From: Sebastian Schreiber Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 3:43 PM Subject: CSUMS letter To: "C.K. Li" Hi Chi-Kwong, It was great seeing you again. Thanks for providing this opportunity to visit WM. Attached is my letter regarding the workshop. I hope it is useful. If you find any typos, feel free to let me know and I will correct them. Three things that I wanted to mention outside of the letter. First, I think a few of the students could have benefited from getting more faculty input about their talks and practicing their talks with their advisor. In particular, I think it is important that the students contextualize their research and are constantly reminded that their audience will consist of fellow undergraduate researchers (not specialists in their area of research). Second, I would strongly discourage faculty from asking questions during the presentations. While sometimes a well placed question can be helpful, I think there were several instances where the questions really disrupted the students presentations. Third, I think that Sarah is doing a great job but shouldn't be expected to handle so many research projects from such disparate topics. I am fearful that she most be feeling overwhelmed by all of that work. Cheers, Sebastian -- ------------------------------------------------ Sebastian Schreiber Department of Evolution and Ecology One Shields Avenue University of California Davis, CA 95616 Web page: http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/sschreiber/