US science and engineering graduate students increase in number

Physics Today ◽  
2010 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Science And Engineering

scholarly journals Monitoring the compliance of the academic enterprise with the Fair Labor Standards Act

F1000Research ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 2690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Bankston ◽  
Gary S. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Department Of Labor ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Postdoctoral Researcher ◽  
Fair Labor

Background: On December 1 2016, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) will be updated by the U.S. Department of Labor. The key changes are an increase in the salary threshold for exemption from overtime for working more than 40 hours per week, and indexing the salary level so that it is updated automatically every 3 years. This update is predicted to have a profound effect on the academic enterprise as a large proportion of the postdoctoral researcher population is currently paid at a salary below the new threshold for exemption. Here we review the key changes to the FLSA, how they came about, and how the postdoctoral population is affected by the ruling. Methods: We describe recent data collection efforts (checking university websites and contacting HR departments) to uncover what institutions in the 2014 NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering are doing to comply with the FLSA ruling for postdocs. Results: Our data show that 41% of the estimated postdoctoral workforce in STEM and 57% of institutions checked have not decided or have no public decision yet available one month prior to implementation, and only 35.5% of institutions are planning to raise salaries to the new minimum. Conclusions: Our data show the uncertainty of postdoc salaries in the U.S. one month prior to implementation of the FLSA ruling. This implementation also gives rise to various issues that have arisen in an already strained research enterprise, including short-, medium- and long-term effects on academe.

Science Outside the Lab: Helping Graduate Students in Science and Engineering Understand the Complexities of Science Policy

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 861-882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bernstein ◽  
Kiera Reifschneider ◽  
Ira Bennett ◽  
Jameson M. Wetmore
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Science And Engineering

scholarly journals Patterns in plagiarism and patchwriting in science and engineering graduate students' research proposals

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Vieyra ◽  
Denise Strickland ◽  
Briana Timmerman
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Scientific Writing ◽  
Graduate Schools ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
Insight Into

As part of a larger study, written research proposals were collected from 115 science and engineering master’s and doctoral students and reviewed by SafeAssign™ with approximately one-third of them containing sentences that were plagiarised as previously reported in Gilmore, Strickland, Timmerman, Maher and Feldon (2010). (We use the term plagiarism, but do not imply any intentional deceit by the students.) Here we report on the patterns of plagiarised material in the hope that it will contribute to the growing awareness of the problem of plagiarism in graduate schools as well as provide insight into the causes of plagiarism. Instances of plagiarism were coded as to 1) the type of source material (primary, secondary, technical, or popular literature), 2) the nature of the inappropriate use (directly copied, a few words changed, minor grammar alterations, or attempted but insufficient paraphrasing), 3) where in the proposal (introduction, methods, results, or discussion) the plagiarism appeared, and 4) whether or not the plagiarised information was cited and if it was, whether or not the citation was accurate. Plagiarised text was found in 28% of the proposals. Clustering of certain patterns of behaviour, such as directly copying material from popular literature while paraphrasing information from primary scientific literature, were examined in an attempt to gain insight into the cause of the plagiarism. It is our interpretation that the source of the plagiarism was a lack of familiarity with scientific writing as a genre and lack of awareness of its norms and conventions.

Measuring the Advising Alliance for Female Graduate Students in Science and Engineering

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic R. Primé ◽  
Bianca L. Bernstein ◽  
Kerrie G. Wilkins ◽  
Jennifer M. Bekki
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Science And Engineering
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