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When the Dean for Graduate Students posed the following question to different focus groups of graduate students, faculty, and alums, he got an earful.
The September 1998 report from the Task Force on Student Life and Learning states that "An MIT education should prepare students for life through an educational triad composed of academics, research, and community." How is this relevant for graduate students?
Here are snapshots of what the Dean heard.
Students say that the triad is what the typical student would like to have. This is more than a preference: they stress the importance of the triad – and the depth and breadth of opportunities in academics, research, and community – as essential to their psychological well-being and integral to their intellectual development. Students cite Ashdown House as a microcosm of the educational triad, and suggest expanding that model.
Also convinced about the relevance of the triad, alums believe that "community" is given short shrift at MIT. They recommend that the Institute "operationalize" the triad, especially with regard to community. Alums relate community experiences to a broader array of skills sought by business and industry in the graduate students whom they hire, and recommend that the graduate experience stress this reality.
Faculty are very realistic about the educational triad. The general sense is that MIT "does fine" with academics and research, but fails to provide the sense of community that would integrate the graduate experience. In this regard, MIT has typically focused its efforts on the undergraduates. Challenges for creating community ("operationalizing the triad") lie with assigning responsibilities for implementing change and in resolving the very serious issues of housing and financial resources.
There are some common themes in what these three groups have to say about the educational triad. All three constituencies agree that:
Background
How did the Graduate Students Office (GSO) come to ask this question of graduate students, faculty, and alums?
The impetus for this research was a "wake-up call" to the Dean that occurred more than two years ago. At that time, the GSO undertook what seemed to be a straightforward project, that is, hiring a writer to rewrite the chapter in the course catalogue on graduate education at MIT. Once the Dean read a proposed draft, he realized that this was a chapter for a publication that did not yet exist.
Why was that important? Although the energy and excitement conveyed by the new description did not "fit" the existing course catalogue, the Dean was convinced that its vibrant tone and content should be part of existing communications about graduate education at MIT. And it wasn't!
The implication for the GSO was to conduct a systematic and complete review of existing communications in an effort to identify the gaps, what was working and what wasn't, what was not in place that needed to be. Then and there, the Dean took the plunge and began a strategic planning process – with the goal to create and implement a communications strategy for graduate education at MIT- that has dramatically changed the way the GSO conducts its business.
Methodology
A communications strategy is the business of developing and implementing coordinated and persuasive communications over time. There are three streams of work entailed: completing a constituency analysis; developing a message strategy; and articulating business objectives.
The Dean identified a nimble core team with representatives from the Dean's Office/GSO, Public Relations Services, MIT Libraries, International Students Office, and the Graduate Student Council. Working intensely over a period of 10 months, the core team developed a customer taxonomy of 26 unique constituencies, organizing them in grid fashion as internal or external customers; and as key customers, very important customers, and other important customers. A thorough analysis of each customer segment provided a list of customer "benefits" (clarifying the "value added" offered by the GSO) and "liabilities" (what should be happening). The team also identified existing modes of communication.
Pushing their analysis one step further, the team identified seven key themes around which to categorize the liability statements. These themes (such as workflow, internal marketing, and resource/time) provided another framework from which to prioritize business objectives and short-term action items.
To craft messages, the core team needed to address questions such as: What is graduate education at MIT all about? What do we want to say? Are there consistent, identifiable messages throughout MIT's communications? Are they the right messages? Are we using the right media for our messages and for our audiences? Only by answering these questions could the team create a set of overarching messages that fashion a clearer picture of the full range of experiences available at the Institute and complement departmental outreach about unique programs.
To begin, the team planned a series of focus group sessions to investigate the graduate experience by asking students (in so many words), "What are you getting?"; by asking faculty, "What are you providing?"; and by asking alums, "What did you get?" In the replies they captured, the team planned to look for patterns, and the extent of overlap or "disconnect" in the perceptions of the three groups. From this material, the team could identify and validate key messages regarding graduate education at MIT.
Collaboration
To begin, the Dean welcomed "a new agenda of collaboration" as a key aspect of the work undertaken by the GSO. The three person "Dean's team" (Dean Ike Colbert, Associate Dean Blanche Staton, and Barrie Gleason, director of the Communications Office, Public Relations Services) served as the mainstay for planning and implementation. Project teams always represented other Institute organizations and the student body. And on a regular basis, the Dean's team scheduled information sessions to update key stakeholders and senior administrators on work-in-progress.
More recently, the GSO sponsored the design and implementation of a two-part series of workshops on collaborative leadership, the first of which was co-led by Executive Vice President John Curry and Director of Organization and Employee Development Margaret Ann Gray. The first workshop introduced a conceptual framework and language describing "collaboration" and "leadership." In the second session, co-led by Dean Ike Colbert and Margaret Ann Gray, participants deliberated over a shared work agenda for the coming year.
Included among the GSO's collaborators are the offices of admissions, career services and preprofessional advising, alumni/ae association, the libraries, resource development, student life, public relations services, and the graduate administrators.
A "quiet revolution"
It's evident from what we've already learned that MIT needs to address a sea change in the model of what young people have come to expect of the Institute. This challenge is not unique to MIT, but represents a "quiet revolution" in graduate schools across the country, in which graduate students are expressing a desire for something different, more relevant, from their graduate experience. [Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2001, describing survey sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts] Through its work-to-date, the GSO is positioned to address the challenge by playing a clear, supporting role in the development of community, and by implementing its freshly minted business objectives in the following arenas.
Fashion key messages for Institute communications
The Dean's team will complete focus group sessions with students, alums, and faculty, including sessions with each and every department. Then, by convening the appropriate colleagues, they will analyze all comments, identify patterns, and shape high-level, overarching messages that present a clear and coherent picture of the graduate experience at MIT. Complementing what the departments do, these messages and themes will reflect a firm understanding of the unique attributes and strengths of MIT that need to be reinforced. They will be reflected in the GSO's new Web and print publications – already in the pipeline – and inform the work of colleagues who are developing communications in support of the campaign, recruitment, contact with alums, and other endeavors.
Implement collaborative agenda
The GSO, along with its collaborators, will complete a wide ranging set of business objectives by the start of the next academic year. This work will impact on graduate life in the following areas:
Promote educational triad, but create an institutional vision of community relevant for graduate students
The GSO is eager to re-engage the discussion of community at MIT. The special impetus for this recommendation lies in the attitudes of graduate students: the depth of their feeling about what students are not getting in terms of community, along with their willingness to contribute to the change process. Its unique focus (community) rests with faculty insights regarding the graduate experience as a profoundly different undertaking than what occurs at the undergraduate level. In their words, "What we ask of graduate students is to learn how to create truth, to do something that is original and true. This is a solitary endeavor for which the student needs support from the community." Both "takes" spur an examination of the qualities of the MIT community already in place (or that need to be in place) to enhance the graduate experience.
The definition of community proposed in the 1998 report of the Task Force on Student Life and Learning . . .
. . ."community" refers to students, faculty, staff, and alumni who have come together on campus for the common purpose of developing the qualities that define the educated individual.
. . . brings together the attributes of common location, an interacting population, and individuals unified by a shared interest. And while it's clear that MIT must continue to marshal physical, human, and programmatic resources in support of community life – as the report recommends – let's consider another framework for bringing the community side of the triad to the required standard of excellence.
The GSO proposes thinking about community at MIT as "opportunities for priceless encounters." [Executive Vice President, Alumni/ae Association, Bill Hecht, in conversation, December 2000]. These encounters are the many and varied interactions that prepare students for community citizenship; they always include graduate students and may include others who share the responsibility for building community. [Three Questions in Search of Answers, Report of the President 1998-99]
For graduate students, such encounters may be considered as multiple levels of learning along a continuum; as socialization efforts with the purpose of developing students as good "citizens of their fields," and as global leaders. These opportunities occur at three levels, which may or may not be discrete. At the core is the departmental level where the opportunities flourish for students to connect with their departments, their programs, their professions. This is the heart of the graduate enterprise, where students learn the normative, interactive modes in any given field, where they learn to express and defend their ideas, seek connections, exchange criticisms. These intellectual and quasi-social interactions represent what faculty are already doing. In our discussions, students and faculty can readily identify the rich and relevant ways they engage with one another at this level. The Institute does well with providing opportunities here.
What's not so apparent to students (or faculty or alums) is the extent to which the Institute provides sufficient support for opportunities in other arenas, that is, for "priceless encounters" at the Institute level, or at the personal level. At the Institute level, for example, consider what opportunities are available for students to "connect" with senior administration, the occasions for senior administrators to "hear" the concerns expressed by graduate students, and for students to "hear" about the Institute's pressing priorities and relevant policies. The "opportunities for priceless encounters" at the most intimate level of the graduate culture are those naturally occurring and informal, personal encounters around such magnets as location, ethnicity, gender, or cultural background.
One student compared the three levels of community experience for graduate students to learning how to dress for the New England winter. "It's difficult to achieve the right balance," he said. "You need to learn how to dress in layers, with a warm jacket (the Institute layer), then suitable attire for the business of the day (the department layer); and, close to the skin, your thermals." [Graduate student Christopher Jones, in conversation, January 2001]
What support must MIT provide to ensure that students pull that outfit together and achieve the best "fit"? At the level of the department, MIT needs to articulate where the opportunities for priceless encounters work best, and why; but at the same time, examine at the Institute and personal levels, how we can do better with encouraging and enabling graduate students in their "solitary endeavors." MIT must enhance the graduate experience by ensuring that opportunities for its priceless graduate students are considered in a comprehensive and integrated fashion, rather than a fragmented and unexamined manner, for which no single individual or organization claims responsibility.
In summary
While the GSO is contributing to the sense of graduate student community and will continue to do so, the responsibility for promoting an institutional vision is a shared one. (This is not the place to detail current programs and activities of the GSO; however, they are clearly outlined in the Dean's annual report 1999-2000, online at http://web.mit.edu/communications/pres00.) In the short term, the GSO plans to complete its focus group sessions; analyze the data collected in these discussions, and craft a message strategy for describing the graduate experience at MIT in a relevant and engaging manner. Between now and the next progress report, Dean Ike Colbert (ikec@mit.edu) welcomes any comments or suggestions on the work at hand.
Acknowledgments
We wish to express our appreciation to all those whose earnest and thoughtful comments contributed to this overview. We especially appreciate the acknowledgement and support so generously offered by Vice President and Dean for Research Dave Litster and Professor Gordon Kaufman; and for the support of "ex officio" members of the team Chancellor Larry Bacow and Vice President and Secretary of the Corporation Kathryn Willmore.
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