• Grad Students Take Top Entrepreneurial Prizes in Student Competition
• News for Graduate Staff Holding Academic Year Appointments
• Why Graduate Students Succeed or Fail
• Graduate Faculty Mentor Workshop
• Ismail Travel Grant Recipients
• The Graduate School Draws First CGS Survey Winner
• Provost's Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentors
• Chappelle Fellowship Winners Announced
• Meet the New PGSG Officers
• Important Dates

A team developing a test that will aid in cancer management therapy and a startup cosmetics company with a line of organic soy-based beauty products took the top prizes in Purdue's 19th annual Burton D. Morgan Entrepreneurial Competition.
IV Flow LLC won the top $30,000 prize in the Gold (graduate) Division of the business plan presentation contest, which took place at Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship on February 17, 2006.
Mike Golebrowski, a second-year Krannert School of Management MBA student, made the winning presentation. He explained the chemistry and technology of injecting a fluorescent dye into a cancer patient's bloodstream to get faster, more accurate counts of circulating tumor cells. Team member Wei He, a doctoral candidate in chemistry, devised the technology. The third team member, Yuehui Ouyang, is a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering.

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Provost Sally Mason and Executive Vice President and Treasurer Morgan Olsen have announced that the payroll arrangements for faculty, staff and graduate students paid on academic year appointments will change as part of the implementation of the OnePurdue project.   The current payroll practice of ten-month salary payments during the academic year and biweekly payments during the summer cannot be continued using the automated process being implemented with the SAP software.   Purdue's campuses have varying calendars, multiple summer session schedules and fluctuating days in pay periods that also contribute to the difficulty in working in a truly automated system.    This change does not impact faculty, staff, and graduate students paid on twelve month, or fiscal year appointments.  

A new book, Three Magic Letters: Getting to Ph.D. by Michael T. Nettles and Catherine M. Millett (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), presents the results of a ten-year study of more than 9,000 graduate students at twenty-one research universities.   According to Inside Higher Ed (retrieved February 16, 2006), these are the salient findings of the book:

• More than 30 percent of all graduate students never feel that they have a faculty mentor.
• Two-thirds of graduate students enter Ph.D. programs without any debt, suggesting that those concerned about expanding the pipeline to graduate education should pay attention to the affordability of undergraduate education.
• Students rate their social interaction with faculty members as high in the engineering, sciences, mathematics and education -- and relatively low in the social sciences and humanities.
• In rating the quality of academic interactions, students in the humanities think highly of their professors while those in the social sciences and math and science are more critical.
• Significant gaps exist in the experiences of minority and female graduate students -- from admissions to getting teaching or research assistant jobs to publishing research while still in graduate school. Generally, these gaps do not favor minority students.

Here's the link to Inside Higher Ed for a full review of this important book:

More than 35 faculty attended the Graduate Faculty Mentor Workshop on February 1, 2006.   Faculty had the opportunity to hear from three experienced and successful Graduate Faculty Mentors: Professor Ourania Andrisani (Basic Medical Sciences), Professor Joseph Francisco (Chemistry), and Professor William Harper (Health and Kinesiology). Click on the links below for their tips on effective mentoring of graduate students.

Ourania Andrisani, Basic Medical Sciences

Joseph Francisco, Chemistry

William Harper, Health and Kinesiology

Three current graduate students also presented at the workshop.   Devon Durkee (Food Science), Hayden Olenik (Nuclear Engineering), and Dan Scanlon (Foreign Languages and Literatures) stressed the importance of effective, supportive mentoring in their own careers as students.

The A. H. Ismail Interdisciplinary Program Doctoral Research Travel Award competition provides funds to assist students in the presentation of their doctoral research at a national or international conference. This year's winners include:

Merlin Ariefdjohan, Foods and Nutrition
Yin Ling Cheung, Linguistics
Matthew Churchfield, Aeronautics and Astronautics
Baratunde Cola, Mechanical Engineering
Christy Gliniak, Foods and Nutrition
Anna Klopot, Foods and Nutrition
Phoi-Tack Lew, Aeronautics and Astronautics
Mane Muharrem, Aeronautics and Astronautics
A Nusawardhana, Aeronautics and Astronautics
Xiaojuan (Joanne) Ren, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Katrina Triezenberg, Linguistics
Mary Qu Yang, Electrical and Computer Engineering

In 2005, the Graduate School started a collaborative effort with the University of Notre Dame in response to an RFP from the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). The goal of this effort is to study the national issue of Ph.D. attrition. The project is funded for six years, three years from CGS and three additional years by the Graduate School.

A total of 14 departments from each institution were selected for evaluation based on their similarities in academic responsibility. The 14 departments include: Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, English, History, Philosophy, Biological Science, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. These bi-annual survey consists of three basic components: a departmental survey, repeated surveys of a cohort of new graduate students, and an evaluation of peer mentoring.

This semester, 61% of eligible Ph.D. students completed the survey. Of the 190 respondents who completed the survey, a winner was declared from a random drawing by the Graduate School for an award of $1,000. This semester's winner was Moiz Diwan of Chemical Engineering. Diwan accepted his award on February 6, 2006 at a luncheon with John Contreni, dean of the Graduate School, and Arvind Varma, head of the School of Chemical Engineering, and his major professor.

Two $2,500 awards were presented by the Graduate School at the 2006 University Honors Convocation on April, 9 at the Elliott Hall of Music. This year's winners include Anil Bajaj, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and David Nichols, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology.

The two recipients were chosen from a total of 12 nominees. Nominees for the Provost's Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentors must meet the following criteria:

• Current graduate faculty member on the West Lafayette campus
• Nominees must demonstrate sustained and significant contributions to graduate education through activities such as:
  • Well-structured relationships with students that lead to successful completion of masters and doctoral degrees. These relationships include service on committees, mentoring, funding, intellectual and creative support, advocacy, and respect for students
  • Innovative graduate teaching
  • Significant administration of graduate programs

For more information, please visit http://www.gradschool.purdue.edu

Chappelle Fellowship Winners Announced

The Charles C. Chappelle Fellowship provides a one-year fellowship to students with undergraduate degrees from Purdue for the furtherance of post-graduate research at Purdue University. Chappelle Fellows are selected on the basis of character, intellectual ability, and promise of degree attainment. The Chappelle Fellowship provides a stipend, Graduate Tuition Scholarships, payment of most fees, and a medical insurance supplement.

The recipients of the Chappelle Fellowship for this year include:

Behnam Arjomandi - Agricultural Economics
Dennis Chan - Mechanical Engineering
Meghan Darling - Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
Dawn Gordon - Aeronautics and Astronautics
Daniel Guildenbecher - Mechanical Engineering
Juan Ramirez Jr. - Mathematics
Robert Schneider - Mechanical Engineering
Brandon Stutzman - Civil Engineering
William Walton -  Civil Engineering
Gregory Wilson - Aeronautics and Astronautics