Student News: Two CPB students complete prestigious Professors for the Future fellowship

Population Biology PhD candidates Kyle Christie and Marshall McMunn were honored for their work as Professors for the Future fellows at the program’s annual symposium. Along with Kyle and Marshall, an additional 12 fellows from a variety of disciplines were also honored.

Professors for the Future fellows 2017
Professors for the Future fellows 2017

Professors for the Future is a competitive, year-long fellowship for PhD Candidates and Postdoctoral Fellows at UC Davis. Each year around 12 fellows are chosen to participate in the program. The program provides pedagogical and leadership training for fellows. This involves a Seminar on College Teaching, a course on Ethics and Professionalism in the University, retreats, and additional seminars. The core of Professors for the Future is the set of projects designed by fellows to improve the graduate and postdoctoral experience at UC Davis. These projects have ranged from organizing seminars on writing, developing a postdoctoral fellow research symposium, and training graduate students how to mentor undergraduates.

Kyle and Marshall teamed up to design and teach a R bootcamp for graduate students. The week before winter quarter began, the duo spent four days teaching the basics of working in R. Their bootcamp attracted an impressive 200 students from a wide variety of backgrounds on campus. These types of bootcamps are important as graduate students are often expected to know these computational tools, but their departments typically do not offer courses covering this material. By all measures, their bootcamp was a success.

Kyle Christie teaching R workshop
Kyle Christie teaching R bootcamp in January
Marshall McMunn teaching R workshop
Marshall McMunn teaching R bootcamp in January

On May 31st, 2017, fellows were honored for their service to the university. The ceremony was followed by a poster session where fellows described their projects to school administrators, faculty, and future fellows.

The applications for Professors of the Future are now closed for 2017-2018. The applications for the following academic will open in December 2017. To learn more about the program, and read about other fellow’s projects, go to this website: https://grad.ucdavis.edu/professional-development/professors-future

Post by: Easton White (eawhite@ucdavis.edu)

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