I’m a huge fan of peer review in the classroom: it gives students opportunities to interact with and be inspired by each other while building their critical review skills. Not to mention peer review on initial drafts reserves my time for more meaningful one-on-one interactions on more complete work. In contrast, student writing in my lab is usually a solo project where students work with only me. The process is effective (as in we get a satisfying finished project), but I feel a void in peer interaction. With three (three!) thesis students this semester (2 undergrad and 1 MS student), I decided it was a great time to create tools for whole lab writing instructions and review: the First Annual SuperFly Writing Retreat.

It’s grad school application time, which means writing recommendation letters for our students. In the past, I’ve struggled to find a formula that works well for different students and situation. Of course, it depends on how well I know the student and how strongly I can recommend them*. Something that has worked well for me is to ask students to give me background info on themselves and the opportunity to which they are applying. I used to ask for this in the form of a resume and personal statement, but decided it might be easier/less intimidating for them to simply answer some questions in a survey.