Grad Committee meeting notes, 5/21/13

Overall, the meeting was a frank exchange in which we (grads) mainly articulated some proposed reforms in more detail, while faculty responded by discussing the practical constraints enabling/preventing certain reforms from taking place. Speaking for myself, it was very helpful to hear these constraints spelled out explicitly; many of our earlier discussions regarding graduate offerings (or the lack thereof) would have benefited from an understanding of the needs/wants of faculty as well as our own. Better late than never! I'll assume most of you are familiar with our wants/needs at this point so I'll mostly limit my notes to the faculty response.

'''There are four key constraints that limit the number and frequency of grad course offerings. Specifically:'''

1. Faculty teach one grad course per year. This is because faculty must teach 4 courses per year, and 3 of them *must* be undergrad courses, per the Dean's mandate. There is nothing preventing faculty from teaching a second grad course in a year, but that would be overload; a "sacrifice." Given faculty research/service responsibilities, it is very unlikely to happen. With sabbaticals, that amounts to about 15 grad offerings per year.

2. This grad course can be whatever the faculty wants to teach; i.e. there is no departmental rule telling faculty that they must teach methods courses. This is a symptom of a deeply-rooted culture of freedom and democratic decisionmaking among faculty, especially at R-1 universities, in which faculty cannot be told by their colleagues what they must teach. Faculty are deeply adverse to meddling in their colleagues' courses, and to establish a top-down mechanism which would encourage/enforce institutional oversight. Apparently, this is part of the reality of being at an R-1 school--faculty are more or less given free reign to teach what they like. At other schools, e.g. teaching colleges, it may be easier to institute such directives; not so at an R-1.

3. (and this is related to point #2) Faculty, especially junior faculty, are less likely to choose to teach a core/methods course (over a course related to some research interest) because there is a risk of getting poor evaluations and student disengagement. There is a pervasive (but not universal) belief among faculty that teaching required core/methods courses are "thankless jobs" because often, half the class does not see the course as relevant to their interests, especially where attempts are made to make a course appeal across the physical/human spectrum. It was not fully explained why these courses should necessarily elicit low evaluations; only that experience bears this out (Scott's ed.: empirical result without theoretical basis?).

4. The number of students willing/able to take grad courses when they are offered. Some classes cannot be offered every year because the numbers won't support it.

While the above constraints may seem incompatible with our desire for more/better core/methods courses, we did discuss a few ways to move forward, given the constraints:

1. Faculty are more likely to offer methods courses if there is a demonstrated demand for them. For example, the grads could take a poll (annually at minimum; possibly more often?) to determine which courses are needed. This would give faculty some security that if they choose to offer a methods course, it will be well-attended, and by engaged students. This partially addresses Constraint #3: if students want to take the course, the risk of poor evaluations is smaller. In general, faculty were quite receptive to such a "strategy of persuasion," at least compared to a top-down strategy.

2. While faculty are very reluctant to "get in each other's business" (see Constraint #2), they nonetheless understand that the core offerings are not as good as they c/should be. Faculty expressed a willingness to "strongly encourage" their colleagues to take the core courses seriously--after all, how can faculty expect students to be engaged if they themselves are just going through the motions?

3. The department could do a better job of cross-listing some upper-division courses (particularly technical methods like RS/GIS) with additional rigor/expectations for grads. This is already happening in some courses but it could be more widespread.

4. For courses where the department does not offer a relevant undergrad course for cross-listing (e.g. qualitative field methods), the faculty need to make a more concerted effort to make this kind of training available.

5. Faculty could make an effort to rework the schedule (looking 2-3 years ahead) to ensure more regular offerings of popular courses. For example, if Rigby's quantitative methods course has enough demand to offer it every 2 years, then faculty need to make sure that this comes up in their planning meetings at least that often.

6. It may be possible to make the core courses (297/298) more appealing across the "divide" with greater emphasis on contemporary geographical issues/themes. There is potential in these courses for valuable socialization into the discipline--a chance to "feel like a geographer"--but we're not there yet.