Chapter 4 General Policies

4.1 Pay rates

  1. Graduate students

All graduate students in our department are paid as RA (Research assistantship). GRA represents an appointment of 0.33 FTEs. No graduate student can work more than 0.5 FTE, typically not less than 0.25 FTE. This means a student is responsible for working at least 13.2 hours weekly on research outside of their thesis/dissertation on work that contributes directly to research performance in the lab. In most cases, this will overlap with your thesis project, but this includes assisting your lab mates with their work. These hours are not monitored unless a student clearly does not contribute to the lab’s work. Students are responsible for paying all the various university and health fees.

Base pay rates for students on GRA fellowships are set departmentally.

  • MS degree: $23,000 + 3.80% Fringe benefit
  • PhD degree: $25,000 + 3.80% Fringe benefit

GTA fellowships of $1000 per semester are available occasionally through the department. These funds are provided to a student account for the additional work required for a GTA. These GTA fellowships must be approved by the department Chair.

Productivity incentives
Ultimately, the job of researchers is writing. Therefore, graduate students are encouraged to write their work as they progress through their degree program. So we have productivity incentives as follows:

  • Submit a paper to a refereed journal (the first submission for each paper) co-authored with NM

    • first (co-first) or corresponding author: $500 one-time award in the student account
    • co-authors: $100 one-time award in student account

  • Accepted at a refereed journal co-authored with NM

    • first (co-first) or corresponding author: $500 one-time award in the student account
    • co-authors: $100 one-time award in student account
    • Accepted at exceptional journals (incentive = 1 in the list): additional $500 one-time award to the first (co-first) or corresponding author

  • Research Grant

    • Although the students’ main role is to be trained to do good research, write a good paper, and present the results, I encourage having an opportunity to do grant writing for skill development. See Fellowship and Grant opportunities for information, and feel free to add.
    • Accepted grant: 10% of research grant income added to stipend as a one-time award. For example, if you get a $2,500 grant, you will receive $250. The PI does not need to be a coauthor (Most student grants do not allow that).

  • If you achieve something noteworthy, please let me know. I may add that to this policy.

  • There are graduate school rules for the upper threshold for the amount that can be added to your base stipend. So, I may not be able to increase the stipend sometimes (e.g., if you get a $1M grant, I cannot add $100,000), but I do my best.

  1. Undergraduates Undergraduate student pay rates usually begin at $12 per hour. Undergrads research assistants are expected to work more than 10 hours per week to have regular interactions. The time attending lab meeting or studying specific tools relating to their work can be counted towards working hour.

4.2 Lab meetings and seminars

  1. Daily journal club
  • Mizumoto lab has a daily journal club (Mon-Fri, 9:20am-9:50am at NM’s office, as of Jan 2025). No preparation will be required other than downloading a pdf or printing it. We will read one paper together within 30 min. If you find a paper you want to read, add it to the list. Any papers are welcome. Do you have papers you need to read for your assignments, writing, or studying? Put them in the list. They do not need to be a good paper.
  • The purpose of the journal club is to have a habit of reading papers. Reading paper builds your foundation for writing. You are going to read ~150 papers/year just through this journal club.
  • Journal Club format (we do not read just silently but go through the paper with interactive discussion):
    • 0-3 : Read out the title and abstract to understand the main point of the paper
    • 3-10 : Read the introduction quickly and individually in ~ 5 min. Point out the important sentence for each paragraph.
    • 10-25: Interpret figures one by one through discussion.
    • 25-30: Follow-up discussion
  1. Lab meeting
  • The goal of the lab meetings is to provide meaningful updates that directly contribute to the development of thesis or paper. Each meeting will focus on discussing a single figure, which could represent either results or concepts. This format ensures that updates are purposeful, and that feedback directly supports academic progress.
  • Figure presentation
    • Presenter presents at least one figure that could be used as part of their thesis or paper.
    • The figure can represent anything such as methods, results or concepts.
  • Document preparation
    • Presenter will prepare a 1–2-page document to accompany the figure, which should include:
      • Background: Introduction information for the figure
      • Methods: Explanation about the data collection
      • Results: Explain the figure.
      • Figure Legend: Detailed explanation of the figure
      • So, this is very similar to our format of Daily journal club. Make sure prepare documents which can be directly used to paper/thesis. Do not prepare for the meeting. Meeting is the regular opportunity to make a progress on paper/thesis.
  • Meeting Frequency & Duration
    • Each person presents every 4 weeks. (you can get ~ 10 figures for your thesis/paper)
    • Each meeting lasts 30-60 min. We use the time of journal club on Friday.
  • Pre-meeting preparation
    • Send the document and figure to the lab members by 11:59pm on the day before.
  • Discussion format
    • Read the document in 5 minutes.
    • Presenter explains the figure with context and relavance.
    • Discuss figures and documents, focusing on constructive feedback for imporvements and next steps.
  1. Department seminar
  • The Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology has a department seminar during semesters; you are expected to attend it. Ask a question even if it differs greatly from our field (mostly, they are!). Thinking about what to ask for a question is the most effective way to attend seminars.
  1. Shared Lab Meeting
  • We have shared lab meetings between Penick Lab (Entomology), Mizumoto Lab (Entomology), and Smith Lab (Biology) on collective behavior in social insects. This is a monthly meeting on the first week of Friday.
  1. Annual evaluation meeting
  • All trainees will have a one-to-one annual evaluation with PI (NM), where PI provides an evaluation with a trainee, and the trainee provides an evaluation with PI. I will provide a one-page sheet for the evaluation.

4.3 PI Availability

NM usually writes in the morning (7:20-9:20 am) if there is no other schedule. Except for this time, NM is available for any kind of meeting with lab members until 5:30 pm. All other schedules are in my Outlook calendar (), and thus, you can freely add meeting schedules with me on the vacant spots. You do not need to ask me to add it if you schedule it by 5 am of the day.

If lab members send me an email, I try to reply on the same or the next day if it is within a usual working day. If you do not receive a response within 48 hours, please send me a reminder.

Please set a deadline whenever you request feedback for your proposal or manuscript. It will help both of us. And feel free to bug me close to the deadlines (even on the day of) – I won’t be offended by reminders. Instead, I will appreciate them!

I always use a virtual deadline one week before for any tasks with a hard deadline. This is for safety. I may get sick or have an accident. Please remember this and behave in the same way. But in an emergency, do not hesitate to ask me to do something in the last second.

4.4 Presentations

Learning to present your research is important. Very few people will read your papers carefully (sad but true) but you can reach many people at conference talks and posters. Also, if you plan on staying in academia, getting a post-doc position and a faculty position will depend significantly on your ability to present your data. Even if you want to leave academia, presentations will likely be an important part of your job. Additionally, every time you present your work, you represent yourself and the entire lab.

It is therefore highly encouraged that you seek out opportunities to present your research, whether it is at departmental talk series and events, to other labs (within or outside of Auburn), at conferences, or to the general public. If you are going to give a presentation (a poster or a talk), consider having a practice presentation to the lab as early as you can. Practice talks will help you feel comfortable with your presentation and allow you to get feedback from the lab and implement those changes well before your real presentation.

NM is also happy to share slides from some of his talks if you would like to use a similar style. You’ll get a lot of feedback on your talks in any case, but other people’s slides might be helpful to you as you are setting up your talk. As with posters, feel free to go with your own style as long as it is polished and clear.