Grad Committee meeting notes, 5/13/13

Comments grouped according to whether they came from faculty or grads.

-Faculty:--

What should be the core curriculum? The grads have identified some important solutions.

Why separate the methods from the core courses in the proposal?

“Specialized” vs. “general” methods might need to be separated.

The document is welcome and timely. It’s important to revisit these issues once in a while, and if necessary go back to the drawing board. 297 was originally conceived as a stopgap measure.

Key challenge: how do you implement given the constraints of the faculty?

This is a positive effort, and not a new refrain.

For core courses—it’s hard to find the right balance of material to avoid some students being bored out of their mind, and others having serious difficulty.

In defense of the smorgasboard course: some felt it had good pedagogical value, as students would be exposed to many ideas and methodologies.

There could be great value in a “research frontier” seminar, in order to become familiar with the key literature. But more than 1 quarter is needed. Minnesota’s course could be a model.

For many (all?) methods, e.g. remote sensing, there is no shortcut. Only so much you can learn in a short period.

The issue in the past with more grad courses was staffing, and that remains an issue now.

For professors, the problem with teaching methods courses was there was a chance of getting killed in course evaluations. For a junior professor, this is a problem. Also, professors are needed to staff big undergrad courses, and are pulled off for other responsibilities.

When professors take a sabbatical, their grad course is usually the one that gets released.

Preparing grads for the job market was the main reason for formalizing the final defense.

Student reps have always been a part of the process—it’s in the bylaws.

We will have a new projector this summer. The website is in the final stages. New laptops also.

There could be a “graduate education policy committee” with 2 grads as members.

Moving forward—we could go to grads and faculty in other departments, and ask about their current practice. Don’t scattershot this—we don’t want the same person to get pinged more than once. Ask “we’re rethinking our core, what do you do in your department?” etc.

-Grads:--

The methods and core courses were separated because there was a widespread feeling that more methods were needed; more consensus. This either needs to happen within the department or get institutional support for getting requirements satisfied in other departments. And the methods are especially important for new students.

We need a research design seminar. We get some training in other departments but it’s hard to bring that back to geography, as the methods aren’t the same.

We like the survey course, but there were varying degrees of preparedness. Some didn’t take it seriously.

Breadth needs to be matched with rigor. What if a subdiscipline got a few weeks of time?

The survey course could be better handled through a colloquium. What’s more important is deeper engagement with the literature, and a focus on proposals.

In Sociology, they have a 3-quarter methods course? How are they able to do it? They have a huge faculty. We’re relatively small.

Where do we have room to push, and where are there real barriers?

There is a need for professional development beyond the core courses, to prepare us for the job market. We should make a push for our outgoing students and their job talks. Other departments have infrastructure for this; lots of grilling beforehand. We have this to an extent now with the brown bags, but these are informal—these seminars should be formalized.

Creative ideas welcome. This will take more than just a reshuffling of 298. And grads should be involved in this process.

We’ve started compiling syllabi from other departments.