Achievement

A new feature of our program in 2010-11 was an IGERT Apprentice Program, designed to help to recruit new students and to help them in developing the research, training, and outreach plans that we require of all applicants to the program. (Our IGERT only recruits students to the program after they are already in a PhD program at the U of Maryland.) We identified prospective new students at the start of the academic year via "Language Science Day," a new university-wide event that brought together 120 people from 10 units. Students were encouraged to sign up as IGERT Apprentices and to start participating in all program activities. Apprentices were given much guidance on the development of the extensive program application/plan that we require of all students, including meeting with various faculty, and assigning each apprentice to an experienced IGERT student, who served in a mentor role for the application process, something that hopefully made it less daunting for the new students.