Innovation in graduate training: a skills-focused graduate program in fisheries science
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology, Statistics
- Keywords
- storytelling, scientific enterprise, academia, pedagogy, fisheries research, science communication, statistics, R statistical software, tidy data
- Copyright
- © 2018 Favaro
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Innovation in graduate training: a skills-focused graduate program in fisheries science. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26952v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26952v1
Abstract
To be effective, a modern marine scientist must be more than smart - they must be skilled. There is extensive literature decrying the state of statistics training at most universities, and it is almost a cliche to say that students should be better communicators - yet few research-based graduate programs include explicit training in these fields as a core requirement. In this poster, I describe the Fisheries and Marine Institute's new Fisheries Science M.Sc and Ph.D programs, with a focuses on the pedagogical underpinnings of the structure of the program. These evidence-based programs are built around core training in R Statistical Software, statistics and study design, and science communication, and support students conducting research in the fisheries science space. Our goal is to produce world-class research, but also work with industry, government, and communities to use that research towards the shared goal of protecting biodiversity in the world's oceans.
Author Comment
This poster was presented at the 4th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, 13-16 May 2018, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.