News from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research

Graduate Students Office

Postdocs

The Ministry of Education requires that all postdoctoral fellows (or postdocs for short) at McGill must register immediately and do so once a year while they are here. All units, including research institutes, need to make sure that their postdocs are registered. There are no fees charged from postdocs.

Although registration may appear demeaning to postdocs, it is not intended to be so. Registration for international postdocs will ensure their qualification for the Quebec income tax exemption. It will also ensure to all postdocs that McGill can reach them to welcome them and provide services and privileges to them. So far, about 100 postdocs have registered this year. This is somewhat surprising since reports from certain sectors of the University indicated that there were approximately 400 postdocs at McGill.

Postdocs at McGill are registered and supported by the Graduate Studies Office (398-3990).

At the present time, McGill adheres to the definition of a postdoc that was established by the Ministry of Education of Quebec. The McGill definition has been in place since 1997. It is as follows: "Postdoctoral fellows are appointees who have been awarded a Ph.D. or equivalent not more than five years prior to their initial appointment. Postdoctoral fellows shall be appointed for limited terms and may be reappointed provided that the limited term appointments do not exceed in aggregate five years. Their appointments are temporary, involve full-time research and are viewed as preparatory for a full-time academic and/or research career. Postdoctoral appointees work under the supervision of a senior scholar or a department."

Academic Classifications

Please note that people employed to do research full time who do not fulfill the definition of a postdoc are normally considered to be research associates and must be employed accordingly. Unlike postdocs, research associates do not register and do not qualify for the Quebec tax exemption. They must be paid benefits.

There is an excellent article in the September 3, 1999 Science magazine that all postdocs, their supervisors, directors of research institutes and academic chairs should read. It is accessible at www.sciencemag.com.

Student Research Assistants

A new form has been designed to be used when employing students as research assistants. It is accessible through the academic employment office under the direction of Lindsay Bignell. It has been modeled after the work study employment form so that expected hours, pay rates, pay periods, and work expectations are clearly laid out in written format.

All students employed by professors to work on research should have such a form filled out and filed on them. This form is designed to prevent misunderstandings between students and their research employers concerning the conditions of their employment.

In general, FGSR does not condone volunteer work on research. The associate vice-principal (graduate studies) has come across situations where students have been asked to work for free on a professor's research project before the professor will agree to supervise them. Clearly, this is unacceptable since it can lead to abuse in situations where students are accepted into a department on the condition that they must find a supervisor before they are finally admitted. There are also reports of situations where professors will only write a letter of recommendation to graduate schools for undergraduate students if they work for free in their labs or on their research projects. This is also unacceptable and open to abuse. It is, however, acceptable to let a student audit lab meetings or visit in a laboratory before the student decides if she wants to work with a certain supervisor or research project.