Building Scientific Thinking Skills. 2 Credit Hours

Catalog description

The goal of this course is to provide the opportunity for graduate students to develop critical thinking skills in reading scientific literature, writing scientific grant proposals and manuscripts, and effectively communicating their own scientific ideas with peers. The course will be offered in three consecutive stages. First, each student will be assigned a scientific article focusing on a topic in the areas of Microbiology and Immunology and will give a 50 minute review presentation to the class. The content of the article will be discussed and reframed in the context of a grant proposal, followed by questions/critiques from fellow students and faculty members. Second, each student will be guided to develop a F31-style fellowship proposal on their chosen topic. Students are encouraged to work with their mentors to develop the proposal focused on their own research. The writing is expected to complete over the course of four weeks, after which feedback is provided by peers and MIMG faculty before a final draft is submitted. Finally, each student presents an oral mock qualifying exam (QE) defense of his or her final written proposal to the class and a mock QE committee composed of MIMG faculty members. This course is different from many other writing courses because it is designed to achieve multiple purposes: 1. Since the proposal writing and defense portions mimic the process involved in the MIM discipline QE with MIMG faculty, this course will serve as a practice for the QE (though all MIM students must write an entirely original QE proposal for actual QE); 2. Since the scientific proposal is fully spelled out and written in the format for F31 fellowship application, the student may use the same proposal for his/her F31 application; 3. Since the proposal focuses on the research of the thesis project, the discussions/critiques from the class will help the student to evaluate the feasibility and significance of his or her potential thesis project before investing too much into the project; 4. Finally, the three stages of this course have a long lasting impact on scientific skill development.