Summary
1. Open Rotation Policy
Graduate students accepted into any participating program are permitted to rotate in and join the laboratory of the faculty associated with any of the participating biomedical graduate programs, subject only to the consent of the faculty member and the department to which the student wishes to transfer, space constraints, and financial considerations. The participating departments in the program are Biochemistry, Genome Sciences, Immunology, Microbiology, and Pathology.
Students are required to perform their first and second rotations within the program to which they are accepted, but the third (and any subsequent) rotations may be with faculty outside of this program. At the conclusion of an outside rotation, the student will give a rotation talk in both departments or programs. Although some students may transfer under the Open Rotation Policy, we anticipate that the great majority will choose a thesis advisor from the program that they initially joined.
2. Transfer Policy
If a student chooses an advisor from a different program, he or she will transfer into a program with which the advisor is affiliated. The advisor and the departmental program to which the student wishes to transfer must consider the proposed transfer in a timely manner, and inform the student and the program from which the student is transferring of their decision in writing. In many cases, this transfer will require the student to take one or more additional courses in the new program in order to obtain the training appropriate to that program.
3. Course Requirements
As much as possible, participating programs will try to coordinate the total number and nature of core courses and electives required of their students, in order to permit transfers with a minimum of additional requirements.
4. Teaching Requirements
Programs will coordinate with each other to equalize as much as possible the number and nature of the teaching responsibilities. We note that even for programs with reduced teaching requirements, students often opt for teaching in large and demanding undergraduate courses in order to obtain marketable teaching experience.