These are recommendations that EEB members developed during our Ecology Group discussion: Statement must make an impact in a short amount of time: Committee members typically have about 5 minutes to spend on each statement during the first round of review (although will spend longer during subsequent rounds). Figures are good, so long as: There […]
PhD students
Lab policy: Figure formatting
Here are Global Change Biology’s guidelines for figure formatting. I recommend that members of Treseder Lab follow these as closely as possible.
Lab policy: Pre-reviews of proposals, manuscripts, and conference abstracts
Any research proposal I need to review and approve submission of any proposal that involves research, regardless of the funding agency or proposal length. Here are the reasons: 1. It will help you improve the proposal. In general, proposals that undergo a friendly review before submission to the granting agency have a better chance of […]
Lab policy: Two week turnaround time
Please allow me two weeks (i.e., 10 business days) to provide feedback on any writing, posters, or other material that you send to me. Letters of recommendation also require two weeks’ notice. You’ll need to plan in advance, because it essentially means that the hard deadline for any proposals, abstracts, etc is actually two weeks prior […]
Writing a review paper
These are notes from a lecture I gave to a grad writing class in EcoEvo at UCI. What is a review paper? Critical evaluation of published literature to develop new conclusions or insights Covers a general topic (> 100 papers) Targeted toward broad audience, especially students What is a great review paper? Evaluates the implicit […]
What you need to be competitive for a faculty position
Faculty positions are extremely competitive in ecology (and most other fields). It is not uncommon for 200+ people to apply for one opening. Most of these applicants are qualified, so if you want a faculty position you must establish a truly exceptional record. Here are some goals to reach if you would like to be […]
Dissertation preparation
Structure of the dissertation When you are preparing your dissertation, be sure to follow the formatting requirements specified by the Graduate Division of UCI. The earlier you apply the formatting, the better. You don’t want to be revising your dissertation at the last minute just to re-format it. Also, when you submit your dissertation to […]
Advancement to Candidacy and Dissertation Proposal
Characteristics of a good dissertation proposal A good dissertation proposal accomplishes a few important goals. First, it motivates you to organize and define your research plans for one or two potential chapters of your dissertation. Second, it allows your committee members to provide useful feedback on these plans. Third, it demonstrates to your committee that […]
Some common characteristics of high impact publications in ecology
•Solidifying emerging perceptions in a concept, opinion, or review paper •Developing a conceptual framework •Synthesizing ideas and knowledge from multiple disciplines •Overturning a common assumption •Developing a widely-applicable tool (e.g., a primer set or informatics pipeline) •Conducting a highly novel experiment (important element of scientific progress, but not always highly-cited) •Quantifying widespread effects from previously-published […]
What do you need to be a successful researcher?
Passion for science and research —By far, this is the most important. It will help you maintain your motivation even during challenging times in your career (which will be more frequent than you’ll expect). One way to protect your passion for your research is to select research topics that are important to you. They should […]