Physics Student Council ?
Posted by Nick.
This is a post requesting some input / discussion from people. Contribution would be much appreciated.
This spring I think it was, a number of “reviewers” came to visit and review our department as a whole. A number of the 4th/5th year students had lunch with these reviewers, and some discussion of the role of graduate students in the physics department followed, mostly pertaining to the fact that we have a small role in any of the decision making / department culture as compared to other physics departments, or even other departments on campus.
Examples of things of concern here include, but are certainly not limited to:
1) Creating a voice in department politics / decisions (ie faculty meetings, tenure, hire, etc …)
2) Graduate admissions (sort of included in the above, but
3) Adviser / advisee relations (broad, but important topic as some people know)
4) Organization / social structure (tea, incoming student mixer, prospective student events, etc)
5) Restoring a greater sense of community among physics students (ie digging older grad students out of their research caves, creating more general interaction and so on…)
Now, I’m not sure what I’m suggesting with this post since it is mostly to get feedback. However, some physics departments have their own physics grad student council (see MIT). I don’t think we have enough people to necessarily warrant that much organization, but I think periodic discussions as a student body would be good, and having a way to air grevances and have a voice in the department would be extremely beneficial.
Read more in the comments section of this post:
August 18th, 2008 at 10:45 am Using
If you have a look at the MIT physics grad student council website, I think they have some good stuff on there. For instance their constitution, and the purposes included in it:
I. Understand the concerns and needs of students at physics department and work with faculty to address those needs.
II. Take our voice to the MIT Graduate Student Council on a regular basis.
III. Host well planned and well funded socials, and try to increase the level of student-student and student-faculty interactions.
IV. Create a more unified graduate student population whose unique academic and social needs are better known, represented and met.
V. Act as an intermediary between students and the faculty and administration in the Department of Physics.
VI. Foster a sense of community among the student body of the Department of Physics.
Another thing I wanted to discuss a little bit more was interaction in the grad admissions process. One thing the reviewers were shocked by was the fact that we were left completely out of this process. I also found out that in the Math and Biology departments the grad students go so far as to even review applications and some times even act as part of the grad admissions committee. Again, I’m not sure where we, being such a small group, would really fit, but it’s another part of academia that would be helpful to have experience with (for those of us continuing that direction post graduation).
Yet another thing I’ve been concerned with lately is the dying off of tea these days. This has long been a fixture for meeting and getting to know members of the department, and generally encouraging discussion … and some afternoon shenanigans. Also, the tea list as been in absence as of late. I think just getting that out would even help stoke the interest, but I definitely think tea needs some sort of rejuvenation.
Ok, I’ll stop bitching for now. People, let me know what you think. Maybe we should all gather for a tea in the future and iron some of this out if people are interested.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:49 am Using
Another example is Ohio State (http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~pgsc/)
August 18th, 2008 at 1:45 pm Using
I’ve given some thought to this as well. It just seems as if the grad students don’t really have an official outlet to let our voice be heard. I think a physics council could also serve as a way to get social things organized, like tea. Maybe we could figure out a way to rejuvenate tea time (like you were talking about) by changing it up a bit. I’d certainly be down for discussing ideas sometime. Want to try to get something together for this week?
August 18th, 2008 at 1:45 pm Using
When I was a grad student at NMSU, we had a little department student association. It actually worked pretty well despite the fact that there were a total of around 20 grad students. If there was a concern that students had, there was a way to pass those concerns to the higher-ups.
Of course, I think that part of the reason why it was successful was the fact that the faculty wanted input from the grad students. Honestly, I’m just not sure that a lot of the Dartmouth physics/astronomy professors want to view the students as anything other than lab rats. I think that overcoming that is going to be the hard part.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:28 pm Using
Tru dat G-money! I think that aside from faustering more social activities among graduate students, it’d be nice have more social functions for grads and faculty as well. My class tried a couple of years back to have faculty drinks after colloquia on Fridays, but that fizzled quickly. I don’t know what it is about our faculty that make them abhor the idea of socializing with grad students. Actually, given what I’ve seen, their problem may not be so much socializing with students, but with eachother. The grad-spy network reports significant fracturing of the faculty by discipline and even some divisiveness within disciplines. In a department our size, that means you can’t get more than 2 or 3 faculty to stand to be in the same room with another.
I”m not sure what the answer is, but I agree there’s a problem. I think a physics graduate council and some sort of representation in departmental matters is a great start.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:40 am Using
Ryan is very right, some faculties really don’t get along with each other. Even the relationship is not bad in some cases, but they’d rather just say hi and nothing more. It’s somewhat upsetting to see what your life would be were you becoming a professor.
I’m not sure the department (or those few who are in power) is willing to take us seriously. Take the admission as an example, from what i’ve heard, the process can be quite ridiculous and sad, some of the faculties don’t even take themselves seriously. They forget they are not our boss, but our teacher, mentor, guide or even friend.
hmm, maybe this post should be password protected, haha.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:58 pm Using
Here at Maryland, there are a number of jobs which are assigned to grad students each year at an annual grad student meeting (if you don’t show, you run the risk of getting stuck with the most undesirable job). Two of those jobs are faculty liaisons (one pre-quals, one post-quals) specifically to be a go-between for the students and faculty. Of course, it helps that the faculty actually care what we have to say. I think Nathaniel’s right, that would be the biggest stumbling block at Dartmouth.
As for tea, I’m sad to hear that it’s fizzling out. I definitely think getting the list out would help. I had noticed that once people move out of the first year office, we break down into groups largely based on who works on what floor. Tea would help with that, too.
I had picked up the seeming reluctance of the faculty to interact with the students (it was quite a contrast to what I had seen in undergrad at Gettysburg), but that’s interesting to hear that they don’t like being in the same room with each other, either. I hadn’t noticed that. Is it a clash of egos, money wars, or just the disconnect between fields?