MSFS Student Compact

We want our MSFS students to find employment in the field of forensic science, whether that be in crime laboratories, industry, research, or academia. To help achieve this, our job is to ensure students get the training, experience, and opportunities they need to advance in their chosen career. Inevitably, this will involve research and laboratory work for you to be able to complete your degree requirements, but it shouldn’t stop there. We want to conduct meaningful and impactful forensic science research, publish high quality papers in the best forensic journals, and present our work at professional meetings and conferences. Below you can find information on the program philosophy and expectations of MSFS students.

Agreements between student researchers and their faculty supervisor are often implicit. However, an implicit agreement is little better than no agreement. This document makes things explicit. Much may be common knowledge, but writing down common expectations helps prevent misunderstandings.  Your committee chair/project advisor will likely have their own individual expectations and idiosyncrasies, and there will be lab/instrumentation specific requirements, but what is outlined below will be common to all MSFS students. If you have questions or concerns, please talk about them with your advisor and/or the group during our regular meetings.

 • Working with students and contributing to their professional development is the most rewarding part of our job. Our ideal is to help students develop into colleagues. We will work tirelessly for the good of the MSFS students. Regardless of their personal strengths and weaknesses, the success of every student is our top priority. We will work to contribute to your professional development and progress in your degree. We will help you set goals and hopefully achieve them. 

• We are ambitious, obsessively precise, and have high standards, and we expect the same from you. The field of Forensic Science is small and demanding. The profession that you are training for involves matters of serious consequence, including life and death. 

• We are busy professionals with several demands on our time. We teach several classes each per semester, assist students with research and publish manuscripts, are members of professional organizations and still consult professionally. We are expected to stay abreast of developments in this fast-paced and ever-changing field, advise students/groups, and help run the program, department, and University. Because of the varied demands on our time and resources, we will need you to be an active participant in your graduate experience. That said, we want to work with you directly; that’s why our program is small.

• We will be available for regular meetings and informal conversations. However, our schedules require that we plan, in advance, for meetings to discuss your research and any professional or personal concerns you have. Although we will try to be available as much as possible for “drop-in business”, we are often running to teach a class or to a faculty meeting and will have limited time.

• We will help you navigate your graduate program of study. You are responsible for keeping up with deadlines and being knowledgeable about requirements for your specific program. However, we are available to help interpret these requirements, select appropriate coursework, and select committee members.

• We will facilitate your training in complementary skills needed to be a successful scientist, such as oral and written communication skills, grant writing, lab management, mentoring, and scientific professionalism. We will encourage you to seek opportunities in teaching, even if not required for your degree program. We will also strongly encourage you to gain practice in mentoring undergraduate and/or high school students.

• We will encourage you to publish your research, attend scientific/professional meetings, and will make an effort to fund such activities. Please use conferences as an opportunity to further your education, and not as a vacation. If you register for a conference, we expect you to attend the scientific sessions and participate in conference activities during the time you are there. Travel fellowships are available through many of the professional organizations and meetings where you would be presenting, BGSU’s Graduate College, BGSU’s Graduate Student Senate, and the University if program grant money is not available. We will help you identify and apply for these opportunities.

• We are committed to your education and training while you are in our program, and to advising and guiding your career development. We are also committed to mentoring you, even after you leave our program. We will provide honest letters of evaluation for you when you request them.

• We will strive to be supportive, equitable, accessible, encouraging, and respectful. We will try our best to understand your unique situation, and mentor you accordingly. Each student comes from a different background and has different professional goals. It will help if you keep us informed about your experiences and remember that graduate school is a job with very high expectations. If you have a problem, come and discuss it with us. We will do our best to help you solve it. We view our role as fostering your professional confidence and encouraging your critical thinking, skepticism, and creativity. If your individual advisor’s attempts to do this are not effective for you, we are open to talking with you about other ways to achieve these goals.

 • We are training you to be experts, and we expect you to act like an expert, with integrity and high moral and ethical standards. Although we do not expect you to have all of the answers, we do expect you to take ownership over your educational experience. You should be professionally and scientifically curious, while being accountable and behaving safely and appropriately within the laboratory. We expect you to meet deadlines and demonstrate mastery of the science behind your thesis topic. You have the primary responsibility for the successful completion of your degree.  

 •MSFS students begin their research with brainstorming meetings with their committee chair/advisor, participation in the Proposal Writing course (FSCI 6790), and hands-on training on the instrumentation and methodology being used. Our goal is that each student should, as quickly as possible, be able to function with high levels of autonomy in order to advance their own professional goals. In general, we expect you to: 

o Learn how to plan, design, and conduct high quality scientific research; 

o Learn how to present and document your scientific findings; 

o Treat your lab mates, lab funds, equipment, and reagents with respect; 

o Take advantage of professional development opportunities; 

o Practice good work habits, including organization and time management; 

o Work diligently and obtain your degree.

• You should schedule and meet regularly with your committee chair/advisor and provide them with updates on the progress and results of your activities and experiments. Make sure that you also use this time to communicate new ideas that you have about your work and challenges that you are facing. Remember: We cannot address or advise about issues that you do not bring to our attention.

• Be knowledgeable of the policies, deadlines, and requirements of the graduate program, the graduate school, and the University. Comply with all institutional policies, including academic program milestones, laboratory practices, and rules related to chemical safety, biosafety, and lab or field work.

• You must be aware of the research literature related to your project and chosen forensic discipline. Beginning students can expect substantial help from an advisor, but if you are undertaking a Master’s Thesis, the expert on the literature will be you, not your advisor.

• Attend weekly research group meetings. Attendance and participation in weekly Research Group Meetings (typically scheduled for Friday afternoons) is required for all MSFS graduate students during the time that they are enrolled in FSCI 6990. Students may be doing full thesis research, laboratory or other projects, or writing a paper, but all of us need to be informed of what’s going on in the lab space, deadlines, complications, and issues. We will also use this time for you to practice your oral communication skills by discussing/presenting on your progress and/or brainstorm troubleshooting ideas in a seminar format.

• You will work to meet deadlines as this is the only way to manage your progress. Deadlines can be managed in a number of ways, but we expect you to work your best to maintain these goals. 

o Graduate research requires full-time dedication and year-round effort. We have established the non-negotiable program deadlines as part of the MSFS Handbook. You need to familiarize yourself with these requirements and ask questions of your advisor if something doesn’t make sense or seems like it won’t work. 

o For graduate students, there is to be a balance between time spent in class and time spent on research and perhaps on outreach or teaching. As long as you are meeting expectations, you can largely set your own schedule.  

o Working at odd hours and in odd places is more common than a regular schedule for graduate students. However, to create opportunities to interact with colleagues, review data with your advisor, and if troubleshooting becomes necessary, you will be expected to spend some regular time in the lab – at least several hours on weekdays during ‘normal business hours’ (8 am – 5 pm). Part of your job is to be in the lab and talk with other people about your research. 

o As a Master’s student, you may need to plan on doing some work on your projects between semesters and during long academic breaks. 

o Work-life balance and vacation time are essential for creative thinking and good health and we encourage you to take regular breaks. Be aware, however, that there will be certain times (during training, when thesis, conference, or grant deadlines approach, or when a project’s goals are not being met) when more effort will need to be devoted to work and it may not be ideal to schedule time away or that we expect extra time (evenings, weekends). After a crunch, compensatory time off is not only acceptable but recommended. If you will need time off, please discuss it with your advisor in advance. If special circumstances require you to miss work, let your advisor know. 

o It is your responsibility to talk with your advisor if you are having difficulty completing your work. You advisor will likely consider your progress unsatisfactory if they need to follow-up with you about completion of your lab or coursework.

• Be mindful of constraints on advisor time. We check email several times during the day. Whenever practicable, we will respond to emails during regular business hours, those received outside of business hours will get a response within 24 hours. Emails received over the weekend will typically get a response Monday. When we set a deadline, we will block off time to read and respond to your work. You are likely not the only advisee of your advisor. If we do not receive your materials, we will move your project to the end of the queue. Allow a minimum of one week prior to submission deadlines for your advisor to read and respond to short materials such as conference abstracts. Allow three weeks for them to work on thesis drafts, manuscripts, or grant proposals. Please do not assume we can read materials within a day or two, especially when we are traveling, over the weekends, or on breaks or vacations.

• You will communicate clearly and effectively.

o Make sure your advisor has your current phone number and email address, and your advisor will provide you with their contact information. 

o Faculty cell phone numbers are for emergencies only while you’re in the program, or professional contact after your graduation. 

o We will do our best to contact you during normal business hours (weekdays between 8 am and 5 pm), and we expect the same from you. If you receive an email from faculty or your advisor at an odd time, please accept that it is likely the only time we had available to work or check email. While a timely response is appreciated, you are not expected to respond immediately, at night, or over the weekend. If you need time to gather information in response to an email, please acknowledge receipt of the message and indicate when you will be able to provide the requested information. 

o While email is an acceptable form of communication to schedule meetings or for brief communications regarding a change of plans or to send materials for review, it is not a replacement for face-to-face communication. Generally, it is not acceptable to ask questions, review data, or troubleshoot laboratory issues over email.   

o Remember that all of us are “new” at various points in our careers. If you feel uncertain, overwhelmed, or want additional support, please overtly ask for it. We welcome these conversations and view them as necessary.

• Research must be documented. In the excitement of the moment, it is easy to forget or omit vital details. Contemporaneous notetaking helps you remember, organize, and communicate your results. You will keep a lab notebook:

o Every time you work on your project, write in your notebook the date and time and what you did. (If you are being paid an hourly wage, you have to keep track of your hours anyway.) Even a single sentence provides a useful record.

o If you take experimental measurements, write them in your notebook.

o Your record should include things that failed as well as your successes. Write down what it was that didn’t work; you may save someone else many hours. Big things that don’t work should definitely be written down, but even little things that don’t work are often worth writing down. 

o Your notebook is a good place to record test inputs and outputs, transcripts, screen dumps, etc. Print them out and tape them into your notebook. In some ways, a notebook is better than a demo, because there’s a permanent record.

o You may also find it useful to use your notebook to sketch ideas, observations, measurements, proofs, code, solutions to problems, or whatever. Put these things directly into your notebook, not on scraps of paper to be transcribed later. Go wild; notebooks are cheap.

o If you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen!

• In the student’s final semester prior to graduation, the research/capstone project shall culminate in submission of a thesis or written report of publishable quality and a presentation of the results of their work orally, in a public forum, before their committee. The field progresses only when good work is published. Every thesis will be a publication quality manuscript of the research completed while in the MSFS program. However, publication in scientific journals is also a universally acknowledged sign of personal success. Writing for publication is an essential part of the graduate research experience; a good thesis will be connected to 1-2 submitted papers. Most published papers are presented at conferences. With help from your advisor and through research group meetings, you will learn how to plan, prepare, and deliver an effective presentation. 

• Actively cultivate your professional development. BGSU has outstanding resources in place to support professional development for students. We expect you to take full advantage of these resources, since part of becoming a successful scientist involves more than just doing academic research. You are expected to make continued progress in your development as a teacher, as an ambassador to the general public representing the University and your discipline, with respect to your networking skills, and as an engaged member of broader professional organizations. Various organizations on campus engage in science outreach and informal education activities. Attendance at conferences and workshops will also provide professional development opportunities. When you attend a conference, we expect you to seek out these opportunities to make the most of your attendance. You should become a member of one or more professional societies such the American Academy of Forensic Sciences or the Midwestern Association of Forensic Scientists, both have student membership levels.

• Help other students with their projects and mentor/train other students. This is a valuable experience!