BME PHD STUDENT HANDBOOK

MONITORING STUDENT PROGRESS BEFORE THE GBO

Junior Progress Committee

Statement of Purpose

This committee (JPC) is charged by the Committee on Biomedical Engineering with overseeing Ph.D. students up to the Graduate Board Oral Examination.

The responsibilities for the JPC during that time are as follows:

• Meet with the incoming Ph.D. students during the orientation period to go over this document in detail, making sure that everyone understands their responsibilities. 
• Determine, on a continuing basis, whether each student is making satisfactory progress in the program. This determination will be based on reports from the individual members of each student's advisory committee, progress reports from the student and from the student's rotation preceptors. In addition, the progress of first year students will be assessed from the report of the June meeting of the student with all members of his/her advisory committee (see below). 
• Determine whether any student should be asked to leave the program.

The responsibilities for Ph.D. students during that time are as follows:

• Establish an email account and check frequently for messages. Almost all facets of the Program's oversight and advisory activities will be administered via email.
• Connecting with a laboratory and developing a research interest which leads to a thesis research project.
• Taking an appropriate group of advanced courses and performing satisfactorily in them.
• Preparing for and passing the GBO examination in a timely fashion.

The important structural elements of the first three years of the Ph.D. program are as follows:

• Coursework will consist of Year 1 of the Medical School or other biomedical coursework approved by the Biomedical Engineering Committee. This is followed by at least a year of advanced engineering/science courses, designed to 1) meet program requirements and 2) prepare the student for his/her thesis work. The medical school year can be replaced, at a student's option (and with approval of the program director), by a different course sequence, such as the core courses of the Biochemistry, Cell, and Molecular Biology Program or equivalent courses on the Homewood Campus.
• An advisory committee consisting of three faculty members will be assigned to each student when he/she enters the program; this will be done by the Program Director based on the student's stated interests. This committee is responsible for guiding and evaluating the student up through the GBO. Its composition should reflect the student's research interests and can be changed by the student at any time (see below). Each student will meet individually with the members of his or her advisory committee twice per year (during the Spring and Fall undergraduate advising weeks) to discuss progress, problems, and plans.
• In order to be introduced to research opportunities, students are required to arrange rotations in one to three laboratories. The purpose of rotations is to facilitate connecting with a laboratory and finding an area of research which will lead to a thesis project. If the student and rotation preceptor feel that a good match has been made on the first or second rotation, there is no need to continue rotating.
• The JPC provides formal checkpoints to monitor students' progress. To that end, the JPC communicates with pre-GBO students once per semester, usually by email. The purpose of these communications is to remind students of what is expected and to monitor progress. At the end of the first and second years, the JPC will identify any students who are not making satisfactory progress in the program and will make recommendations to the Committee on Biomedical Engineering concerning those students.

Goals and mechanisms for the pre-GBO years

For M.D./Ph.D. students, the "first year of the program" in the discussions below is exactly that, their first year at Hopkins. The "second year of the program" corresponds to the M.D./Ph.D. student's first strictly-Ph.D. year. That is, if an M.D./Ph.D. student were to take Year 1 and Year 2 of the Medical School, then take a year of courses at Homewood, then the student's second year, for the purposes of the discussions below, would be the year of courses at Homewood. His or her first year would be the Year 1 medical year.

Rotations and connecting with a laboratory

Identifying a lab and research project is one of the most important task for a beginning Ph.D. or M.D.-Ph.D. student. Consequently, first year students should have one rotation planned upon entry to the Program. Students will provide the Director of the JPC a report on their rotation plans at that time. All Ph.D. candidates are expected to complete at least one and no more than three rotations by the end of their second year in the Program. By the end of the second year in the program, student must have identified a thesis preceptor and laboratory. As soon as the student commits to a lab, the rotation process ends. That is, the requirement is to find a lab to work in, not to do rotations. However, a student must continue the rotation process until he or she has settled on a lab.

The following procedure should be carried out in setting up a rotation. The student and faculty member will meet and discuss mutual interests and exactly what each will expect of the other during the rotation in terms of rotation duration, work to be accomplished, amount of supervision expected, reading to be assigned and completed, and frequency and duration of student/preceptor meetings. The faculty member will email a brief statement of this agreement to the student, and the student will signify acceptance with a positive reply. Any changes to the plans for the rotation must be described via email or hard copy and must include an email or written response. Copies of these agreements will be emailed to Hong Lan. It is important to recognize that in this Program, thesis proposals must demonstrate clearly how modern principles of engineering, mathematics and/or computer science will be applied in the thesis project to solve an underlying biomedical problem. Lab rotations should be selected with this requirement in mind.

Coursework

Coursework choices are difficult because of the constraints imposed by 1) the Medical School year (or years in the case of M.D.-Ph.D. students) and 2) the need for advanced prerequisites for many desirable second-year engineering/science courses. It is important that students consult faculty and rotation advisors when selecting coursework.

Grades

Grades lower than B- in course work prior to the GBO exam must be made up in one of two ways: 1) the student must take and pass with a grade of B- or higher an equivalent course; or 2) the student must demonstrate competency by being examined in the course material on their GBO. Grades lower than B- in two or more courses will result in a student's being able to continue in the program be reevaluated by the Committee on Biomedical Engineering.

Advisory committee

The best advisory committee is one appropriate to a student's interests; as these interests change, advisory committee members should change to reflect those interests. The best basis for choosing and changing advisory committee members is rotations. At each semester checkpoint, the JPC will ask each student to consider whether his/her advisory committee could be improved by changing members.

Graduate Board Oral Examination

This examination should have been taken by the end of the first semester of the third year of the program; a student who does not take the exam by the end of the second semester of the third year will be considered not to be making satisfactory progress.

Evaluation of progress

In the vast majority of cases, students take care of their own progress; however, occasional cases arise in which students do not prosper. These cases need to be identified as early as possible so that the student can be guided onto a successful track or asked to leave the program. In most Ph.D. programs, this evaluation is accomplished by departmental qualifying examinations. Because of the coursework structure in the BME program, qualifying examinations do not seem feasible. Instead, the JPC will judge whether each student is making satisfactory progress in the program on the basis of 1) course grades and 2) performance in rotations.

At the end of the first year in the program, the student should have completed the medical school (or an alternative) year of courses and should be engaged in a rotation. Evaluation of this work will be done as follows:

1. Students are expected to be in the top 3/4 of the medical school class. If a student receives more than one C grade in a major course (Molecules and Cells, Developmental Biology, Gross Anatomy, Neuroscience, or Physiology), the JPC will investigate.
2. Before August 31st following the first year, each student will discuss an assigned paper before his/her advisory committee. The paper should be based on the student's lab rotation experience and should be assigned by the rotation preceptor. The student is expected to exhibit a level of knowledge appropriate to his/her rotation experience. The advisory committee will report to the JPC if the student's performance in critically evaluating the paper (or in the rotation) is unsatisfactory.

The JPC will inform students by mid-summer of their promotion to year 2. Students whose progress is not considered satisfactory will be brought to the attention of the Committee on Biomedical Engineering.

At the end of the second year in the program, the student should have completed one year of biology and one year of engineering/mathematics courses and should have chosen a laboratory or be engaged in a third rotation. The JPC will evaluate students at this point on the basis of:

1. Satisfactory completion of sufficient coursework at an appropriate level. B or better performance in non-Medical School graduate courses, unless there are extenuating circumstances. Students should take at least six semester courses during the second year, and should have completed the 600-level course requirement or have a plan for doing so.
2. Formal evaluation of the student's performance in rotations will be sought from rotation preceptors by the JPC. If the student has not made adequate progress (meaning that he/she has not connected with a laboratory or has not performed adequately in any rotation), then the JPC will arrange a formal meeting with the student and the student's advisors. This meeting will take the form of a departmental oral examination and will conclude with a recommendation to the Committee on Biomedical Engineering as to whether the student should continue in the program.

Checkpoints

The JPC will communicate with students at the middle of each semester to elicit information about planned rotations and progress in choosing a laboratory and in setting up a GBO. In addition, at the end of year 1, the JPC will arrange a meeting with the student's advisors as a group to discuss a paper based on one rotation. The JPC will consider promotion to year 2 based on year 1 grades and the outcome of this meeting. At the end of year 2, the JPC will solicit written rotation summaries from the student and an evaluation of performance from the preceptors. Based on the student's evaluations and grades, the JPC will recommend promotion to Year 3 or require a departmental exam. Students who have not taken the GBO or who have not connected with a laboratory by the beginning of the third year will be monitored twice per semester by the JPC.      

¹ The first rotation must begin by February 1 of students' first year.

²TA requirement must be met before end of Year 4 of doctoral studies.