Graduate Programs

Diane Clemens-Knott

Brainstorming:

• How do you support undergraduate teaching with Ph.D. requirements as well?
• How do you get high-quality graduate students to come?
• How do address graduate student morale and work ethics?
• How to establish a Ph.D. program?
• How to increase graduate program while maintaining a "standard" geology undergraduate program?
• How to recruit students when you can't offer a competitive financial package?
• Why are students coming to graduate school anyway?

Themes to focus on:

Two broad questions:

1. Improve numbers and quality of applicants?
2. How to foster a "traditional" graduate culture?

What are some examples of departmental efforts in this area?

• College provides funds for a graduate recruitment weekend to fly graduate students in for a Thurs, Fri, Sat experience; >50% of applicants who participate in this weekend enroll.
• Networking.
• *Advisors networking for their students.*
• Professional meetings: brochures, "gimmes," booths at GSA (applicants say they met people at GSA).
• Booths: not clear how well they work; if you're going to do it, make sure that it's done well; students & staff are probably more effective than faculty in terms of staffing the booth.
• Website indicating "where are our graduate students now?"
• Field trip with current students, faculty, alums and faculty from other institutions (networking).

• Need to collect data to find out from the current graduate students:

1. how they heard about the program;
2. why they chose to apply to the program.

What are some ideas for making this work better?

• Webpage for graduate students:

1. prospective students
2. information for current students
3. get current students to post information about their current research

• Make sure that undergraduates test-drive any web site that could be visited by prospective graduate students.
• Website: include news, current events, makes the department more exciting for outsiders.
• Make sure you track alums yourself; the institution may not want to release the information.

To foster "appropriate" culture:

• - require graduate students to participate in an annual field trip
• - weekly coffee hour on Mondays; weekly seminar on Fridays
• - graduate students sign up for course credit for colloquium; attendance is taken
• - graduate students are required to give talks in department colloquium
• - need to be consequences for not attending weekly seminar
• - offer 3 or 4 summer fellowships for grad students (combination of institutional and dept. funding); only students who are active and constructive members of the community (attending seminars, etc.) will be considered for fellowships.
• -make graduate students as much a part of the dept. as possible: arrange opportunities for faculty to listen to graduate students
• -regularly scheduled meetings where faculty *listen* to graduate students
• -graduate student lounge (all sciences can use it; centrally located if the institution doesn't have numbers to support a lounge for each department)
• -integrate "full-time" grads with "part-time" grads using field trips, evening (4:00ish) seminars, etc., so that the non-traditional students are able to participate if they want to
• -requiring a graduate student seminar their first year; different faculty teach it each year; but all first-year students must take it 1st semester.
• -start first semester with an overnight field trip
• -give graduate students a document of "graduate student expectations"
• -teach a "research methods" class that all graduate students take (to produce graduate student research proposal as end product) as early as possible
• -required first-year sequence: 1st semester = field trips, papers, etc.; 2nd semester = write your research proposal!
• -communal suffering can help to foster culture!

What resources regarding this topic would you want to see on the website?

• -Statements of graduate student expectations
• -Links to department webpages
• -Links to information about first-year graduate courses
• -Bullet lists of recruitment, promotion
• -Bullet lists of ideas about how to promote a graduate student culture.

What is your plan for the future?

• -Potential workshop on M.S. programs (recruitment, retention, programs, etc.).
• -Learn from graduate students why they're coming to graduate school, and what their expectations and needs are.
• -Workshops on graduate programs in general... Ways to help graduate students, recruit them, foster culture, etc.