Department of POP New Graduate Student Guide 2010
Welcome new graduate students to the Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and
Policy. Getting you settled in the department and the University of Florida includes numerous bureaucratic tasks and procedures. Since you will mainly work with very sensitive personal health information, it is important that you also meet all requirements to properly handle this information. Finally, there are some rules and etiquettes within the department.
The current students decided to create this guide for new students to assist you in getting settled in and to answer the most frequently asked questions right away. Please keep in mind that this guide is based on previous experiences and requirements can change. Accordingly, this guide is not meant to be exhaustive, so you need to keep an open mind and ears. After all, it is still your responsibility to fulfill all necessary steps and procedures.
Linda Orr: As soon as possible, provide her with your address & telephone #,
Copy of your Social Security Number
Room 3334, 3 rd floor (SSN) card , if you are an international student and don’t have one, linda@cop.ufl.edu
check in the international student paragraph to find out what to do; most importantly your bank account information
Linda will provide you with a key to your office/graduate student office. If you will be a graduate assistant (TA), with the numerous people and departments involved in setting up your payroll, our experience is that it can take 6-8 weeks for the first paycheck to be deposited to your account. So please be prepared to have your expenses (e.g. rent and food) covered until the first paycheck arrives.
Melanie will give you the necessary paper work to get your Gator One Card, with those papers you have to go to Shands Room 1111 (across from the food court). Your Gator
One card is your primary tool on campus to identify yourself and use the University amenities, for example you can ride the bus for free with it, get access to the various gyms and recreational facilities on campus but you will also be able to have after hour access to the College of Pharmacy in case you plan to pull all-nighters.
Lisa Fowler: Schedule, please create each semester a class time schedule (see attached excel file) and e-mail it to Lisa so she has
Room 3334, 3 rd floor an overview to schedule department-wide meetings. Please send fowler@cop.ufl.edu
that schedule to Lisa as soon as you have determined which classes you will be taking.
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After hour access is only possible through the center door in the front courtyard. On your right is a slide through card reader to open the door. Take your Gator One card in your right hand, with your thumb on the picture and slide it slowly.
You have to go to the International center upon your arrival to the university and get a new I-20 visa form (Linda has to provide you with some forms for this, so please check with her first). You need to make sure it is signed (on the back bottom) to be able to travel in and out of the country. This signature has to be renewed ANNUALLY , make sure that the signature is valid for at least 4-6 weeks when you plan to reenter the country; otherwise you could run into problems when reentering.
If you do not have a SSN you need to go to the SS Office with documents also provided by Linda, your Passport/Visa and I-20 to apply for a SSN. However, you cannot do that within the first 10 days after entering the country. More information you will find here .
You always have to provide the Dept. of Homeland Security with your current address.
You can do this online .
With an F-1 visa you are usually only allowed to work 20 hours per week during school time and 40 hours during break weeks and summer. Your Teaching assistant (TA) assignment is already 13.3 hours. These numbers might vary for each individual, but make sure you are aware of the hours you are allowed to work and that you are compliant to these for each individual week. Being NOT compliant can be a reason for termination of your visa.
Every student has to create and use a GatorLink account; this is each student’s computer network identity at the University of Florida. You will need this to access your
UF email account, wireless networks on campus, myUFL, e-learning and ISIS.
Remember that you also create your professional email account here. So you should use an appropriate login/email address, for example your first name initial and then directly your last name (e.g. for Peter Foster; pfoster@ufl.edu). You will not be able to change your email address later.
All communication within the University and department has to go through this
“relatively” safe UF internal network. Recently the university has allowed other colleges to forward their GatorLink E-mails to other accounts (e.g. G-mail), but we are NOT allowed to do so, because of the sensitive data we are working with. Also any e-mail communications regarding classes you work for as a TA is considered sensitive as well, especially student grades. While e-mailing information from one UF e-mail account to
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Department of POP New Graduate Student Guide 2010 another is considere d “relatively” safe, if you have to e-mail grades or sensitive research data you HAVE to encrypt it (more information on this later). Try to avoid this if possible and just walk with a (secure, i.e. encrypted, yes, it is a hassle but you can get into big trouble in case of a security breach, the emphasis is on “big”) thumb drive or hard drive to the person if you can.
For students provided with office space, you will get the office key from Linda, it will work for our printer room (Room 2310, around the corner) as well as the new space in room 2320.
Please always make sure, that if you are the only person in the office and leave, to turn off the lights and CLOSE the door(s). The doors can only be opened with a key and our stuff is protected. If you think you will be the last graduate student to leave the office for the day, please also turn off the lights and close the door of the printer room.
Do not make your belongings unnecessary accessible (e.g. cell phone, wallet etc.) in the office. Until now, we have been lucky and nothing has disappeared, but as we say in Germany; opportunities make thieves.
You can contact the graduate student representatives for desk assignments and they will provide you with a key for your desk and a cabinet for your files right next to your desk. Make sure that you lock all your belongings and sensitive paper work in the desk drawer when you leave the office. For example, you may wish to leave your laptop running on the desk at all times during regular office hours, but at least lock it away in your desk if you leave it over night. When you leave your laptop running on your desktop, please make sure to lock it with password protection when you leave the room.
We have a refrigerator and microwave for your convenience in the printer room. With so many people using the graduate student office, printer room, refrigerator and microwave, please leave everything at least as clean as you originally found it. If you find it dirty, please show some initiative and enthusiasm to clean it up or notify the graduate student representatives. That also counts for the shredder; we have plastic bags available to replace full ones. If you come across a full shredder, please take out the full bag it, knot it tight, put in a new one and leave the full bag on the hallway outside the room to be picked up.
With continuous budget cuts throughout the University, the use of expensive toners and supply of paper is limited and we have developed a “printer etiquette” to conserve toner and paper. Our use of resources is being monitored, so please keep this etiquette in mind so we do not get further restrictions on printer use.
Printer Etiquette: Only print material relevant to those research projects that you are working with our department’s faculty or the classes you teach!
You should not use the printer for personal use (e.g., classes you are taking as a student). If you print a pdf document, often the first page is unnecessary and the last
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Department of POP New Graduate Student Guide 2010 several pages often consist of references, which you may not need depending on the project. If you do not need these pages, you can select to only print the pages needed in the print window (“file” -> “print” instead of just hitting the printer symbol). Here you can also select to print more than one page of the document on one piece of paper
(highly recommended). If you want to print handouts from PowerPoint slides with dark background, you can change the background to white and after saving, print the slides to conserve toner.
When you do not need printed out papers anymore , please deposit it in the “reuse recycle bin” (next to the printer) and remove all staples. This way we can reuse the blank side of the paper. Please make use of this scratch paper! Make sure that you do
NOT do this with sensitive material (e.g. student grades, facilitator guides, exam keys and personal health information). Make sure you use the shredder upstairs in the copy machine room (Room 3323, 3 rd floor). If you print sensitive material, make sure you pick it up right away and do not let it lying around on the printer (e.g. facilitator guides for your TA assignments) since the door is often open during the day.
There is one computer in the printer room for every graduate student to use. You need to contact David Hemond david@cop.ufl.edu
from the IT department, to get a WebAsyst account to access these computers. The WebAsyst account will also be necessary to log into COPShare . The printer room computer is ONLY meant to give you access to special software you might need (e.g. SPSS, SAS, etc.) and to provide you with about
100MB of secure backup space for your important documents, research results and later your dissertation. Technically these data are actually stored on a server which is secure and a backup is created on a daily basis. You will not be able to install any software on these computers. If you unavoidably need any software installed for your work or research, please contact Dr. Segal . This computer should not be used for personal use. You should be using your personal laptop for almost all your work.
CLOSE the door of this room after you when there is nobody but you in there!
Install the Office Printer:
→Control Panel→Printers→Add Printers→local printer→create a new port→standard
TCP/IP port→enter Port 10.15.106.59 (new in 2010!) Name HP LaserJet P3005 PCL6
If you are interested in health care provided by UF, you can enroll in GatorGradCare , please check out the respective website. If you are going to be appointed as a
Graduate Assistant for both the fall and spring terms, it is recommended that you enroll in the annual plan. Basically you have to go to the UF Infirmary first (gate keeper), except in emergencies. For international students, once you got the confirmation email, please forward the e-mail to insurance@ufic.ufl.edu
, otherwise there will be a hold to sign up for classes for you.
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When you complete each of these trainings, please print the certificate twice, give one copy to Linda and keep one for your records:

You need to complete the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(1996) (HIPAA) training for researchers, and repeat it on an ANNUAL basis (you might want to put this in your outlook calendar). HIPAA

If you work with SSNs you will have to complete a special training, this is a onetime training only. SSN Training

Sexual Harassment training, every UF employee has to complete this training within the first 30 days of employment. To find more information and to complete, please visit myUFL > My Self Service > Training and Development
This has to be renewed at least every 2 years.
Tax deadline to submit your tax forms is always April 15 th . Usually the university provides a free tax form program for international students.
In ISIS, you can browse and sign up for the different courses that you choose to take.
Especially on the graduate students level not all classes will be listed on ISIS, often because there are prerequisites for them. To sign up for these classes and get information about their content (syllabus), you have to email the instructor.
Keep in mind that the department requires you to get approval from your advisor before registering for classes each term.
If you will be taking an independent study course offered by the department, you must receive approval from the supervising faculty member. These courses are departmentally controlled so you will not be able to register for them yourself through
ISIS. Please use this Independent Study Form and make sure you submit the form to
Bruni with the appropriate signatures well before the end of class registration.
Make sure that you sign up in time for your classes and that you pay your tuition fees in time. A late fee of at least $100 applies otherwise! You can calculate how much Tuition fee you have to pay per semester here . Most students have to sign up for 9 credits during fall and spring and for 6 per summer (class and/or independent studies credits).
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The number of credits may differ depending on your source of funding.
You will mainly use your personal laptop for your work, but you will use it within the UF network and therefore have responsibility for its security. To quote Lane Blanchard
(Head of the COP IT Dept.) ”See your computer as an investment for your education and not your personal toy”. Therefore, install only programs necessary for your work to keep your computer secure and stable. P2P software (e.g. eDonkey) is NOT permitted as well as any other file sharing software. UF provides you with some free software , especially REQUIRED to install is McAfee Virus scan software. Additionally you can use your windows firewall (I for example use Zone alarm, because it is good and free).
You have to make sure you always have all important updates installed for all programs or the UF network will reject your request to log on.
You have to store all sensitive data, again research and classes, encrypted on your personal computer. Private Health Information (PHI) is ONLY allowed to be stored on your personal computer IF specifically instructed to do so by your supervisor on a specific project and IF it will be stored encrypted. Mostly, this kind of data will be stored on our secure servers. For encryption, you can buy a program called PGP (preferred), which costs about $120. As an alternative, Windows Vista Ultimate has a built in encryption software. You can buy as a student Vista Ultimate and Microsoft Office for less than $10 each at the Reitz Union bookstore. You need to bring a printed and signed Microsoft license agreement and a copy of your last paycheck for that.
You should use the whole disk encryption option which takes a few hours to set up but does not slow down your computer afterwards.
Back Up your data!!! It is recommended to buy an external hard drive (they are not very expensive anymore these days) and back up your entire computer once a week! There actually have been graduate students in the COP who lost their dissertation close to completion because of computer failure or theft.
Use encrypted and password protected thumb drives and external hard drives if you have to transport sensitive data (assuming you are allowed to do that).
In general, your computer has to be password protected, LOCK your desktop when you leave your desk and set the computer to lock automatically after a few minutes.
If you have questions concerning the network or security you can go to the IT department (Room 4310, 4 th floor, the door with the key code lock). Please keep in mind, their job is to maintain the college computers and network, NOT your personal computer.
You will coordinate your classes and the classes you teach (if you will be a TA) via Elearning (you might want to bookmark this in your Internet browser). You will find there also under “Tips and Tutorials” help to work more efficient with this website.
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The Health Science Center offers free classes on most computer programs you will be using for your daily work (e.g. Word, Excel and Access). You might want to check this site out to see if there are any classes offered that you might be interested in. You can also take a look at handouts of classes offered, in case you just want to read up on some things. HSC IT Training
On the third floor, Room 3323, is a copy/scanning machine. You will be provided with an individual PIN to copy/scan work-related material by Melanie . Please keep in mind that this machine is leased and the department pays for it PER copy/scan. So please prevent unnecessary copying/scanning.
During fall and spring, we have two important and mandatory weekly meetings: seminar where everybody from the department or external speakers present their research
(each student is required to present at least once per year at seminar). Usually on
Friday afternoons, we also have journal club, where one student presents a journal article (everybody has to read it of course). These occasions are mandatory; please contact Dr. Kauf (Seminar) or Dr. Winterstein (Journal Club) if you cannot make it.
If you want to travel to school by car, please check out the Parking Services website.
If you attend UF, you have to show proof of certain immunizations when you start here.
Please check the Student Health Care Center webpage and take care of this ASAP.
You will NOT be able to register for classes until you have fulfilled this requirement.
For presentations at professional conferences, you can print posters at the architecture lab in good quality and below $10.
Within the first couple of weeks in the department, you are expected to set up appointments with each member of the faculty individually. The easiest way is to go to
Bruni and coordinate the appointments with her since she has access to most of the faculty’s schedules. Before you meet with faculty, you should think what areas of
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Department of POP New Graduate Student Guide 2010 research would interest you and read through that faculty’s online information. If you find areas of mutual interest, you should look at some of the published research of that faculty member on PubMed. Soon after meeting with all faculty members you should select a temporary advisor.
Additionally some UF general information for new employees
Wow, this “basic” guide for new students has become quiet long! I hope we have not scared you away or made you fall asleep! In our department everybody has an open door, so do not hesitate to ASK if you have questions!!!
Many off the topics above and deadlines will be announced via e-mail as well. You will get a lot of campus and college wide e-mails, which can be annoying at times, but make sure you check every e-mail thoroughly before you discard it, often times important information gets communicated this way and unfortunately lost as well.
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