T32 Informal Seminars

Dr. Thurston organizes a “T32 informal seminar” to augment the trainees’ Environmental Health Science (EHS) training or to focus on another aspect of training that is not covered in the department’s curriculum. These typically occur about twice a month during the academic year.

The program promoted a supportive feedback culture, where we received constructive comments from our peers and mentors. This process was designed to be constructive rather than punitive.”
^{– T32 Trainee}

Topics of these informal seminars have included:

• Presentations by each of the eight EHS faculty trainers about their work. These presentations motivated new collaborations between trainees and EHS trainers.
• Presentations by Biostatistics trainers and an upper-level T32 trainee that explained how their statistical methodology research was motivated by EHS collaborations.
• Reading and discussion of journal articles that incorporate statistics for EHS-related topics. Trainees often wrote and shared code to illustrate aspects of the papers being discussed.
• Reading EHS-related background material including chapters of a toxicology text, with trainees taking turns presenting the topic and leading the discussion.
• Underlying principles and suggestions for creating documents that follow good practices for reproducible research and clear communication.

The general way of conducting research meetings and the seminar was very respectful to the students and supportive of our work."
^{– T32 Trainee}

• Trainee presentations of preliminary analysis documents for their EHS collaborations, with research question, descriptive statistics, and plots. Subsequently each document was assigned four reviewers (trainees and Biostatistics trainers) and the written reviews presented in the style of an NIH grant review at a subsequent T32 seminar.
• Sharing of useful R code.
• Meeting with T32 alumni to hear about their work and ask questions.
• Information about writing assistance available from the University of Rochester writing center.
• Ample opportunities for trainee practice talks prior to upcoming events (conferences, External Advisory Board meeting, thesis defense, etc.), with feedback from other trainees and trainers.