Convinced that a holistic approach to matching research faculty and graduate students would make both happier, two Iowa State faculty are developing a mobile app that finds those matches. Faculty who lead research teams are invited to try it.
Coltie ("COAL-tee") helps professors share their research, recruit graduate students or even fill staff positions in their lab. It helps would-be graduate students find not just the right university or the right program, but a compatible faculty match. Coltie is free and downloadable from both Apple and Google Play.
What's in a name?
Coltie is a portmanteau of sorts: College + Ties
"Good quality of life in academia resides at the core of the app. Graduate school presents a lot more ambiguity than the undergraduate years, and this is about finding the right fit," said Coltie's chief operating officer Anuj Sharma, Pitt-Des Moines Professor in Civil Engineering. "Making a decision based on geography, a sheet of paper or a U.S. News and World Report ranking really isn't a good way to do it."
The app is in start-up mode, and growing the numbers of researchers and graduate students using it is the focus now -- and its strength down the road. Associate professor and Carlyle G. Caldwell Endowed Chair in Chemistry Robbyn Anand, Coltie's chief executive officer, said they'll continue to develop Coltie's algorithm, which currently matches people by key research words. For example, two labs that appear similar may not be, she said, and as the user group expands, additional Coltie filters could fine-tune matches between faculty and students.
"Do students in that lab go on to jobs in industry, or do they choose academic roles?" she said. "Is the group culture collaborative or competitive? What's the expectation for publications?"
As available, the app's match recommendations include a range of faculty -- assistant, associate or full professor -- and range of students, from undergraduate in search mode to post doc.
These variables matter to students, and faculty will reap the benefits of well-matched students, said Anand.
Scheduled to launch in May, Coltie Hive is a management tool that lets recruitment staff for specific graduate or undergraduate programs engage interested students with, for example, event announcements and other communications, deadline reminders or videos about campus or the broader community. Staff can alert faculty researchers to students who are well-matched to a program or team.
Learn more
100-second tour of Coltie
The Coltie team has applied for a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to develop more features in the app, for example an expectations match quiz, and to add video content that gives students deeper insight into graduate school. The proposed project includes an evaluation of Coltie's impact on educational outcomes at all three of Iowa's regent universities.
Early focus: Midwestern schools
Faculty and students in any academic discipline may create profiles in Coltie, though the emphasis is in the STEM fields "because it's what we know" and because they're research-intensive, Anand said.
While both Anand and Sharma have connected in Coltie with new, high-quality graduate students overseas -- opening a pipeline to those schools -- the app's early focus is on Midwestern colleges and universities with a history of sending students to graduate school in the STEM disciplines. The Coltie team recruits students to the app at regional and national undergraduate research events, with invitations to programs at specific Midwestern schools and by hosting "Ask Me Anything" virtual sessions every few months.
Social connections
Coltie's faculty database contains information for about 45,000 faculty members nationwide -- more than 600 at Iowa State -- extracted from public information sites such as Google Scholar. The app confirms or updates a researcher's key words based on the last five years of publication so matches aren't made based on 15-year-old research interests. To claim their profile in Coltie, faculty use their university email address to verify who they are and then can add content. Faculty not in the database simply create a new account. When they provide a link to their Google Scholar profile, their publications will automatically populate their Coltie profile.
Short videos are encouraged to introduce yourself, your research team, advising style and Iowa State. Student profiles feature a video personal statement, which helps both groups make a more holistic assessment.
So far, about 75 Iowa State faculty and 200 graduate students are using Coltie, Anand said.
She said the Coltie team would like to work with Iowa State faculty to develop content that would benefit many, on a range of topics: writing a research paper, balancing career and home life, for example. The goal is to reach students who can't visit campus and provide some insight to what an Iowa State graduate experience might be like.
"We're trying to facilitate the guidance the very luckiest students might receive who have a very good mentor," Anand said.
Questions about Coltie may be directed to Anand, robbyn.anand@coltie.com, or Sharma, anuj.sharma@coltie.com.
