Courses

All students working with members of the joint C-CEBH/NIDCD program are expected to fulfill any requirements imposed by the admitting department or programs as well as any requirements imposed by their mentors and advisory committees, including all appropriate courses. In addition, trainees in our program are expected to fulfill several programmatic obligations in order to help them develop expertise in auditory neuroscience and in comparative and evolutionary biology of hearing. In the vast majority of cases, our requirements intimately overlap those of our participating doctoral programs.

Principles of Hearing: This course is required of all predoctoral trainees and should be audited by postdoctoral fellows. The course, directed by Dr. Carr and Dr. Moss, emphasizes basic mechanisms and principles of hearing, as well as evolutionary and comparative issues. Trainees are introduced to hearing from the molecular to the perceptual levels. Guest lecturers include many faculty from the joint program.

Evolution: Several different courses are currently offered in evolution by members of the Department of Biology or Entomology. Depending upon the experience and background of trainees entering the program, they may take the most fundamental course or a more advanced course on molecular evolution.

Advanced Seminars: A variety of different courses are offered yearly by faculty in the core or affiliate group on various aspects of hearing and neuroscience. Topics include neuroscience methods, sensory physiology or development of the auditory system.

Research Seminars: Trainees are required to attend weekly seminars in hearing or in neuroscience. The Neural and Cognitive Sciences training program offers a bi-weekly seminar series that often includes topics germane to hearing.

Scientific Ethics: Drs. Dooling and Popper annually team-teach a course that deals with scientific ethics (see syllabus). The course is required of our trainees, and is made available to all students in scientific disciplines at UM. We regularly invite other faculty to participate in the course. Thus, students get the opportunity to meeting and interact with individuals from on-campus and from other agencies (e.g., NIH, NSF) who have expertise in issues such as scientific misconduct, ownership of data, and other similar areas. The course is taught in an informal setting where students are the primary discussants and conveyers of information. Within this format, we make use of a variety of tools including an excellent text (Macrina, F. L., 2000, Scientific Integrity: An Introductory Text with Case Studies), readings from the primary literature, case studies, videos, and participation by other faculty with expertise in particular areas of ethics.

Additional courses: A wide range of additional courses that are potentially appropriate for our trainees, depending upon their specific interests and needs, are found in the participating departments as well as in the Neurscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) program or Molecular and Cellular Biology (MOCB) program. Courses in Psychology include behavior, perception, and sensory biology, while those in Biology include advanced courses in evolution, behavior, molecular biology, and neuroscience. The Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences offers several courses that are likely to be appropriate for our trainees including Neurological Bases of Human Communication and Instrumentation in Hearing and Speech Sciences. Trainees with an interest in clinical issues will be able to take appropriate courses in Hearing and Speech Sciences. The MOCB program offers basic courses in molecular and cellular biology. A partial listing of these courses is available at this link.

Teaching: Predoctoral trainees should have some experience teaching and working with undergraduate students. This not only enhances opportunities for future employment by giving direct teaching experience, it also helps the trainees develop communicative skills that will be useful through all phases of their scientific careers. Predoctoral students are supported by teaching assistantships from their home departments during the times they are teaching. These stipends are comparable to fellowship support. In most cases we attempt to have the trainees serve as teaching assistants, and be supported in this manner, sometime during the first several years they are at UM while they are taking courses and before they start their dissertation research.

Journal Clubs and Seminars: One of the most important roles of the research training program to help further foster interactions between faculty and trainees interested in hearing research at UM. Fortunately, most of the people involved are in the same building and there are frequent interactions between them. While this informal interaction is invaluable, we also to provide for more formal interactions centered around the hearing sciences seminar and journal clubs.