Re-Envisioning the Ph.D. at Penn State for the New Millennium
True or False? Ph.D. success equals a professor job.
"Not sure it was ever true and sure it is not true today," said Eva Pell,
vice president for Research and dean of the Graduate School.
True or False? Industry job equals not much success or maybe even failure. "Not sure if it was ever true and definitely not true today," she added.
Dean Pell gave the welcoming remarks for the sixth annual Graduate School Faculty Workshop held on October 3, at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. The topic for this year’s workshop was "Re-envisioning the Ph.D. at Penn State for the New Millennium."
"We have a large population of Ph.D. students and a large population of postdocs. I’m not sure if it is a good or a bad thing that we have more Ph.D. students than jobs. My sense is it is a good thing, if we manage it properly. Obviously, if it is a bad thing, we shouldn’t be educating as many students. Each one of us in academia will have to decide that. The solution, however, is using the wonderful education we provide in different ways," she said.
In her remarks, Dean Pell shared a story about one of her students from a number of years ago, who, today, has "a wonderful career as a faculty member at one of the biggest community college systems in the United States." The alumnus came back to speak to her class and said that his experience "is like being in another world. He is teaching students whose families have never gone to college or may not speak English. He said he is trying to get them to a place where they can use their education to make a better life for themselves in a very different way than students at Penn State. Our challenge, said Dean Pell, is to provide a superb education and to prepare our students to serve society in a lot of different ways."
Dean Pell thanked Dr. Richard H. Yahner, associate dean for the Graduate School, for choosing this topic and for organizing the workshop. Before introducing Dr. Jody Nyquist, Dr. Yahner noted that the intent of this workshop is not only to consider her study, but "to address how we can change thingsÑwhat do we need to do to make the graduate experience the best graduate experience. Our hope is that we begin to think about this collectively and begin to generate thinking on where we need to go in the future with graduate training."
Dr. Nyquist began by saluting Penn State for this occasion and for re-examining or looking at the current status and future directions of the Ph.D. To bring this to the fore, she started by saying a few words about the Ph.D. "Obtaining a Ph.D. is more than obtaining a degree," she remarked. "In every interview with a person who held a Ph.D., inevitably, he or she would say, Ôwhen I got my Ph.D.’ It is an imprinting experience, never to be forgotten."
Dr. Nyquist went on to say that during her interviews with members of academia and business she heard assumptions with "questionable authenticity" and explained, "We think we know what business and industry thinks about academia and business and industry thinks they know what academia thinks about them." The perceptions are very different.
"Doctoral education, therefore, deals not only with the production of degree holders, but really with a cultural belief system that shapes professional lives," she stated and added, "If there are changes to be made, research institutions may have to do more of the changes. We have a lot to lose and we have to think about it very carefully. That is the real challenge."
Dr. Nyquist also shared what she learned from those outside the academy. "They) say, more than ever before, we need Ph.D.s to do work for society. What has changed is the kind of complex issues we are dealing with today. With the globalization of the economy, there are questions that we have never faced before. And the answers to those come only with that kind of deep, analytical ability that people with Ph.D.s holdÑthe ability to make sense out of disparate data and to a bring meaning to things that we never looked at and juxtaposition before."
"No one wants to demean, dilute, diminish, distant or destroy the Ph.D.," she assured. What she heard in her study was that everyone wants to "support, sustain, enhance, improve, and strengthen" the Ph.D.
Dr. Nyquist then referenced the booklet prepared from the study, titled "What Concerns Do We Have?" and talked about origins of the project and the interest of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a few findings from the study, and implications and ongoing efforts.
To highlight strategies for implementing change and innovation, the Re-envisioning the Ph.D. research team members created a Web site to enable institutions, organizations, agencies, and corporations to display descriptions of promising practices occurring across the nation and abroad. The Web site, http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/, serves as an online "living" resource for everyone interested in shaping the future of doctoral education.
Following Dr. Nyquist’s talk, a group of panelists from Penn State presented some of the innovative initiatives in place at Penn State to enhance the quality of our Ph.D. students as they prepare for the workforce. Synopses of the panel presentations follow.
To view the videotape of the Graduate School’s workshop on "Re-envisioning the Ph.D. at Penn State," please contact Dr. Barbara W. Pennypacker, p1q@psu.ed.
PANEL PRESENTATIONS
Dr. Melvin L. Billingsley, Acting Chair of Pharmacology,
Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
"Re-envisioning the Ph.D. in the Life Science Consortium"
Rapid advances in the life sciences are changing approaches in fields as diverse as medicine, plant biology, and agriculture. In order to train students with sufficient depth and breadth to meet the challenges of the coming revolution, the Life Science Consortium (LSC) has developed Ph.D. programs which emphasize rigorous personalized scientific training, breadth of scope, and curricular flexibility. In order to achieve these goals, several innovative features have been designed into the LSC-Integrated Biosciences (IBIOS) Ph.D. programs. First, there are nine different options available for Ph.D. training under the LSC IBIOS program and they range from ecological and plant molecular biology through neuroscience. Students apply to the program and rank their top three options. Once enrolled, students have the flexibility to participate in programs across several colleges at Penn State. For example, a student in neuroscience can spend a semester at University Park followed by a semester at Hershey and can perform thesis research at either campus. Many programs encourage dual mentorship for the Ph.D. committee. Additionally, students are encouraged to undertake summer internships in commercial, governmental and related settings, and are encouraged to explore non-traditional venues for internships. Finally, all LSC students are required to take coursework in scientific ethics and a colloquium. The latter is designed to expose students to top-ranked scientists in cutting-edge disciplines. Students from diverse programs must learn how to interpret findings and perspectives from areas different than their own specialties. These innovative approaches are designed to prepare students for life-long learning and accomplishment.
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Dr. Susan L. Brantley, Professor of Geosciences
"The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Program
of the National Science Foundation"
Now entering its second year, the Biogeochemical Research Initiative for Education (BRIE) is an NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) grant funded in order to study and develop innovative approaches to advanced interdisciplinary research and education. BRIE funds graduate research and education in five departments across four colleges at Penn State.
Several unique opportunities exist within BRIE to enhance Ph.D. students’ experiences. For example, all BRIE students are required to have two advisors, one from their home department and another from the department of a second area of concentration. We believe that structuring the program in this fashion enhances students’ perspectives on interdisciplinary research, particularly by integrating contemporary paradigms from both programs (through faculty mentorship) into a constructive research agenda. Perhaps BRIE’s largest departures from traditional, discipline-based study are the research and teaching "credit cards." Students are encouraged to develop unique research agendas and teaching modules emphasizing alternative, interdisciplinary approaches to traditional topics and methods. After committee review and approval, students can receive up to $4,000 for their own research and up to $1,800 to implement their teaching modules. Again, we believe that "breaking away" from the traditional graduate students’ research experience (structured around faculty’s research agendas and teaching methods) by subsidizing students’ own initiatives offers significant benefits to the education experience. In particular, these "credit cards" are mechanisms that spur creative interdisciplinary approaches to traditional research as well as to foster innovative methods of knowledge transfer.
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Dr. Robert Hendrickson, Head, Department of Education Policy Studies
"Identifying Best Practices in TA Preparation and the Departmental
Environment Where They Thrive and the Impact of the Teaching Assistant Experience
on Employability"
This presentation discussed briefly the work of the Teaching and Learning Consortium TA team to identify departments with exemplar TA preparation programs and to analyze what departmental and environmental factors promote and sustain these programs. This study will provide an inventory of the ways departments across the University are using TAs in teaching and learning activities. Four departments and one college wide TA preparation programs have been identified for analysis. The study will be described and the anticipated outcome will be used as benchmarks for other departments to emulate. The TA Team is also investigating the relationship between the TA experience and employability after degree completion. One hypothesis is that as industry moves more and more to team approaches for innovation and problem resolution they find the TA experience particularly attractive in prospective employees. This presentation included a brief review of the literature and implications for graduate preparation programs.
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Dr. R. Neill Johnson, Associate Director, Center for Excellence
in Learning and Teaching (CELT), Affiliate Assistant Professor of English
"Stepping into a Community of Teachers: The Penn State Course in
College Teaching"
In the best of circumstances, departments provide regular and frequent occasions for faculty and graduate instructors to interact on teaching matters so that support for TAs is local, systematic, and sustained. However, in a departmental context TAs seldom forget the difference between themselves and the faculty, nor are their newly established assumptions about teaching and learning often challenged. This is why teaching development programs at the college or university level can provide such important preparation for graduates whose careers will demand their active participation in broad-based teaching and learning communities. When status is not an issue, graduate students can more easily develop collegial relationships with faculty, and sharing experiences with instructors from a wide range of disciplines improves both teaching and problem-solving skills.
Over the past eight years, CELT has witnessed more than 700 graduate students and faculty take the Penn State Course in College TeachingÑa noncredit, in-service course for experienced instructors. The course establishes an interdisciplinary, multigenerational community who see teaching as an integral part of scholarship and who are deeply invested in becoming better facilitators of their own and others' learning. Course participants learn how to describe and implement their teaching objectives, how better to assess their students' learning, and how to document their own effectiveness as facilitators of learning. They become acquainted with the process of assembling a teaching portfolio as, among other things, a means of communicating their related knowledge and skills to potential colleagues and employers. The Course in College Teaching has served as a model for department-based courses, and has even more potential as a model for college-based courses that encourage experienced TAs to connect with other instructors outside their areas of expertise.
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Dr. Jeffrey H. Cohen, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
"Bridging Research and Graduate Training: Cultural Anthropology
and the NSF’s CAREER Program at Penn State"
In 1999, the National Science Foundation's CAREER program (formally the young scholars program) funded Dr. Cohen’s proposal that sought to study migration between rural Mexico and the U.S. and at the same time, to develop innovative approaches to graduate training in cultural anthropology. Dr. Cohen briefly described the grant, its dual research and teaching goals, and how it seeks to mentor a new generation of students while building a framework for understanding global social, cultural and economic processes.
The research component of the project has three goals. Our first goal is to define the history of migration between Oaxaca, Mexico and the United States and to describe the economic and social factors driving cross border movement. The second goal is to determine the role of remittance investment in the processes of socioeconomic change and growing social inequality in rural Oaxacan communities. The third goal is to construct a comparative body of data for a broader discussion of migration and policy issues.
These goals, organized around intensive team-based summer fieldwork, are combined with an innovative graduate and advanced undergraduate training program in cultural anthropology that we hope will recruit and mentor bilingual Hispanic students through their advanced degrees in anthropology at Penn State. Mentoring includes working closely with students as they complete the requirements for their degrees. It also means spending a good deal of time out of the classroom helping these students adjust to western Pennsylvania and new ways of thinking about the world and migration, in particular. To this end, the project includes a lecture series that uses real and virtual classroom technologies and resources of the Population Research Institute to introduce students to specialists in the U.S. and Mexico who are working on similar research agendas. Undergraduates have the opportunity for hands-on training in anthropology through a summer field school that will be offered beginning in 2001.
The research and teaching goals of this project are combined to meet some of the challenges of the 21st century. The program bridges the divide that often separates research and training by making teaching, student work, and classroom instruction integral to the success of research. It introduces students to the rigors of anthropology and science in general and, at the same time, mentors them through their learning experience as they learn the skills necessary for successful fieldwork and data collection and analyses. Finally, the program looks to build tolerance for cultural differences and understanding of the global processes of change and introduces students through virtual technologies and hands-on fieldwork to an international perspective on a crucial issue for our country's future well being.