students. For our master’s students, these include: meetings each semester with their thesis committee, a
research prospectus that must be defended to their committee and to the department (during the Graduate
Student Prospectus Symposium), their oral preliminary exams, and the defense of their thesis. All M.S.
students also must enroll in BIO 501: Introduction to Science as a Profession, during their first semester in
residence. For Ph.D. students, these events include: annual meetings with their dissertation committee, a
research proposal that must be defended to their committee and to the department (individual departmental
seminar), their written and oral comprehensive exams, and the defense of their dissertation. Again,
students also meet with the Graduate Coordinator as needed to resolve any issues related to the program
requirements, as well as academic or personal issues. Alternatively, the Graduate Coordinator may contact
the student to schedule a meeting if certain benchmarks are not met or if their advisor feels that it is
appropriate to intervene.
d. GRADUATE STUDENT SUPPORT
Graduate Teaching Assistantships and extramurally-funded Research Assistantships
Most of our M.S. and Ph.D. students, and all who are not otherwise supported on federal
fellowships, are supported with either departmental teaching assistantships (TAs) or faculty-provided
research assistantships (RAs) for their entire tenure. Nearly all are also supported on faculty-provided RAs
during the summer. The department currently has 3 2 M.S. TAs to award at a level of $11,000 and 8 Ph.D.
TAs at a level of $19,000 for the nine month academic year (paid in 10 installments). Research
assistantships are generally paid at the same level during the academic year, but RAs may be paid at
increased levels during the summer months.
Each semester extramurally funded RAs support an average of 36% of all enrolled graduate
students (Table 6). However, RA funding appears to be dropping in recent years likely because of reduced
success rates of extramural grant applications. For instance, for the five-year period from 2008-2012 we
supported 43% of our graduate students with RAs, whereas in 2013 there was 26% RA support and in
2014 only 15% of our students were supported with RAs.
Table 6. Number of M.S. and Ph.D. TAs and RAs per semester during 200 8 - 2014.
Year Spring TAs Spring RAs Fall TAs Fall RAs
2008 34 5 37 13
2009 34 17 38 17
2010 37 17 28 18
2011 28 15 30 16
2012 32 14 38 (4) 14
2013 39 (2)^12 39 (4)^10
2014 39 (2) 3 39 9
*Additional TAs that were not part of our allocation from the Graduate School. TAs paid from
Department of Biology and Marine Biology part-time funds, IDC funds and other funds.
Adequacy of Number of Teaching Assistantships
We are currently using all of our available TA funds to support graduate students. In fact, since
2012 we have started to use additional money provided by the College of Arts and Sciences, beyond the
TA money allocated by the Graduate School, to pay graduate students to teach laboratories. We also must
hire additional part-time faculty to meet our instructional need for undergraduate laboratories. Our faculty
members remain committed to continuing their efforts to enhance the extramural funding of our M.S. and
Ph.D. students. However, we believe that we have reached a point where the continued growth of our
program will be constrained by the number of available TA stipends. For instance, it has become clear that
our goal of a Ph.D. program that sustains between 20-30 students each year cannot be attained without at