Advice for students

I am no longer accepting new graduate students or serving on graduate committees. However, my views of how to be a grad student are summarized in a presentation (below) that I gave in response to one by Steve Stearns (below). We gave these as talks (fall 1976) as back-to-back “seminars” at Ecolunch, a weekly seminar/discussion group at the University of California, Berkeley. Steve and I were both Miller Postdocs at the time and just one year out of grad school. We handed out typed outlines of our presentations. Our notes made it into the graduate student grapevine and were photocopied and distributed widely over the decades.

Peter Morin eventually encouraged us to write up our presentations for publication. We did so in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. As Steve later noted, these articles are our most widely read but least cited papers!

Our papers summarize rather opposing views (cynical vs. acynical)of how to be a grad student. However, Steve and I see them as complementary, simply because there is no one way to be a grad student. I recommend reading both.

I want to add advice I learned from the late Eric Pianka, my own (unofficial) MA advisor and long-term colleague and friend. Namely, when you start out on your graduate career, your goal should be to establish yourself as the leading authority in some area by the time you complete your Ph.D. That may sound rather ambitious. But if you aim high, you will hit high.

I attach a related paper “On becoming a better scientist.” This was an invited paper and was based on a talk I gave at a symposium organized by graduate students (2011) at the Institute for Dryland Environmental Research Ecology, Ben Gurion University. It is basically a reflective essay. In part, I look back on “Stearns and Huey.” But I look as well at additional lessons that I learned later in my career. At the end I address how to attempt to stay fresh throughout a long career in science.

Steve Stearns - Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students

Ray Huey - Reply to Stearns: Some Acynical Advice for Graduate Students

Ray Huey - On becoming a better scientist