Report to the Student Affairs Committee of the Washington University Board of Trustees by Lorrie Cranor, 1995-96 Graduate Student Representative to the Board of Trustees May 3, 1996 Good morning. Throughout this year the members of this committee have heard about a wide variety of wonderful activities involving undergraduate students at Washington University. But except when prompted by my persistent questions, we have heard very little about graduate students, the activities they are involved in, and the issues that concern them. Many people have the misconception that graduate students have no interest in student activities and no concerns that cannot be addressed within their home departments. This is most definitely not the case. Today I would like to tell you a little bit about the graduate and professional programs at Washington University, some of the issues of concern to students in these programs, and a new committee which has been formed to try to address some of these concerns. Graduate students comprise just over half the student body at Washington University. They are involved in a wide range of programs ranging from two-year professional masters degree programs to 4-8 year doctoral programs to part-time evening programs that may take any number of years to complete. In some schools such as business and law, students' academic programs consist almost entirely of course work. In other schools, students spend several months or years doing laboratory or field research, internships, or practicums. Doctoral students in the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering often receive free tuition and stipends throughout their graduate education. These students generally hold research assistantship or teaching assistantship positions which require them to contribute 10 to 20 hours per week or more towards the teaching or research efforts of their departments. In most of the other schools students generally take out large loans to pay their tuition and sometimes hold part time jobs to help pay for their living expenses. As a graduate student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, I am most familiar with graduate student life in my school. So let me tell you a little bit about what life is like for an engineering graduate student. There are generally between 700 and 800 graduate students enrolled in the engineering school each semester. Of these students, about half are part time masters students who take one or two courses each semester in the evening. Because of the large number of evening students, many courses that full-time students take are only offered in the afternoon or evening. Thus it is rare for engineering graduate students to have courses that start before 2 or 3 pm and common for them to have courses that last until 9 pm. The engineering computer labs are open 24 hours a day during the fall and spring semester and it is not uncommon to find graduate students working in these labs late at night. Engineering graduate students generally take about 3 courses a semester for their first two years. These courses are generally all engineering courses, as most departments will not pay for courses that students take outside the engineering school. They spend summers taking additional courses, working on research projects, or at summer jobs in industry. Most finish their masters degrees after about two years. They generally need only a few additional courses to meet the course requirements for their doctoral degrees. Once they have completed their doctoral course requirements, they must take a series of qualifying exams. The format of these exams vary from department to department, but generally include written and oral components and cover material from all the required courses offered by the department. Students then begin work on their dissertation project. For some students this work is a continuation of the work done for a masters thesis. Most students supported by research assistantships are provided with shared lab or office space, excellent computer equipment, and other materials needed for their research. As a teaching assistant, I have been given an old computer, but a rather nice private office connected to my department's grading and consulting room. Engineering graduate students supported by their departments are generally expected to work year round. Most spend 60 hours per week or more on course-work, research, and their departmental responsibilities. They generally take off only one or two weeks during winter and summer breaks and rarely get a spring break. My department views one-day holidays like fall break as excellent opportunities to hold mandatory day-long seminars for graduate students. With all this work, we would all go a little crazy if we didn't take some time to relax and have a good time. Intramural sports, and the various university martial arts and social dance clubs are pretty popular with engineering graduate students. Medical school students seem to be very serious about IM sports too... every year the IM ultimate frisbee team I play on gets pounded by the IM frisbee teams from the med school. Some grad students are involved in other extra-curricular activities as well including musical groups and religious organizations. However, graduate students often complain that they have trouble finding out about these groups and question whether they are even allowed to join. When the Graduate-Professional Council (GPC) was formed 3 and half years ago, it started sponsoring university-wide graduate student social events including fall happy hours and spring picnics. Several hundred graduate students attended the last GPC picnic held on campus a few weeks ago. About 3 and a half years ago engineering graduate students got together to talk about forming a student government. Initially the government was formed because we needed a mechanism for electing representatives to GPC. But once we got students from our various departments together and we started talking, we realized that we had a lot of common concerns that an engineering student government could address. Thus AGES, the Association of Graduate Engineering Students, was born. It took two years before we were officially recognized by our school. But now that we are recognized we have a budget, and we just recently acquired a lounge complete with lots of surplus furniture. We are still working towards the adoption of a set of graduate student rights and responsibilities and are trying to find ways for graduate student achievements to be publicly recognized. While there are deans lists, graduation honors, and other forums for undergraduates to be recognized, graduate engineering students often complain that as their years in grad school drag on, their achievements and milestones seem to go unrecognized by anyone other then their advisors. AGES has recently been instrumental in revamping the engineering graduate recognition ceremony held in conjunction with graduation to make it more of a special occasion. We hope to find other ways of recognizing graduate students as well. AGES' biggest accomplishments include obtaining direct deposit for graduate students, simplifying the engineering school's thesis formatting requirements, producing a graduate student handbook, and organizing the first engineering graduate student orientation that anyone can remember. Unlike undergraduate orientation which is extensively supported by the university and school administrations, the engineering graduate student orientation is completely student run and would not exist in any form if students did not volunteer their time to organize it. Some of the other graduate and professional schools have orientations sponsored by their administrations, but there is currently no university-wide orientation for graduate students. This is among the graduate student concerns which until recently really had nowhere to be addressed. Recently, the Chancellor appointed a new committee to address this sort of concern. The Professional and Graduate Student Coordinating Committee, known as PROGRADS, has one graduate student and faculty or administrative representative from every school. There are several ex-officio members including the graduate student representative to the board of trustees and Dean Carrol. At the first PROGRADS meeting a few weeks ago we compiled a list of concerns that the committee might try to address. Among these concerns were the difficulties graduate students have pursuing joint degrees and taking courses outside their home departments, a lack of career services aimed specifically at graduate and professional students, inadequate health insurance, a lack of graduate student housing, and a lack of support for student activities. As we discussed these concerns, we repeatedly came back to the problem of graduate students feeling isolated in their schools and having little awareness about extra-curricular activities and academic programs outside their own schools. The students from the medical school said they felt especially isolated from the rest of the university. Over the next few months PROGRADS will work with the chancellor and the deans of the various schools to prioritize our list of concerns and start trying to address them. One problem which we are turning our attention to immediately is that of graduate student housing. We believe that an off-campus university apartment building could provide needed housing for graduate students as well as the venue for a graduate student community center that would promote interaction between graduate students in different departments and schools. We are currently gathering information about the types of housing options students would be most interested in and exploring the feasibility of such a plan. I am very excited about PROGRADS and look forward to the opportunity to finally try to address some of the problems that graduate students have been talking about for years. The administration's sponsorship of this committee is a good indication of their awareness that graduate students do have valid concerns that are not being addressed and of their willingness to work with us to address these concerns. I hope that at this time next year my successor, Jim McCarter, will have a long list of PROGRADS accomplishments to report to you. Before I conclude, I would like to address a few remarks specifically to the students present. With any luck I will be finishing my dissertation this summer and moving on to a job that pays a bit better than a teaching assistantship. I am very pleased with the enthusiasm shown by Jim and the new GPC officers, and look forward to hearing about all the great things they will be doing next year. Throughout this year I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to promote more interaction between the undergraduate and graduate student governments and other organizations. To those of you who are undergraduate student leaders sitting here today, I urge you to contact Jim and the GPC officers next year and let them know how you might work together. Your organizations are well established and well funded, and people know how to get a hold of you. We're not so well funded and we're really just getting started. But we have an email address and I have handouts for you with officer contact info. When you start planning activities that are supposed to be inclusive of the university community, when you propose university centers, when you ask for improvements to university services, look us up. When you go forward with not half the student body, but rather the whole student body behind you, just think of what you might achieve. Thank you. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have about graduate students, the PROGRADS committee, or GPC.