Archive : Tomorrow's Graduate Students and Postdocs
769 Playing The Game: The Review
January 19, 2007
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Folks: The posting below is a review of the book, Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Graduate School. that gives important, if irreverent advice on how to succeed in graduate school. The review is by Dr. Mary McKinney of Successful Academic Coaching. Feel free...Read the full entry for "769 Playing The Game: The Review"
Posted by markep on January 19, 2007
765. Using the Assessment Process to Improve Doctoral Programs
January 08, 2007
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"Graduate deans and the Council of Graduate Schools should be leaders in advancing assessment of student learning as part of graduate program review and in demonstrating how evidence of student learning can be integrated with data that programs currently collect of draw upon as part of external reporting demands."
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Posted by markep on January 8, 2007
752. Learning Your Students' Names
October 23, 2006
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"I'm terrible at names," complained my friend Steve. He's a respected professor of entomology who is fascinated by ugly bugs that make many of us shudder. "Really?" I asked. "How many species of beetles can you identify by name?"
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Posted by markep on October 23, 2006
749. Campus Interview - The Research Presentation
October 06, 2006
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"As Eisenbach points out, candidates who are able to make their research presentation accessible and interesting to faculty and students alike are also demonstrating their teaching skill. In other words, your research presentation should simultaneously be a teaching moment."
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Posted by markep on October 6, 2006
747. Advisee Management Tip: Ask for a Memo
October 02, 2006
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"Somewhere, on an intellectual basis, your advisees know that you're not thinking about their research and progress every waking moment. But on an emotional level it is hard for them to keep this truth in mind. The dissertation is so central to their life that it is easy for them to forget that other peoples' lives don't revolve around it."
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Posted by markep on October 2, 2006
743. Preparing Stewards of the Discipline
September 15, 2006
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"Imagine an initiation at the start of the academic year in which all new doctoral students receive a six-sided velvet tam with golden tassel (one element of doctoral regalia), as a symbol of their entry into the disciplinary community. It would echo the graduation ceremony at which their advisor will place the velvet and satin hood around their neck. It would celebrate the decision to undertake the most rigorous educational experience available. It would provide an occasion to talk about the serious venture that awaits them, and the responsibilities for the generation, conservation and transformation of knowledge that they are assuming as stewards."
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Posted by markep on September 15, 2006
722. Finishing the Doctoral Degree in a Timely Fashion:
May 09, 2006
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"Modesty is also helpful in choosing a manageable topic. Some students set out to write a dissertation that will change the world; others just want to write a dissertation. In terms of results, there seems to be no correlation between the quality of the dissertation and the ambitious nature of the topic."
Posted by markep on May 9, 2006
720. Doctoral Dissertation - Looking Back, Looking
May 02, 2006
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"According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, despite a dearth of comprehensive national statistics, several studies have indicated that the attrition rate in doctoral programs could be as high as 50 percent (Smallwood, 2004)."
Posted by markep on May 2, 2006
702. IN DOCTORAL EDUCATION, IT'S TIME FOR AN OVERHAUL
February 28, 2006
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"The national median at all universities for registered time-to-degree (from completion of a baccalaureate degree to receipt of the doctoral degree.) is 7.6 years - a figure that has been rising steadily over the last 30 years."
Posted by lagace on February 28, 2006
694. UNIVERSITY AIMS TO SUPPORT ALL FEMALE GRADUATES
January 31, 2006
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"So our main goal in designing this policy was to make sure that we retain in the academic pipeline women graduate students who become pregnant and give birth."
Posted by lagace on January 31, 2006
687. ACADEMICS ARE INTELLECTUAL ENTREPRENEURS
January 10, 2006
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"The best teachers and researchers are all 'intellectual entrepreneurs.' They're in the business of creating new information, new ways of thinking, new ways of seeing their particular discipline. A biomedical researcher working on the latest vaccine, a political scientist establishing a new way of looking at studying political processes, and a young musician figuring out how to create his or her path through the art world are every bit as entrepreneurial as someone establishing a new business."
Posted by on January 10, 2006
684. WE NEED HUMANTIES LABS
December 02, 2005
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"My curiosity about this hypothetical English professor's reaction began after a discussion with my father, a professor emeritus in physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. As we chatted about my work as a dissertation and tenure coach, he expressed shock when I recounted how graduate students in English could go a month or more with no contact with their advisor. He estimated that his students usually saw him daily, and never went for more than a week without interaction with him, except when he was traveling. As he quizzed me more and more about the grad student experience in humanities departments, it became more and more clear to me that there is a deep divide."
Posted by on December 2, 2005
681. CIRCLE OF SUPPORT
November 18, 2005
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"As engineering programs strive to attract and retain more female students, supportive communities and service components are no longer the exception-they're becoming the rule."
Posted by on November 18, 2005
647 PREPARING GRADUATE STUDENTS FOR THEIR SCHOLARLY LIVES.
July 21, 2005
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"Simultaneously, finding balance in their scholarly, professional, and personal lives emerged as an important issue for the students. They often commented in interviews that faculty members appeared to experience considerable pressure in lives characterized by lack of balance between professional and personal commitments and interests. Some of these students flatly reported that they could not lead the kinds of harried lives they observed in professors around them and thus leaned toward applying their knowledge in what they thought would be less stressful environments."
Posted by markep on July 21, 2005
647 PREPARING GRADUATE STUDENTS FOR THEIR SCHOLARLY LIVES
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Folks:
The posting below looks at four of the overall research findings that can help inform those involved in the preparation of graduate students for their scholarly lives. It is from Chapter Three:The Development of Graduate Students as Teaching Scholars A Four-Year Longitudinal Study by Donald H. Wulff, Ann E. Austin, Jody D. Nyquist, Jo Sprague in, Paths to the Professoriate Strategies for Enriching the Preparation of Future Faculty Donald H. Wulff, Ann E. Austin, & Associates. Copyright © 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass - A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 [www.josseybass.com]. Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: New Faculty: A Practical Guide for Academic Beginners
Tomorrow's Graduate Students and Postdocs
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PREPARING GRADUATE STUDENTS FOR THEIR SCHOLARLY LIVES
Question 4: What Study Findings Can Inform Those Involved in Preparing Graduate Students (Aspiring Professors) for the Teaching Aspects of Their Scholarly Lives?
We can use each of the previous results, of course, to inform faculty members and others involved in preparing aspiring professors. However, in addition to the results in response to the specific research questions about teaching, we also identified some more global key findings about graduate education. In this section of the chapter we highlight four of the overall findings from our research that can help inform those involved in the preparation of graduate students for their scholarly lives.
[Too Much of Graduate Education Is Characterized by a Lack of Systematic, Developmental Preparation]
Often the graduate programs for these students did not purposely plan systematic opportunities for their developmental progression as teachers, researchers, institutional citizens, and scholars engaged in their communities. During the first year, many of the students were unclear about what graduate education entailed and what the path to a graduate degree would require. In addition, throughout the study, they reported that they were not particularly knowledgeable about what a faculty career involved, and even less knowledgeable about careers in other kinds of academic institutions. Most of the students knew little about professional service and had little opportunity to talk with faculty about service components of their work. Even at the end of their time in the study, the students reported virtually no knowledge of faculty or institutional governance. Possibly, some might assert, these issues might be more appropriately addressed during the latter part of a graduate !
student's experiences. Nevertheless, we observed that opportunities for exploration of these and many of the other facets of a faculty career rarely occurred in ways that fostered systematic development with the intent of helping the aspiring faculty develop appropriate skills across the range of faculty responsibilities.
[Graduate Education Too Often Does Not Provide for Systematic Feedback and Mentoring That Could Help Eliminate Unnecessary Barriers to Success]
In using metaphors to describe their experiences, many of the students spoke of uncertainties and challenges-chasms, mountains, dilapidated bridges to be crossed, or rocks being throw down on them as they proceeded to climb-that were significant barriers to their progress. In explaining a picture that he drew to represent his graduate experience, one fairly successful doctoral student portrayed himself running a marathon. His path was punctuated with some signposts, but, he explained, they were not accurate. At various intersections, without good directions, he was uncertain how to proceed. Geraniums on a window ledge were falling on him, logs obstructed his path, and a car nearly hit him. He explained, "You know, I've been pretty successful despite these things," but continued by pointing out that too many unexpected barriers occur in the graduate experience. Graduate students often must find their way through the obstacles of graduate education with minimal guidance !
from faculty. Through such examples, the students demonstrated that the departments represented in our study did not systematically or frequently pay attention to providing preparation, orientation, and feedback to graduate students in their work and development as teachers. Much of the assessment of which students were aware occurred in annual reviews (when these did take place), when faculty met privately with students to discuss their programmatic progress. Formative feedback provided for students to assess their progress or make changes in what they were doing occurred far less frequently. Although some of the graduate students reported receiving some feedback from supervisors about their teaching, it often was not thorough or carefully designed to help them grow as teachers. In the absence of thorough input, they relied on feedback from their own students (both formal evaluations and informal comments or discussions) and their students' performance and grades to c!
onsider what constituted effective and ineffective student learning, w
hat teaching strategies were most effective, and how teachers and students should relate.
[As They Progress Through Graduate Education, Many Students Begin to Wonder If They Really Aspire to Academic Life]
We observed too many students who had entered graduate school excited about particular driving passions and questions become increasingly disillusioned and disenchanted. When they began, most were not aware of the value system of the academy. Although ultimately some students explicitly discovered and internalized academic norms, many had a difficult time. As these students struggled to demystify the values of the academy and to make sense of expectations within what some perceived as daunting bureaucracies and difficult-to-decipher institutional cultures, they became concerned about how to align academic values and expectations with their own. Some reported that there seemed to be a "secret model" of graduate education that had implicit norms and rules. Some students also reported difficulty in interpreting various parties' expectations for what counts as "success." Other students experienced clashes of differing values and expectations with their advisors or faculty !
members. Authority and relationship issues-with students, and with advisors and supervisors-were significant.
Simultaneously, finding balance in their scholarly, professional, and personal lives emerged as an important issue for the students. They often commented in interviews that faculty members appeared to experience considerable pressure in lives characterized by lack of balance between professional and personal commitments and interests. Some of these students flatly reported that they could not lead the kinds of harried lives they observed in professors around them and thus leaned toward applying their knowledge in what they thought would be less stressful environments.
Ultimately, some students who entered graduate school with aspirations to become professors perceived that the academic life might leave little room for their own passions, values, and commitments. Some only maintained a sense of empowerment when they felt they could explore alternative approaches or careers and discuss these options with their faculty advisors and supervisors. Some of the students who felt disempowered and disenchanted progressed in silent resignation. For others, however, this sense of their own diminishing priorities and aspirations left them wondering about the desirability of an academic life. In some instances, students prolonged completion of their studies, discontinued their graduate education, or in a couple of the very worse scenarios, simply dropped out of their programs without any word about where they were going.
[Current Graduate Education Does Not Match the Needs and Demands of the Changing Academy and Broader Society]
Looking across the study findings, we conclude that there are problems in the ways that universities prepare graduate students for the future. Many academics seem to be hanging onto an idealized and traditional model that heavily emphasized research preparation with little attention to the other roles of faculty members. This model does not adequately take into account changes in faculty roles, in student characteristics and needs, in modes of education delivery, and in societal expectation of the academy. As illustrated by the experiences of many of the students in this study, faculty members sometimes try to "clone" themselves-training graduate students only for the tasks and roles for which they themselves were prepared. Although many elements of traditional academic training remain very important, faculty members should not ignore the demands of the changing academy and the broader society as they prepare future faculty. Otherwise, the academy will be producing highly specialized graduates who are not sufficiently prepared to make connections between their own work and the needs of their students, the academy, and the broader society.
Posted by markep on July 21, 2005
625. PAVING THE WAY
May 25, 2005
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"Of course, this sort of community is nothing new. Gilbert points to international scholars in computer science and engineering, Asians and Indians in particular. "You never just find one of them, there is always a collection," he says. "The ethnicity of the faculty is related to the ethnicity of the student body." For example, he says, if there are a lot of Chinese faculty, there is no doubt a large contingent of Chinese students. When he was a student, Gilbert says, he thought many international students were successful because they were better prepared, "but what I found out is that they had better support systems."
Posted by markep on May 25, 2005
608. ENGAGING STUDENTS POLITICALLY GOES BEYOND THE VOTING BOOTH
March 17, 2005
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"The reason we care about voting rates is that they hold particular social value: we consider them necessary for the legitimacy of democratic governance and for the strength of our pluralist democratic culture."
Posted by markep on March 17, 2005