Graduate Deans Research Articles

Don’t count them out: PhD skills development and careers in industry

Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify what skills gained during PhD study are linked with preparation and differences between industry and academic positions. Design/methodology/approach Using student-level data from nearly 2,400 early career PhD alumni from 50 US PhD granting institutions, this study uses a generalized ordered logit model with partial proportional odds to test the main and conditional effects of 14 areas of skill development on perceptions of career preparation. Findings This study contributes empirical evidence to show that research skills and communicating with non-technical audiences are positively linked with job preparation. Practical implications The combination of sophisticated research and noncognitive skills promotes the idea of a well-rounded PhD – a highly skilled and versatile researcher that can interact in both academic and industry settings – as a goal of doctoral education. The knowledge gained from this study will assist scholars and graduate educators, including faculty advisors, program directors, graduate deans, graduate education professionals and career development professionals to reconceptualize professional preparation for work in industry. Social implications For-profit businesses, particularly start-up companies, are vital for economic development and many require PhD-level employees across research and management roles. Developing PhDs with the appropriate skills for industry will better align higher education and economic interests. Originality/value The wide scope of doctoral institutions allows for a quantitative approach not appropriate for single-institution case studies of doctoral career pathways research.

Examining Factors that MA Students face while conducting their Theses: The Case of School of Education and behavioral Sciences, Wolaita Sodo University.

The purpose of this study was to dig out the root causes for the challenges that MA/or second degree students face while conducting the research(Theses). Hence, to realize and achieve this purpose, qualitative case study research method and design respectively were employed. Both primary sources and secondary sources were employed. The primary sources were 40 regular and summer MA students, and the secondary sources were the Theses materials of 4 years. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 40 Theses materials out of the 4 year batches. Observation and document analysis were made to collect data. Data were analyzed qualitatively through narration. The findings showed that there was the knowledge gap on the part of the researchers about the fundamentals of research on one hand and on the other hand the concerned bodies gave little attention for capacitating the researchers, and also gave low attention for monitoring the progress of the researchers while conducting research. And it could be concluded that there were a lot of activities that the concerned bodies like school of graduate studies, heads and deans of the departments and schools or colleges, academic vice presidents, and even instructors have to do to capacitate the researchers or MA students. Therefore, it was suggested that statistical courses should be integrated with research courses and also there should be the content regarding advanced analysis of the findings, and also the training for the students should be strengthened and also there should be monitoring and evaluation system developed.

Drop in foreign applicants worries engineering schools.

Graduate deans cite anti-immigrant rhetoric as applications from overseas students decline by up to 30%.

Professional Education and Private Practice: Is There a Disconnect?

This article summarizes results of a national study conducted to evaluate the private practice career intentions of MSW graduate student members of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) (n = 271), the extent to which these students are being prepared for private practice by the graduate schools, and the views of the graduate deans (n = 104) and macro practice (n = 152) and clinical (n = 278) members of NASW about private practice and social work education. An analysis of mailed questionnaire responses from these stakeholding groups suggests a striking disconnect between practice and education. Although a majority of graduate students plan to enter private practice, most on a full-time basis, graduate schools do not teach content specific to private practice careers, and many faculty even discourage the discussion of private practice career aspirations. On the other hand, a majority of NASW members, whether clinical or macro social workers, expected graduate schools to begin educating students for private practice. It is proposed that the labor force transition from the public to the private sector has resulted in the bifurcation of social work education. Implications for social work practice are discussed; short- and long-term initiatives for matching social work education to social work practice are proposed.

Developing the Teacher Scholar… a Call for the New Professoriate the Graduate Teaching Academy

In a special Symposium issue of this journal (Spring 2005), S. Shyam Sundar and Mary Beth Oliver eloquently explore the relevance of journals in graduate education. They note that this relevance evident in terms of the role that journals play in socializing students into the norms and practices of scholarly publication...journal articles provide graduate students with models for how to present their own research ideas in ways that are typical and will likely be well received by other scholars in the discipline. Sundar and Oliver expand on essays from an earlier Educator Symposium (Autumn 2003) regarding the obligation and practice of preparing students to teach. Wayne Wanta cites mentoring, confidence, and incentives in preparing the international doctoral student. Paul Parsons laments that invest so minimally in training doctoral students to teach, and notes that value systems is the critical tenet in developing professors. Sharon Dunwoody counters that Research 1 universities are no longer giving lip service to and cites newer tenure criteria requiring rigor and innovation for the future professoriate. William Christ cites Ernest Boyer's call for a of and the movement toward accountability. Beth Barnes adds that this increased accountability and assessment of student outcomes requires a commitment to make doctoral students teachers of record in significant classes, after extensive grounding as and research assistants. The Symposium also includes an essay from Richard L. Barton, who elaborates on the Graduate Teaching Academy Model espoused by thenEducator editor Jeremy Cohen. Barton cites the crucible of this model being a consistent, extensive interaction of doctoral teaching associates with faculty course coordinators and, in some cases, even graduate deans. The Graduate Teaching Academy Understanding the critical need to develop professors that can successfully weave their scholarship and research agendas into their classrooms, Cohen launched the Graduate Teaching Academy (GTA) in this journal in 2003. The GTA has spawned some promising pedagogical and theoretical scholarship, although the pool of overall submissions has been somewhat shallow. Accepted manuscripts have been eclectic, ranging from media literacy in Sweden to computer literacy in literature, from civic journalism to student-collected data quality to the value of Web design in pedagogy. …

What You Don't Know: Graduate Deans' Knowledge of Doctoral Completion Rates

Doctoral completion and times-to-completion are issues of growing concern in the university community. Research on student completion difficulties has focused on student characteristics and student–supervisor relations. This article addresses the administration of graduate programs — more specifically, graduate deans’ knowledge of and attitudes toward doctoral completion rates and times-to-completion. A survey was carried out involving graduate deans from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Data showed most deans were unable to report doctoral completion percentages and completion times. Still, they rated completion at their universities as relatively good. Their lack of information may hinder attempts to improve trends in doctoral completion. Improved surveillance of students’ progress in doctoral programs may aid deans in evaluating the impact of program requirements and economic factors on doctoral completion and graduate studies in general.

Preparing the Next Generation of Faculty: Graduate School as Socialization to the Academic Career

Based on a four-year, qualitative study of graduate students, the article discusses graduate student development, students' perceptions of the academic career, and graduate students' suggestions for improving graduate socialization experiences. The article concludes with recommendations and policy questions for faculty advisors, chairpersons, teaching assistant supervisors, and graduate deans.

TA Teaching Effectiveness

As full-time faculty positions become less stable, graduate teaching assistants (TAs) will continue to increase their responsibilities in instruction of undergraduate students. These increased responsibilities are most evident at large research universities, where full-time faculty have been drawn away from undergraduate instruction in order to teach graduate courses and fulfill increasing research demands (Boyer, 1991a, 1991b; Diamond & Gray, 1987; Stokely, 1987; C. J. Sykes, 1988). As a result, a great deal of responsibility for undergraduate instruction has been handed over to graduate teaching assistants. Generally, research assistantships offer better funding and more opportunities to work closely with faculty mentors. Therefore, prestige of teaching assistantships becomes jeopardized as best graduate students seek research assistantships so that they will gain research skills and experiences necessary to become successful college faculty members. Sullivan (1991) describes this as skimming cream off top of each group of graduate students and diverting their talents away from teaching. Faculty and administrators at research universities are gatekeepers for successive generations of TAs, providing them with their primary training for college faculty positions. However, since socialization into university research function has become major focus of graduate assistantships in what C. J. Sykes (1988) refers to as the historic escape from teaching (THEFT), teaching becomes a secondary faculty pursuit. Faculty have little time to devote to mentoring their teaching assistants. Furthermore, little extra time exists in a TA's schedule to become socialized thoroughly and effectively in teaching function (Davis & Minnis, 1993). Therefore, graduates entering careers in higher education typically lack training and experience necessary to perform their instructional duties (Boyer, 1991b). In many instances, department chairs assign TAs with no training or teaching experience to teach undergraduate classes. In Bomotti's (1994) study nearly half of TAs had attended no teacher preparation courses nor workshops. However, nearly three-fourths (73%) of these TAs expected to pursue a teaching career. In a national study of 240 graduate deans, Buerkel-Rothfuss and Gray (1991) revealed that very few institutions (26%) offered some form of university-wide TA training, while approximately 56% offered some type of training at departmental level. In a more recent national study of 65 research universities, Butler, Laumer, and Moore (1993) found that nearly 70% of TAs were provided with some type of formal training either at university or department level. In a national study of TAs, 53% indicated having received some form of training, but over 75% indicated that their training amounted to less than one week (Gray & Buerkel-Rothfuss, 1991). The majority of such training efforts are limited to one day or less usually at beginning of term or semester (Buerkel-Rothfuss & Gray, 1991; Ronkowski, 1989). Lack of training or ineffective training is often case due to an incongruence among following factors: When training should occur, who should conduct it, how long it should be, what it should include, whether native and international TAs should receive identical training, and how training should be evaluated (Weimer, Sviniki, & Bauer, 1989). When formal TA training is offered, it is typically provided at university or departmental levels. At university level it typically deals more with university policy and procedures rather than effective instructional delivery techniques (Gray & Buerkel-Rothfuss, 1991). State mandates and university policies often force hurried and ineffective training. University training is usually limited to a one-day workshop, delivered primarily through workshop presentations by university faculty and administrators. …

CORRELATES OF SATISFACTION WITH GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICANTS' PERFORMANCE ON THE GRE WRITING MEASURE

ABSTRACTThe focus of the study was the new GRE writing measure and the proposed GRE scoring guide. The objective was to determine the degree to which the features of student essays upon which scores will be based are the same features that graduate educators use at their institutions to evaluate students' writing. A sample of essays, which had been previously reviewed and judged by graduate deans and faculty, were rescored several times by trained readers. Each rescoring was based on a specific trait in the GRE scoring guide – development of ideas, sentence structure, and so on. The influence of each feature on the judgments made by faculty/deans and on the scores assigned by trained readers was compared. No evidence was uncovered to suggest any differences between graduate deans/faculty and GRE essay readers with respect to the bases on which they judge essay quality.

Rating, not ranking.

Rating, not ranking.

Advisement in Graduate Education: The Graduate Dean's Perspective

The authors report results of a survey of graduate deans showing that academic advisement needs improvement in three areas: articulation of advisement guidelines, preparation of advisors, and support for graduate advisement in the university community.

Faculty Rewards for Community Service Activities: An Update

Abstract The authors of this article report the findings from a replication of their research on the importance placed on various faculty activities by graduate deans and directors. In particular, community service activities were assessed as to their perceived significance. Similarities and changes since the earlier research are discussed in relation to current trends and issues within higher education.

Perceptions of Research Misconduct and an Analysis of Their Correlates

The lay public presumes that professions are self-regulating. In exchange for self-regulation, they are granted autonomy over the conduct of their professional roles (25). In the academic profession, self-regulation encompasses the full spectrum of scholarly activities including the enforcement of standards and ethical principles for the conduct of research (5). However, the effectiveness of self-regulation in the academic profession is currently being challenged. To elaborate, in recent the public has perceived misconduct as growing, if not pervasive, throughout science. In a recent survey of a sample of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) -- the nation's largest umbrella organization for the scientific community -- three-fourths of those responding indicated that media coverage had exaggerated the problem (1). Nevertheless, 37 percent of those polled did believe that instances of fraud and misconduct had increased over the last decade. Moreover, a separate assessment by the National Science Foundation concludes: 20 percent of the scientists say that they have directly encountered fraud, and about 20 percent of graduate deans have dealt with verified cases of misconduct in the past five years [(35) p. 1]. This conclusion was derived from a review of six survey studies that measured the extent of misconduct in science and engineering. These perceptions and experiences have fostered a broad range of actions by the scientific community, including: * A call to graduate programs in science to integrate coursework on ethics into the curriculum. * Numerous sessions and panel discussions scheduled at various professional association meetings. * Editorials in many professional journals. * Changes in editorial policies of some journals, whose editors now require each coauthor of a paper to acknowledge his or her contribution and responsibility for the content of the article. * A regular quarterly newsletter, Professional Ethics Report, published by AAAS, as a means to inform the general community of scientists on evolving issues and actions. * Congressional committee hearings on misconduct in medical and scientific research. * Revised or new codes of ethics that address fraud and misconduct by a large number of scientific professional organizations and associations. * Mandatory requirements to establish institutional panels to oversee issues related to research ethics and allegations of scientific misconduct at research universities receiving federal research funds. * Establishment, in various federal agencies which support scientific research of new offices, that are expressly charged with setting up policies and procedures regarding allegations of misconduct, addressing charges of misconduct, overseeing investigations, and recommending or meting out sanctions. These actions represent the exercise of some degree of responsibility for deterring, detecting, and sanctioning research misconduct by the various loci of responsibility for addressing misconduct that have been identified by Chubin (13): the laboratory, the institution of employment, scientific societies and journals, governmental agencies, and private foundations. Of utmost importance, however, is the responsibility of professional peers for detecting and deterring research wrongdoing (13). They are thus critical to the efficacy of the actions that have been taken by the scientific community listed above; if individual academics do not detect and address misconduct, then such wrongdoing is unlikely to be sanctioned. Despite the importance of the actions of individual academics to the process of self-regulation, Chubin points to the silent suspicions of peers regarding violations of ethical principles and norms which are left undocumented, and asks why these academics do not speak out [(13) p. 187]. Moreover, when science faculty do take action, it is generally informal and decentralized (7)(44)(45). …

Economic Challenges for the Fourth Generation University Theatre

Economie Challenges for the Fourth Generation University Theatre Kent Neely College and university educators are keenly aware of the current economic pressures which are causing tremendous shifts and changes in the manner in which they work. University theatre scholars and practitioners in particular experience an exacerbation of the problem. The current economic crisis affects university theatres especially hard, largely in part from a history of serving two constituencies, higher education and the professional theatre. Those two institutions grew rapidly over the last 30 years by relying upon deficit budgeting and an imbalanced exchange between services and population . As a result of this conflict, the university theatre can no longer sustain the quantitative productivity which characterized it in the past. For the purposes of this article, university theatres are defined as academic and practical programs of theatre study found in colleges and universities . The phrase "economic challenges" refers not to sales, earnings nor the means to those ends, but to the conditions that surround, and to the influences exerted upon, an enterprise by coincidence or design. Further, it presumes that these conditions and influences affect the existence of that enterprise through the supply and acquisition of human, financial and material resources and the use of those resources in the creation of a service: education. University theatre, now in its fourth generation, has developed within four distinct periods that parallel major changes in the United States economy, public policy and higher education.1 The first generation occurred near the turn of the century when George Pierce Baker began playwriting and study classes at Radcliffe in 1904, at Harvard in 1906 and finally at Yale in 1925. Baker's efforts were the first to indicate that the study and practice of theatre was a legitimate academic pursuit. The second generation began shortly thereafter and continued through the Second World War as colleges and universities "bootlegged" theatre courses 57 58 Kent Neely into curricula. Public speaking courses were thinly veiled efforts to teach acting; playwriting began to be taught in "workshops" and classes at places like the Carnegie Institute, Cornell, Northwestern and the University of Iowa. The third generation, after World War II and through the 1960s, was the boom time for higher education. The G.I. Bill enabled veterans to reenter acadame. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 funneled vast amounts of money into colleges and universities. The growth was unprecedented in the nation's history.2 The fourth generation began in the early 1970s when college and university funding and student populations changed dramatically. It has been further affected by the erosion of academic resources since 1980. For the past three years it has been hit hard by a major economic recession that Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman said is unlike any the country has previously experienced.3 Friedman noted that "because we have underinvested and overborrowed to such a great extent for the last dozen years, we have seriously impaired our country's long range growth prospects" (Meyers and Alters 16A). Friedman's observations apply to the fourth generation of university theatres and to professional theatres since the prior three decades are characterized by an overextension of education's and theatre's economic tools. Neither grew as a result of an equitable provision and exchange service based upon continuous market need or demand. Both have relied upon deficit budgeting while defining operations by growth objectives; a strategy which grew opportunistically and concurrently in both the university theatre and the professional theatre. An initial rupture occurred for both institutions in the early 1960s as more and more colleges and universities embraced art training as part of their missions. Consider a position speech delivered by W. MacNeil Lowry in 1961 to a conference of graduate deans. Lowry, then director of the Ford Foundation's Program of Humanities and the Arts, was a principal leader in the funding of non-profit arts organizations. He noted a dilemma in the shift of arts training programs into higher education and away from private institutes. The shift concerned him because it was inconsistent with the traditional college and university role as a place for the liberal education of the...

The Operational Importance of Teaching: A Study from the Perspective of Social Science and Graduate Deans

in a discussion ofprogram evaluation criteria, tenure and promotion criteria, merit raise criteria, funds for teaching-related activities, and the dean's resources allocation policy. Teaching is the primaryfactor in allpersonnel and resource allocation decisions according to the verbal representations of the social science and graduate deans. However, there is much less support for teaching in practice, and this support shows wide variation among institutions and considerable inconsistency within institutions. Reasons for this include inadequate total budgets in teaching-oriented institutions, the imperfect institutionalization of teaching support structures, and thefailure of colleges and universities to sustain a tradition in which teaching is defined as an activity that must be actively encouraged and nurtured in many ways if it is to flourish.

Judgments of Graduate Deans and Their Reports regarding Foreign Language Requirements for the Ph.D.

Judgments of Graduate Deans and Their Reports regarding Foreign Language Requirements for the Ph.D.

Graduate Departments and Community College English Teachers

WHEN I FIRST HEARD Bette Midler sing, the most prestigious place she had ever appeared was the Continental Baths on W. 74th Street. Friends only barely tolerated my rave reviews and insistent suggestions that she would become a major star. So when, during the same week last December, the Divine Miss M appeared both in sold-out performances at the Palace and on the cover of Newsweek, I merely smiled. Those community college leaders who for many years have crusaded for reform in graduate education based on the realities of life in two-year colleges must feel a similar sense of satisfaction when they read the recently published report of the Panel on Alternate Approaches to Graduate Education, Scholarship for Society.' Although the criticisms of graduate education have often been uneven, oversimplified, perhaps more hostile than constructive, teachers in community colleges have had opportunity to know sooner than most the inadequacies of their graduate training and can argue from an indisputable position of authority-their collective personal experience. It must be gratifying now to hear their arguments echoed in the words of a major document written by a blue-ribbon commission of scholars, graduate deans, and other university administrators under the auspices of the Council of Graduate Schools and the Graduate Record Examinations Board.2

The Supply of and Demand for College Teachers

Considering the importance of the problem to higher education, and the many hundreds of millions of dollars appropriated by the federal government for the expansion of graduate education over the last few years, it is rather astonishing that we know so little about the present and probable supply and demand of college teachers. The consensus today, as expressed by several federal agencies, the National Education Association, and many college and university presidents and graduate deans, seems to be summed up in the following three propositions: (a) persons trained at the doctoral level are in increasingly short supply; (b) the quality of faculty (as measured by highest degree attained) in the nation's colleges and universities is deteriorating; and (c) the situation will worsen over the coming decade as consequence of burgeoning undergraduate enrollments. Over the last few years various distinguished educational spokesmen have used such terms as disastrous shortage, serious crisis, the nation standing virtually paralyzed, frightening figures, and a major national scandal to describe the supply of college teachers and have called for heroic efforts, crash programs, and new degrees short of the doctorate to stem the tide.

The University and the Creative Arts

The following discussion on the university and the creative arts was prepared for an audience of graduate deans under conditions noted in the first two paragraphs of the text. It is admittedly one-sided: I had suggested to the Association of Graduate Schools that a professor of drama, music, or the visual arts be given a hearing on the same program. The AGS urged me to lake the role of prosecutor, with the promise that its Committee on Policies would keep the subject on its agenda and afford opportunities for rebuttal. I am confident that readers of the ART JOURNAL will lake up the debate and thus help to clarify many of the issues involved in university training in the arts—W.M.L.

The University and the Creative Arts

The following discussion on the university and the creative arts was prepared for an audience of graduate deans under conditions noted in the first two paragraphs of the text. It is admittedly one-sided: I had suggested to the Association of Graduate Schools that a professor of drama, music, or the visual arts be given a hearing on the same program. The AGS urged me to lake the role of prosecutor, with the promise that its Committee on Policies would keep the subject on its agenda and afford opportunities for rebuttal. I am confident that readers of the ART JOURNAL will lake up the debate and thus help to clarify many of the issues involved in university training in the arts—W.M.L.