NEUR 500 Overview

5% - Class Participation. Several times during the year we will take a class to have each student stand up and give an off the cuff 1-2 minute update on what they are doing in the lab and how their experiments are going. Very causal and relaxed but will give everyone a chance to know what the others are doing, and you get some experience talking about your science to others. This will happen roughly 5 times in the year, and basically participation is sufficient for full grades. 

5% - Lab Participation. This is a grade that your supervisor will set, based in how engaged you are in the lab and with your co-researchers. 

15% Research Proposal. This will be a document you submit, usually 3-4 pages, in which you outline the research you plan on doing. There is a template to follow, and it will be due in midOctober. It will be graded by the course coordinator. We will talk a lot in class about how to write this. 

20% Progress Report. Similar to the Research Proposal but a bit more in depth, this will be done in the spring. In addition to learning how to write a progress report, the goal is to help you develop a template for your own Final Thesis, starting to get your experiments and results somewhat organized. This will also be graded by the course coordinator. 

40% Final Written Thesis. I will ask your supervisor and your second reader to submit a grade for this, plus I will read them over myself and assign a grade. The contribution of these 3 grades to the 40% will be 20% from your supervisor's assessment, 15% from your second reader and 5% from myself. 

15% Thesis defense. This will be again provided by your supervisor as a grade agreed upon between them and the second reader.

The class will meet in the lecture room for one hour each week, with diverse (and customizable) content and objectives. The main goal will be to provide background and support for your successful completion of your Final Thesis. 

Some of the topics covered will include: 

• A lecture on "how to do research"! Many students come from backgrounds where they have not been part of a research lab, and so we will provide information to help adapt to this new environment. What are the expectations, how to interact with supervisors and colleagues, where to go for support, how to do the background literature searches, things like that.
• Before the Research Proposal, Progress Report and Thesis are due, there will be a day where we will go over each of the templates/guides and people can ask questions and get guidance on how to approach writing these documents.
• Discussion days: if we don't have a major document due, I will be in the lecture room available for discussion about any related questions or issues the students are having with their projects. Last year this was very productive - attendance is in general not mandatory, and I would usually get together with small groups of people and discuss things from future career options in Neuroscience to details about peoples specific projects, or exciting new discoveries in neuroscience. It is often the case that things that are on your mind about research are also on others, and we had some great discussions last year.
• Presentation days. Several time over the year I will ask each person to stand up and tell the class what they are doing in the lab and how it is going. I prefer to make it a surprise, to get people used to thinking on the fly, but for practicality since it is graded I will usually tell you the week before. 

Some days we will just let you have the time to work on your reports or in the lab, or study for midterms - the primary mission for NEUR 500 is to get students in the labs doing actual research, as they will as graduate students or clinician researchers. Doing that research will take the majority of your time. The main goal with the lectures is to prepare you to do that research and to then present it back to the community. Each student and their labs are different, and you can pretty much guarantee that your concept of your senior thesis will evolve between day one and your defense! Therefore, as the needs arise, we will take the lecture time to point you in the right direction as your path changes.