Miscellaneous Useful Information for Graduate Students

Department Staff whom Graduate Students may interact with:

Last Name	First Name	Title	Description
Bell	Trish	Program Mgmt Spec	Chair’s Asst; Security (keys/alarms) liaison; Parking liaison; Dept conference room scheduling
Brooks	Charlene	Program Mgmt Spec	Supports Cognitive and Neural Systems Program
Chan	Tony	Elect Tech III	IT Coordinator
Coldren-Walker	Julia	Admin Asst II	Supports Clinical program; Supports Social, Decision, and Organizational Sciences Program
Gorham	Carol	Asst Director	Oversee Administrative side of graduate program
Haque	Enamul	Coordinator	Facilities & Procurement
Henry	Merle	Admin Asst II	Supports University of Maryland Psychology Clinic; Procurement
Leffson	Joanne	Coordinator	Personnel & Payroll issues including fellowships
Liden	Bill	Business Manager	Post Award management (Contracts & Grants); Approves travel on external funding sources
Lockwood	Ellen	Admin Asst II	Supports Counseling Psychology program; Supports Developmental Psychology program
Malone	James	Business Services Specialist	Human Subject Payments requests; Reimbursement requests
Payne	Terry	Program Mgmt Spec	Graduate forms; Update graduate mailing lists
Schmidt	Kim	Director of Admin Svcs	Oversees Administrative & Financial aspects of the dept; Approves travel on internal funding sources
Tabor	Meredith	Coordinator	Pre Award management (Contracts & Grants)

Things to Remember

Employment:  Many of you are supported on graduate assistantships.  Remember these positions are 20 hour commitments.  Any additional position is considered overload and a Graduate Student Overload Assignment Request form must be submitted and approved prior to beginning work.  Also remember during the academic year you may only receive an overload for an additional 10 hours. 

Human Subjects:  The Institutional Review Board (IRB) is a committee designated to help assure the protection of the rights and welfare of human subjects. The IRB approves the initiation of and conducts periodic reviews of research involving human subjects. Investigators also share the responsibility for protecting human subjects.  All proposed research that involves (1) intervention or interaction with human subjects, (2) the collection of  identifiable private data on living individuals and/or (3) data analysis of identifiable private information on living individuals requires review and approval by the IRB prior to the initiation of the research.

Animal Subjects:  The University of Maryland Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) is responsible for the review and approval of all proposed uses of live vertebrate animals in teaching and research. IACUC activities are mandated by the U.S. Animal Welfare Act and U.S. Public Health Service Policy.

Travel:  Per University of Maryland policy all travel must be pre-approved.  If you receive travel support, you must submit a Travel Approval Request BEFORE you travel.  (Check out the Goldhaber Travel award from the Graduate School.)

Graduate Student Teaching Experiences Improve Research Skills

A recent article published in Science demonstrates relationship between teaching and development of research skills in graduate students.

Here is the reference and abstract of the article:

Feldon, Peugh, Timmerman, Maher, Hurst, Strickland, Gilmore, & Stiegelmeyer (2011)
Graduate Student Teaching Experiences Improves Their Methodological Research Skills. Science, 333, 1037.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students are often encouraged to maximize their engagement with supervised research and minimize teaching obligations. However, the process of teaching students engaged in inquiry provides practice in the application of important research skills. Using a performance rubric, we compared the quality of methodological skills demonstrated in written research proposals for two groups of early career graduate students (those with both teaching and research responsibilities and those with only research responsibilities) at the beginning and end of an academic year. After statistically controlling for preexisting differences between groups, students who both taught and conducted research demonstrate significantly greater improvement in their abilities to generate testable hypotheses and design valid experiments. These results indicate that teaching experience can contribute substantially to the improvement of essential research skills.