Here you will find information on work-life balance, a typical day, teaching requirements, lab rotations, choosing an advisor, training grants, and additional funding.
The physical and mental well-being of students is a top priority at Yale. Students are encouraged to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Part of maintaining a good balance is understanding program requirements by reviewing the Graduate Student Handbook available on the Chemistry website portal for your incoming academic year and relevant deadlines.
The Good Life Center at Yale is just one resource that provides information to students on how to maintain a good work-life balance. Your peers and faculty understand the importance of balance as well and remain a dependable resource for discussion and suggestions throughout your academic career.
Upon arrival, the Chemistry department matches incoming 1st-year students with current graduate student mentors to help them learn about New Haven, Yale, and the Chemistry department, both academically and socially.
Students are required to serve as Teaching Fellows (TFs) at around 20 hours per week for two semesters during their studies. Typically, teaching requirements are fulfilled in the first two semesters of study, but students on training grants and other funding sources may delay their fulfillment to a later year of study in consultation with their advisor. Students may teach additional semesters at the discretion of the research advisor.
The Graduate School requires all graduate students teaching for the first time at Yale to attend a “Teaching at Yale Day” workshop offered by the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. Students may take the workshop at the beginning of the Fall semester preceding their first teaching assignment. For more information, visit the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. The Poorvu Center also offers in-depth instruction on the fundamentals of teaching, advanced teaching workshops, teaching forums, and teaching consultations. A Certificate of College Teaching Preparation can also be earned for students with career aspirations for teaching.
All graduate students must successfully complete 5 credits of graduate-level chemistry courses. Yale Chemistry offers a variety of courses that are half-credit classes, which provide greater flexibility in the topics that can be studied. Most courses should be completed in the first year of study.
Your day as a graduate student may differ from others’, as everyone has a unique experience at Yale. Your ‘typical day’ may change based on your progress in the program, the time of year (e.g., mid-term vs. summer), your involvement in student organizations, and the scope of your personal research. A primary factor that allows for work/life balance during your studies is access to resources in New Haven and at Yale. A high walkability factor affects the variety of activities you can complete in a day. For academic purposes, you can expect to have a mixture of reading, writing, and data collection through lab work, as well as teaching components, as per the requirements listed above.
Research rotations are vital to the extremely important decision of choosing a research advisor (PI) because the advisor has many roles: providing guidance on courses, research direction, and professionalization, providing funding and space for research, providing regular feedback on your growth as a scientist, helping you to find future career positions, and forming a partnership for continued advice throughout your career. An informed decision uses information from several sources: discussions with faculty members, reading of manuscripts from the research groups of interest, attendance at group meetings, visiting group websites, and familiarizing oneself with the group culture and expectations of the research advisor through discussions with the PI as well as students in the research group.
Beginning early in the Fall term, participation in a formal laboratory rotation is required. Rotation schedules vary between subdivisions. The content of the rotation depends on the student and the faculty member. At a minimum, the student is expected to visit the PI for an introduction and to meet a second time to follow up on the initial discussion to discuss joining the research group before submitting lab choices. Rotating students should read key publications from the group, attend scheduled group meetings, become familiar with the group culture, and discuss ongoing projects with the graduate students and the postdoctoral fellows currently in the group.
During final advisor selection in the student’s first year in the Ph.D. program, every effort is made to match graduate students with their 1st-choice advisor, and communication about decisions remains consistent. Additional resources for choosing an advisor can be found here.
Faculty members who hold joint appointments in Chemistry or are affiliated with the Chemistry Department through the Biophysics or CBI training grants may be selected as research advisors, with no prior permissions required. It is also possible to join the research group of a faculty member who is not formally affiliated with the Chemistry Department, provided that the student works on a thesis project with sufficient chemical content and chooses a Ph.D. committee with two faculty members with primary appointments in Chemistry. If a student wishes to join a group outside of the Chemistry Department, they meet with Chemistry’s director of graduate studies.
An institutional training grant is an award that provides funding to support selected pre-doctoral candidates and/or postdoctoral researchers in a coordinated training program. It provides for stipends, tuition, and training-related expenses. Institutional training grants are different from awards to an individual, which generally provide a stipend for sponsor-selected individuals. Since most of Yale’s training grants are from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), information about applying for and administering these awards is directed towards supporting those awards.
Visit our Funding page and our Fellowships & Awards page.