independence.
George III
I is for Integrative
• Research, ethics and high standards can be taught by example
when faculty are still research-active.
• Research finds its way quickly to the classroom.
• Seminars & visitors that play off class, lab and research are
integrated with the evaluation/dissemination/recruiting efforts.
• Global experience that enhances E, R & T
• Interdisciplinary = vector cross products of research
• Infrastructure for interdisciplinary
• Students as teacher/researchers/leaders/inventors
• Teamwork
• Students learn by teaching (buzzphrase for this is cohort
teaching)
• The program itself is an experiment: it integrates physical
science with social science.
• Students gain (something like) business skills by running their
own IGERT.
• Dissemination & evaluation begin at home.

T is for Troubles
• Teams are HARD in academia. Try to learn from
pros in industry.
• Students can fool you; some are just in it for money.
• Faculty can fool you; some are just in it for money.
• IGERT’s can be perceived as an elite, protected group
by students with just as much talent but not IGERTeligible. Only solution: IGERT students must excel.
• Two-year funding limit.
• Faculty motivation.
• Assistant professor problem: can they afford
interdisciplinary activity?
• Change hundreds of years of academic tradition in a
five-year time span?
What I meant to say
•
•
•
•
•
•
The most fun I have had as professor.
Flexible $$$ for an important experiment.
Revolutionary or weird? Neither!
Better? Maybe.
Resonates with students.
Important.
We are happy to provide copies of the LSU pre-proposal,
full proposal, reviewer comments, this presentation, etc.
…But don’t blame us when it doesn’t work!