LETTER: Graduate studies will benefit with proper implementation of plan

by Debra Norris

To the editor:

As part of the Graduate Student Association's response to the open forum held on April 18, the GSA expresses its appreciation for the time and energy you [the Strategic Planning Committee] invested in what we consider to be a successful interaction between committee members and concerned graduate students. We are very pleased by many points within the report and believe that the recommendations made, if adopted, will guide the university to greater successes in the coming years.

Your recommendations make for a bold plan as Rice enters the 21st century. While we would suggest modifications, we embrace the report and its attempt to further both undergraduate and graduate education in a university that should remain a nationally ranked, first-tier research university.

As promised, we include a written reiteration of our concerns regarding recommendations for graduate education in the proposed Strategic Plan (Section II, Graduate Education, Recommendations).

The following encompasses concerns expressed during the graduate students' open forum, as well as issues raised as a result of that meeting:

* The call for excellence in all graduate programs (i.e., those retained in the wake of consolidations, eliminations and enhancements following a careful assessment of the university's graduate programs), while seeking to attain "international distinction in a small number of carefully selected areas," suggests a bold plan for the future of graduate studies at Rice.

While much care will need to be taken in undergirding all programs and in selecting the few chosen for "international distinction," the plan is exciting. We hope that the committees responsible for making these decisions will seek the advancement of the few areas without diminishing departments and areas not selected for such distinction.

* According to your recommendation, divisional strategic plans resulting from program reviews would be "linked to the annual budget- ing process and used to guide fundraising efforts." We want to make certain that these program reviews do not deteriorate into witch hunts for "unprofitable" departments or divisions.

If Rice University is to meet Dr. Lovett's ideal of "liberal education of the highest order," it is important for the university to consider and, perhaps at times, to compensate for shifting tides in both institutional and public support for the arts and for the humanities. To this end, we urge the committee and the university as a whole to seek ways and means for reducing the disparity between graduate stipends in the sciences/engineering and those stipends in the arts/humanities/social sciences, without reducing the total number of graduate students in those departments which may not receive generous external support.

While we neither expect nor seek uniformity in graduate stipends, we recognize that the university must be more competitive in its stipend awards if it wishes to continue to recruit the caliber of graduate students necessary for defining Rice as a "research university of national rank."

* Because teaching experience is often a fundamental concern of prospective employers in academia, opportunities for graduate students to gain experience as instructors are of the utmost importance.

Thorough "pre-classroom" training, team-teaching with a professor prior to assuming full responsibility for a course and instructing "dissertation topic" seminars rank highly in our vision of possible areas for the university to expand on present graduate teaching opportunities while remaining firmly committed to the highest quality of education for undergraduates.

The university can expand opportunities for graduate student teaching without imperiling the long-standing classroom relationship between professors and undergraduates, and without reducing graduate students to "slave labor." Similarly, those graduate students who wish to engage in non-academic careers must be given opportunities to participate in all aspects and phases of research projects in order to prepare them to vie for and to attain positions in what are often highly competitive job markets.

* The Strategic Planning Committee has reiterated the now pressing need for new graduate housing and the continuing lack of a graduate center. The GSA reaffirms its commitment to on-campus housing and strongly suggests the words "or immediately adjacent to" be stricken from the committee's recommendation regarding graduate housing.

The current facility is "immediately adjacent" to campus and in no way provides a locus for graduate student life at the university. This failing of the Graduate House has occurred in spite of the herculean efforts of former Graduate House Master Robert Patten, former Graduate House managers Don DeGruttola and David Anderson, the Graduate House Council and the GSA.

The committee elsewhere in its report stated, "We must integrate our graduate students more fully into the intellectual life of the university, while we work to strengthen our graduate programs." The committee clearly asserted its belief that "[i]mproved integration of graduate students will have a positive affect on the entire university." This integration will never take place as long as the university insists on keeping its graduate students "adjacent to" university life.

We have long been impressed with the disingenuous arguments that the university has used either to counter or to ignore any suggestion of on-campus housing for graduate students. We suspect that some people used similar arguments 50 years ago when female students wanted on-campus housing and 40 years ago when non-whites sought a place at the university.

Any serious consideration of an off-campus Graduate Center marginalizes graduate students, undermines graduate studies and works to the detriment of the larger university community. In a plan as bold and optimistic as the one before us, the committee's recommendation regarding a Graduate Center, while a most welcome suggestion as far as it goes, could and should be more emphatic.

In respect to graduate housing and a Graduate Center, we urge the university to commit whole-heartedly and unapologetically to the great task of fully integrating graduate students on campus and, thereby, within the university community.

Again, we thank you for the opportunity to respond to your suggestions. We value the spirit of cooperation and free enquiry present in your interactions with graduate students during the open forum sponsored by the Graduate Student Association and the Provost's Office.

Debra G. Norris

Chair, Response Committee

GSA Strategic Plan

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the May 17, 1996 issue.

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