Teaching and Mentoring

Professor in Neuroscience classroom

Teaching

As a PhD student, you will learn how to teach by serving as a teaching fellow for two different courses in your second year. PhD students in the sciences at Brandeis can take advantage of the Center for Teaching and Learning to receive additional training and support.

The University Prize Instructorships (UPI), sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, is a unique opportunity for advanced graduate students to design and teach an entirely new undergraduate course in their field of research. To compete for the prize, applicants must submit a written statement that explains the relationship between their course and their dissertation research as well as their proposed course's detailed syllabus and evaluations as teaching fellows. Instructorships are awarded to exceptional doctoral candidates who have made substantial progress toward their degree.

Mentoring

Outreach and mentoring are encouraged. Research laboratories at Brandeis provide an ideal environment for PhD students to obtain experience mentoring others, since they attract a number of highly motivated Brandeis undergraduate researchers. Thus, PhD students have the opportunity to mentor one or more undergraduate students or junior graduate students in the lab at any given time.

Graduate students can also mentor non-Brandeis undergraduates and high school students who come to Brandeis from diverse backgrounds and locations to conduct independent research projects.

Additionally, Neuroscience graduate students can serve as mentors in both the university-supported Posse program and Science Posse program. Posse mentors work with a cohort of students over the course of a year, providing personal and academic support.