Graduate Program in Cell and Molecular Biology
What's Unique about CMB?
We ensure that the CMB program excels by offering:
- Challenging coursework during the first year
- Great labs from which to choose your thesis lab
- Supervision and support throughout your thesis research.
CMB Faculty
We are very selective in who becomes a CMB faculty member, only choosing those faculty who have strong research programs and who are committed to mentoring and educating graduate students. And, we are lucky to be able to partake of the Graduate School's excellent first-year Core Curriculum while at the same time allowing you flexibility to pursue your interests with our flexible required courses.
Emphasis on Faculty-Student Interaction
A class size of only 10 to 12 first-year students ensures a level of interaction between faculty and students that cannot always be achieved in larger graduate programs. This small class size provides students with individual attention from faculty during their first year, even before they join thesis labs. Two CMB co-directors serve as academic advisors, meeting individually with students to recommend courses based on interests and past courses and help evaluate lab rotations. All five co-directors teach in the Directors' Course involving only the first-year class. Other CMB faculty members are often involved in team teaching in the course providing ample opportunity to interact closely with individual faculty.
This attention doesn't end once students join a laboratory. The five co-directors also follow the progress of each student, every year through the program. This means that if you encounter some difficulties during your thesis research, you will have a variety of folks interested in providing advice and guidance in addition to your thesis advisor.
Student Activities
Plus, it's not just the CMB co-directors that stay involved. The students themselves are incredibly interactive. Students get a chance to talk to each other during the cookies-and-apples get-together right before the weekly CMB Seminar. We're also a pretty social group: parties to celebrate incoming students, holidays, and of course, the retreat.
Program Administration
The program administrator is the organizational "glue" of CMB ensuring that a program with more than 50 students and 95 faculty runs smoothly on a day to day basis. The administrator interacts with students on a daily basis providing advice ranging from the correct forms to fill out to the resources available.
Since its inception, the CMB program has always been more than just a collection of faculty who are looking to get a student into their labs. It is a collegial group of both students and faculty who are excited about science, sharing that excitement, and, for faculty, mentoring the next generation of scientists.