I am delighted to take on this new role as Vice-Chair, Scientific Education in PALM. With the ongoing Strategic Planning, this is an exciting time for our department, an opportunity to bring us together, share ideas, and think about what the future holds. Below I am starting the first installment of the “DID YOU KNOW? corner that I hope to make a recurrent section within the PALM newsletter. It will share information around education that may be useful to people in our department.
I also invite you to consult the weekly Graduate Program newsletter distributed every Monday (please contact Heather.Cheadle@pathology.ubc if you wish to be added to our listserv) .

PALM clinical and/or partner faculty members who are not UBC Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (G+PS) members CAN act as primary supervisor for PALM graduate students (both MSc and PhD), as well as serve on supervisory committees.

Indeed, we count several non-G+PS supervisors in our program who’s students are very successful. Non- G+PS faculty can supervise provided they:

1. Provide graduate stipend (2 years for MSc, 5 years for PhD)
2. Be approved by the PALM graduate program, FoM, and G+PS (relatively straightforward process)
3. Maintain at least 50% G+PS membership on the student’s supervisory committee

Further, to support new supervisors and their students, our Graduate Program has a policy that if faculty (G+PS and non-G+PS alike) are supervising a graduate student in our program for the first time, a PALM co-supervisor is agreed upon and appointed. This is primarily to help the student and supervisor navigate the program requirements. For subsequent students, this is always an option but is not required.