Core Education for Forestry Graduate Students at Northern Arizona University Thomas E. Kolb and Laura E.DeWald School of Forestry Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ, 86011-5018 Graduate students often learn research and teaching skills informally from experience and from mentoring by faculty and other students. These skills can vary considerably among students within the same degree program. At Northern Arizona University, the School of Forestry has designed three, required graduate courses that attempt to provide all graduate students with a core education in research and teaching skills. Our talk will discuss the objectives and implementation of these courses. The objective of the Research Development and Methods course is to prepare graduate students to conduct high-quality scientific research.
Students develop skills to define, plan, fund, conduct, and evaluate research.
All students prepare a detailed research study plan for their thesis or dissertation research that is improved by iterative peer review and revision. The objective of the Proseminar course is to improve student skills in the preparation and presentation of scientific talks and posters. Students are introduced to different approaches and technologies for preparing and delivering poster and oral presentations. All students make a poster presentation and an oral presentation based on their graduate research. Student peer reviews and evaluations by faculty are used to improve these presentations.