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Student Leaders Report
Graduate Student Issues Are Faculty Issues
When the editors of the Faculty Newsletter responded positively to my suggestion for a standing column by the leaders of the undergraduate and graduate student governments, I felt such articles would be valued by both the faculty and the students. I hope to use this first installment as an opportunity to introduce you to the work of the Graduate Student Council (GSC), why those efforts are important to you the faculty, and give a glimpse of more focused communications to come in future issues of the Newsletter.
The purpose of the Graduate Student Council is to promote the interests and needs of the graduate student body. This is a broad mandate, and historically, we have decided to attack those issues and topics that are brought to the Council by our representatives. Graduate students, as well as faculty, choose MIT because of the quality of the individuals on campus; the opportunity to work together and interact is MIT’s largest asset and consequently, a cooperative relationship is natural. Therefore, the needs of your graduate students not only often overlap the needs of the faculty (quality lab and office space, parking, good health insurance, etc.) but also are of corollary importance to the faculty based on the strong relationship between the two populations.
I have had a tremendous opportunity to work with outstanding faculty in relation to my research project as well as on faculty and Institute committees. This experience helped me reach a rather natural observation: faculty and graduate students often share a common world view while having similar aspirations. But of course! However, I do not believe that the faculty as a body and the GSC have worked together to realize our common goals. I hope that this regular column will help initiate a better dialogue about graduate student issues.
Graduate Student Issues
Housing
Throughout its existence, the Graduate Student Council has been working to improve the housing situation for the graduate student body. This becomes immediately clear just by glancing back through old issues of the publications of the GSC (The Graduate, The Graduate Student News, and others). We are in a particularly critical time because of the competitive nature of graduate student recruiting nationally. The cost of living in the Boston/Cambridge area has become a competitive disadvantage for MIT in recruiting the best graduate students. (If you have any doubt of this I would be more than happy to share the three-ring binder full of complaints received over the last 15 months about the cost of living at MIT.) Not only does the GSC have to advocate to the senior leadership of MIT for more safe and affordable housing close to campus, but also we have to protect the campus housing that already exists for graduate students. Administrative decisions end up shuffling graduate students around and hasty negotiations often result in costly mistakes (such as the Worthington Place contract, which currently has MIT spending $90,000 a month to rent apartments that are standing empty.) (See The Tech, 2/4/00.)
The response of students has been to either attend other schools, move further from campus, or simply pass up graduate studies because the sacrifice is seemingly unjustified. These methods of coping are worrisome to us of the GSC, and I believe that the faculty share our worries. There is much more to be discussed around this issue, and that will be the focus of a future installment of this column.
Advising
As reported in the February issue of the Graduate Student News, the GSC over the years has received communication from graduate students who have had misadventures with their advisors and feel powerless to change the situation. The issue is a complex one, and I encourage you to take a look at the article. One lesson to be drawn from this, is that even with the close collaborative relationship graduate students share with individuals on the faculty, there can be chasms that exist in communication. These chasms, and the culture that they expose, are not healthy or desirable for anyone on the campus and can be diminished. Although the apprentice-like relationship is valuable and integral to the graduate student educational experience, the GSC is working to voice concerns about the current nature of that relationship and shape what the relationship will look like in the future. Faculty are the key element in this relationship and as such you will delimit our success.
Careers
In its 1995 report, Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) (joint committee of NAS, NAE and Institute of Medicine) identified that graduate education produces professionals who are going into an ever widening range of careers. Consequently, they recommended that U.S. graduate education change to "impart a broader range of skills" while "retaining the features, including an original research experience, that have made it a world model." Although much of the rest of MIT has ignored the recommendations of COSEPUP, we at the GSC have been endeavoring to realize this goal. We bring numerous companies to campus with the specific focus of recruiting graduate students with our Career Fair. The GSC has initiated programs for graduate students such as the Externship program (IAP job shadowing), Travel Grants ($10K per year to support student presentations at professional conferences) and a Professional Development Seminar series.
Without a doubt, the faculty ensures that graduate students will have a solid research training upon graduation. But who provides instruction to those interested in academic careers about pedagogy, job placement, and the demands of an academic life? Or about the professional skills (beyond research prowess) that are needed to be effective in the private sector? While there are certainly pockets of excellence on these topics (each year we commend those excellent examples at the MIT Awards Convocation with the Perkins Award), the bulk of MIT’s graduate students are failing to receive that "broader range of skills" and have made this known to the GSC. There are many that provide this at a local level, and we thank you. After all, graduate degrees are professional degrees, and preparing students for their future career is critical. Let us work together to provide a graduate education to MIT students that meets the needs identified by COSEPUP so that we can continue to be the undisputed leaders in graduate education.
Conclusion
I hope that the description of these three issues has been informative. These are just part of the work of the Council, but a part that is of particular importance to the faculty. In the next couple of articles, I plan to expand the discussion on issues of competitiveness and advising.
I know that we have common interests and goals and I hope that this will be the beginning step in raising awareness of the needs of graduate students and building a relationship with you, the faculty.