Thriving in Graduate School as an International Student: How to Combat the Hidden Costs and Barriers

International students face various hidden costs that pose potential barriers to thriving in graduate school. In this chapter, we lay out several types of hidden costs: (1) higher expenses and time needed for the international status, (2) adjusting to living in a new country and its cultural differences, and (3) biases and racism. We emphasize that the success and happiness of international students depend on the department and the committee’s understanding of these hidden costs. We highlight strategies that international students can take as well as point-by-point advice for the supporters of international students.

How real is real enough? Participant feedback on a behavioral simulation used for information-seeking behavior research

A challenge of studying information-seeking behavior in open web systems is the unpredictability of those systems. One solution to counteract this issue is employing a simulation to ensure experimental control. However, concerns arise over the realism of such an environment. This paper assesses the realism of a behavioral simulation used to study the evaluation behavior of 175 students from fourth grade through graduate school. We assess realism through the examination of targeted participant feedback about what would have made the simulated environment and tasks more realistic to these participants. Based on this feedback, we reflect on decisions made in designing the simulation and offer recommendations for future studies interested in incorporating behavioral simulation in their research design. We find that a thoughtfully designed simulation can elicit naturalistic behavior when the controlled environment is designed to be realistic in meaningful ways. Because the simulation does not have to perfectly match reality to elicit these behaviors, designing a simulation that is real enough is an effective method to study information-seeking behavior.

Comparative Evaluation of the Condition of Academic Graduate School (Middle 2000s – Late 2010s)

The main task of the article was to identify the dynamics of changing social characteristics of graduate students from research institutes of Novosibirsk Academgorodok. For the comparative analysis we used the data of polls conducted in 2005 and 2018. We compared such variables as the reasons for admission to graduate school, assessments of the current state of the main elements of scientific activity, the expectations of graduate students about their future profession, primarily a scientific career, criteria and factors of its success. Based on these results we planned to identify the main trends inherent in graduate studies as the main method of training personnel for Russian science. It is concluded that at present the system of training highly qualified scientific personnel in the country is in an unstable state. As a result, there is an active discussion in the professional community about ways of further reforming graduate school.

“Computational Thinking” From Pre-K to Graduate Studies to Life

If societies are to advance, they have to be able to harness the capabilities of their technologies in broad and efficient ways. One such technology is computation, writ large, which has crept into so many aspects of modern life. “Computational thinking,” as a bridge between people and computation-based and generalizable problem solving, is a multi-step approach that has seeped into pre-K through graduate school in formal (accredited) learning, nonformal (non-accredited) learning, and informal (byproduct) learning. This work explores what peer-shared open-learning resources are available for this approach based on a multi-channel search of the Social Web through social imagery, shared (digital) learning objects, shared slideshows, and social videos.

First person – Masashi Nambu

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Masashi Nambu is first author on ‘ Direct evaluation of cohesin-mediated sister kinetochore associations at meiosis I in fission yeast’, published in JCS. Masashi works in the lab of Ayumu Yamamoto at Faculty of Science, and Graduate School of Integrated Science and Technology, Shizuoka University, Japan, investigating the development of ‘direct’ evaluation of kinetochore association and the contribution of cohesion and its regulators.

Formation of Soviet Postgraduate Studies in History in USSR in 1930s: Legislative Regulation and Practice

The formation of the institute of postgraduate studies in history in the USSR in the 1930s is examined in the article. The sources used are published legislative acts, journalistic materials, archival data. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the proposed problem was often considered in the context of the history of scientific and scientific and educational institutions or exclusively through regulatory legal acts without taking into account the practice that actually existed and developed under the influence of the community of scientists. Using the materials of curricula for the training of graduate students of Moscow University, Leningrad University, the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as well as using the individual plans of graduate students, the author proves that the older generation of historians sought to integrate pre-revolutionary standards and mechanisms for training dissertation candidates into the new conditions of Soviet power. It is stated in the article that, despite the publication of numerous decrees, instructions, rules by government structures in relation to the institute of graduate school in the 1930s, there were no clear recommendations on the nature of the process of training scientific personnel. Supervisors of post graduate students, as a rule, themselves determined the scope of requirements for applicants. The author reveals the relative freedom of historians in determining the conditions and scientific criteria for entering the scientific community of neophytes.