First-Generation Scholars at NIU

by Robyn Byrd

NIU is hosting a series of talks and events this September designed to welcome first-generation college students to the university. But these events are not just for undergrads -- all are welcome, and especially first-gen alumni, faculty, and staff.

I plan to attend because as a first-generation college student and subsequently a first-generation scholar (i.e. doctoral student), a path which comes with its own set of confusing and unique "firsts."

Events will be taking place in Founders Memorial Library:

Tues Sept 4, 4-6pm

Wed Sept 5, 11am-1pm

As a former teacher of freshman composition at NIU, I met students from varied economic backgrounds. The more privileged of those students, whose parents either have degrees or can easily pay for their children's degrees, don't have a lot of insight into how first-gen students live. Nor do some professors who teach first-gen students. At NIU, many teachers and programs try to acknowledge the troubles of these young people -- struggling to find time to do both school work and "work work," struggling to focus because this all makes them so tired, and perhaps even more tired because they haven't had a good meal in a week. (We even have an on-campus food pantry for this reason.) I understand these struggles particularly well, as I was a first-gen student myself; and years later, I'm still struggling to make ends meet while writing my dissertation.

The first-gen undergraduate student has been the subject of study and of university re-focus for a couple of decades now, and more of those students are now making their way into the academy. First-gen academics, on the other hand, are less common, and therefore less supported by university programs, counselors, and financial aid. Of course universities can train faculty to welcome fresh faced first-timers right out of high school! But what does a graduate professor do with a roomful of students of varied economic and educational backgrounds?

At the graduate level there is quite a bit of assumption on the part of those firmly lodged in the academy about what people already know. Our privileged peers have had much more time to read and travel, and they have had parents to show them what to read and where to go. Furthermore, there is almost no consideration on the part of faculty of whether grad students know how to walk the walk. Not intellectually speaking, but when it comes to scheduling, networking, obtaining data or materials, writing a proposal, and so on. These are skills acquired through trial by fire if you are a first-gen grad student. Your parents didn't know what you were doing as an undergrad. By now you might as well be working on astrophysics in an alien language. No one in your circle can help you, and most professors don't seem like the ones to ask. And as for troubles outside of coursework and writing, you had no idea what you were getting into when it comes to the
psychic and emotional weight of a grad degree.

This is why I'm excited about the First Generation events at NIU! In addition to the solidarity that we have already engendered among first-gen undergrads, I want to see that same solidarity at work among grad students, in faculty-student relationships, and so on. First-gen academics do have folks to turn to - other first-gen grads at the same campus. And while those mentors may be few and far between as of today, we will certainly see more and more of them in years to come.

For International Graduate Students: The Ins and Outs at NIU

Writing a thesis or dissertation is one of the hardest things you may ever do. Doing so in another country, in another language, is even harder!

At NIU we offer an holistic and supportive international graduate student experience, focused not only on your education, but your cultural enrichment and lifelong learning.  From offering financial support, to emotional, social, and professionalization support, our mission is to help you finish your thesis or dissertation and move on to make your mark on the world.

At the Thesis and Dissertation Office, we see many students from Saudi Arabia, China, India, and Latin America (and all over!). We are aware of your unique challenges and bumps in the road that make writing your thesis a difficult journey.

Some challenges our students face are:

• Language barriers
• Student Visa requirements (completing the thesis on-time)
• Understanding Graduate School policies
• Lacking a social network at school

For current and prospective students, getting acquainted with NIU's support services is the place to start.

The Nuts and Bolts

The International Student Faculty Office (ISFO) is where you can find all of the information, forms, advisor contacts, and immigration help you need for becoming an international graduate student, and maintaining your status.  Additionally, the Graduate School website has a page dedicated to international admissions. These pages will help you understand the "ins and outs" of doing graduate work and completing a thesis here:

International Student and Faculty Office

The Graduate School: International Students

The Fun Stuff!

Marcos Quezada and Pablo Suarez,
founders of NIU's Global Friends Network

Knowing how to make social connections, find mentors, and participate in our global community at NIU is as important to your success as actually doing the work. As we have discussed on this blog, having a group of friends or colleagues who are going through the same unique journey as you are is crucial to maintaining interest in your work, and keeping a level head about it!  Explore the student associations and mentorship opportunities such as the Global Friends Network, as well as events and scholarship programs at the Division of International Affairs website:

Division of International Affairs

Some Recommendations

Remember, you may feel alone, and you may feel like you are doing the most difficult thing you have ever done. Only one of those things is true! The global NIU community is here for you, and the Thesis and Dissertation Office is part of that community.  We are your go-to for any questions about completing your thesis, but we are also a resource for navigating graduate school in general. Our office is staffed with Graduate Assistants who are writing their dissertations, and our events and programs attract students from many countries who are trying to do the same thing. So remember to:

• Network through the social groups for international students
• Seek help when you need it! If you don't know where to go, ask us.
• Educate yourself by exploring the links we've provided.

We want you to succeed!

To end, a message and interview with some international students:

International Students at NIU: A Perspective

Doing Grad School with Kids

One afternoon as I stood outside the elementary school, waiting for the doors to open and pour out little screaming humans (including my then second-grader), I overheard two Midwestern moms in active-wear talking about a mutual friend.

"Did you know she's going back to school? I mean, GREEAAD school!"

"Really? She's gonna be so busy, oh my gosh. That's just too much, GREEAAD school, with kids and a house..."

"Yeah I think it's just selfish to go to GREEAAD school like that. I mean, she's got her bachelor's why not just stay where you're at..."

I was in my second year of "GREEAAD school," and in addition to the stinker I was waiting for at the elementary school, I had a toddler at home.  Their words didn't hurt me, but they made me chuckle a bit. While graduate study isn't for everyone, who are these judging women to assume their friend isn't an awesome person who can handle the "triple burden" of school, work, and home?  If I can do it, other women can too. They were selling even themselves short, I thought.  (Maybe they just really loved staying all day in yoga pants that much, I thought snidely.)

So what do we do, as parents in graduate school, to keep ourselves emotionally afloat? And conversely, how do we know we're doing what's right for our kids? Support and understanding is probably thin on the ground, whether you live in the affluent suburbs where success = $, or in a crowded city (or empty rural area) where people are just struggling to get by and don't care to make head or tails of what strange thing it is you do at the Local University. Even seeking out other students like us is hard. I've met a few couples and single parents at the school I attend, but just having kids is not a guarantee that you will have anything else in common to talk about.

I argue that we look to the source of our seeming "burden" for some relief: look to your children. 

Early Childhood: The smallest children can understand that you are in school, that you are smart, and that you are atypical. They may even cutely brag about you to their classmates. (Once I brought my son to class with me and he told all my students how smart I am. He was only 7, so he got away with it.) It's an early model for doing what you love, and working independently. Since early childhood, my son and daughter have never doubted that they can achieve what they set their minds to, or that mothers can have important careers.

Middle Childhood: Going to school brings them the ability to share in what you study! You can enrich their school experience by sharing what you know with them. My son always impresses his teachers by his background knowledge. Having grown up with a mother who does school for a living, he knows a thing or two.  (Since he could talk, I have answered honestly, and in as much detail as was appropriate, every question he asked me. I've been told I'll spoil his imagination! Baloney.)

And here's the best part: School-aged children can also start helping around the house, not only because they should anyway, but because you have enlisted them in your campaign! The family is going to benefit from your degree. They can contribute to you getting it done, whether it's by loading the dishwasher or playing quietly on Saturday mornings. You can all earn that degree together.

Adolescence: Tween intelligence and attitudes bring a whole new level of give-and-take into your relationship with your children. Children this age need to be reminded that you are spending so much time on your schoolwork because it will make you better. If it makes you better, it makes the whole family better.  With their growing sense of self, they should be able to understand why they don't always come first. Raising independent kids is important if you plan to have an intense career life and to have a life of the mind. And they will thank you for it. My son still proudly tells people what I do (though bragging wouldn't be cute from a 12-year-old), even if he can't remember exactly what I study.

Teens: If you are in grad school with teens, you probably have not been in grad school their whole life. They may have to get used to it. I don't have a teen (yet) so I can't comment. I will be done before then. :P  But what I have said about balance, independence, and team effort still applies.

2010: Holding my Bachelor's degree,
while 7 months pregnant with kid #2.

There is a myth that children will resent parents for "neglecting" them for other pursuits. It's nonsense, and those moms I overheard were just perpetuating it. Doing what you need to do for yourself, and fitting that in with your family life is not neglect. It's balance. Your busy and interesting life will complement your child's own busy and interesting life. It will certainly not detract or distract from it.

So, if the university parent meet-ups and attempts to befriend non-student parents haven't worked out, turn to those who already know you, and whom you already have a lot in common with. You can't lay all of your problems on them, and you can't make them your confidantes.  But you can draw from their endless energy, contribute to their own lifelong learning, and go in as a family team to kick this degree's butt.  You will all come out very different from most of the people you know. But that is not a bad thing. This journey enriches all of our lives, and paves the way for our children's future successes.

Finally, a word about the advantages of doing grad school with kids. Many of us can point to our little imps as the impetus for doing school in the first place. And what made us want to do it for ourselves is that having kids makes us want to be the best people we can be!  I didn't really go "back to school" until my son was 9 months old. After five years of undergrad, three for an MA, and four more of PhD-ing... well, he's 12 now and he's never seen me do anything else. To stop now would be to abandon a goal as old as my first best creation (him). While, again, we can't rest our goals and fears on their little shoulders, we can certainly look to them as a major source of inspiration, a cornerstone that child-free grad students do not have the benefit of building upon.

The Thesis and the Dissertation: Peas in a Pod

We call the document for the master’s degree a “thesis,” and the longer one for the doctorate a “dissertation,” and perhaps you wonder why.

Well, many thoughts on the nature of theses and dissertations have been buzzing through our office lately. Over the past four weeks, we held our fall slate of presentations, workshops, and brown-bag sessions for students working on one or the other kind of document. Several of our programs cover important details behind the Graduate School’s document-formatting requirements. When we look through these requirements closely, it becomes clear that they’re nearly identical for either a thesis or dissertation.

So, then, if the format looks nearly identical, what distinguishes the thesis from the dissertation? A glance at the histories of the two words makes for an interesting way to highlight some differences and similarities between these two important writing projects.

"How do I put it?"

Thesis writers, do you sometimes find yourself wondering how to put your ideas in writing while working on your project? If so, you're not only human (nearly all writers, at some point, wrestle with how to put thoughts on paper or screen) but also hinting at some of the history behind the word "thesis." Like many terms in academia, the words “thesis” and “dissertation” come to us from Greek through Latin. "Thesis" originally derives from the Indo-European root *dhe-, which had the meaning of ‘to set’ or ‘to put.’ The root later formed the central element in the Greek verb tithenai, meaning ‘to place, put, or set,’ as well as the noun thesis. In Latin, thesis referred to the unstressed and later the stressed syllables in a line of poetry. (Stress for thesis writers today is usually of a different nature!) In the English of the late 1500s, “thesis” began to refer to a statement to be proved through logic—in other words, a thesis statement. By the next century, the word’s meaning broadened to include what we in the twenty-first century think of when we speak of a master’s thesis--the formal document presented for the master’s degree.

Scholars at a lecture. Engraving by William Hogarth, 1736

"Contrary to what others have said, I argue that…"

Dissertators, when you explain your project, do you sometimes linger around that point where you need to arrange your thoughts to emphasize how your work stands apart from previous scholarship? Such efforts invoke something of the original spirit of the word "dissertation." It's rooted in the Latin verbs dissertare ‘to debate, argue, examine, harangue’ and disserere, a combination of dis- ‘apart’ and serere ‘to arrange.’ The etymology zeroes in on the general task doctoral candidates must carry out today: arrange an argument based on original evidence as well as on an examination of the surrounding scholarly debate, write it out clearly and convincingly at length, share it with the world, and live to tell about it. (Long sentence, longer ordeal!) The word began to refer to such a thing in the 1650s, around the same time "thesis" began to refer to a similar piece. According to the OED, the meaning of "dissertation" began to be restricted to the monograph produced for the doctorate in the 1930s.

Peas in a Pod

Thus, once established in academic circles, the terms "thesis" and "dissertation,” along with the documents they refer to, grew up alongside each other. No wonder, then, that their format requirements overlap and that we sometimes speak of these two types of documents in the same breath. But in addition to the etymological and historical hints at what these documents do, universities usually separate the two by degree and kind. The thesis is shorter and is a kind of knowledge display. The dissertation is longer and is a kind of original research and significant new contribution to a field.

Of course, the Graduate School also offers clear and succinct definitions for a thesis and a dissertation. Check them early and often. And you can always turn to us if you seek further information or guidance. We’re happy to help!

In case you missed one of our fall programs, note that we’ll be offering presentations, workshops, and brown bags once again at the start of the spring semester. In the meantime, we’re available through email, phone, or walk-in. And remember that our writing group for thesis and dissertation writers, Write Place/Write Time, meets on the second Thursday of every month from 6 to 9 p.m. in Founders Memorial Library (4th Floor East). Look for us there this coming Thursday, October 13. Happy writing!   

Source for the above images: Wikimedia Commons.

The History of the Dissertation in Academia

Since I am in the beginning stages of writing a dissertation, I began to wonder... WHY???  And I'm sure you all wonder this at some point.  I looked into the history of the dissertation and didn't find much of interest, until I came upon an old, stale article (does anybody remember 1998?) by Gary Olson and Julie Drew.  It's an interesting read, despite its staleness -- because of its mission.  The authors' need to go into the history of the dissertation is driven by their urge to protect the scholarly and professional status of the dissertation -- to keep universities and faculty alike from downgrading these documents, which are no longer necessarily published or even publishable, to grey literature, second-rate student exercises in a discipline. If that's all it is, then why do it, right?  Academia is so bad we might as well all go ABD!

The History

But wait -- we are working in an enterprise with a short but significant life.  Here is a brief look:


The dissertation is a relatively new rite of passage in the history of academia. When medieval and Renaissance scholars took academic titles, they didn't dissertate to get there. And when some of the most highly educated scholars and writers of the Early Modern Period finished their schooling, they didn't take the title "Doctor". (Unless maybe they were a Doctor of Physick and liked attaching leeches to people!)

The dissertation has its origins in 18th and 19th century Europe, particularly in Germany. Herr Doktors were the first scholars to have to not only write but publish a dissertation in order to have their degree conferred. This guaranteed that the junior scholars, in whom the senior scholars had invested so much time, would produce new knowledge, a contribution. The first American University to grant PhD's followed this format, and by 1861 our own Yale had produced the first three American Doctors of Philosophy, who had all published short but sweet dissertations (Olson 57). (One was six pages long!)

James Morris Whiton,
first American Ph.D.

It was this migration of the dissertation to America, combined with what one of my professors calls "the reading machine" (i.e. capitalism-fueled publishing and the consumption of such), that led to the establishment of the university press (Olson 58).  We had to find a way to print all those books!

Then, with PhDs increasing every year, it eventually became impractical to publish the "diss," (that's what we call it in the biz...), and the requirement to publish fell off by the 1930s (Olson 58).  Since then, we have moved to microfilm, a single bound copy in the library, and eventually, all electronic dissertations that have probably never been printed on paper in their final form. (Unless the proud new Doctor pays about fifty bucks to get a vanity-bound personal copy).  So, what was once a scholar's first real book, a first real contribution to the field, became more like a hoop to jump through.  A big, flaming hoop.

What do we do?

So how do we reclaim our diss? How do we make the diss a scholarly foray into a real academic conversation, rather than a closed-course driving test? Is it about attitude?  Maybe it's about our advisors and their attitude toward the project (Olson suggests as much). Maybe the answer is to think of the diss as something in between a first solo flight and a final flight simulation test. But the difference between those things is huge. The difference between those things can cost us a job. How do we describe our flying to a potential employer, if we don't even believe that we've ever really left the ground?

Well, I don't really know yet. I'll tell you when I figure it out. But no matter how I feel about the result, you can bet I'm going to order one of those fifty dollar cloth-bound copies for my tiny office.

Work Cited

Olson, Gary A., and Julie Drew. "(Re) Reeinvisioning Dissertation in English Studies." College English, 61.1 (1998): 56-66.

In the News (3)

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the strangest article about dissertations and the Russian black market. After reading the piece, I knew that it was time for another installment of graduate degrees in the news!


"The Craziest Black Market in Russia" by Leon Neyfakh (click here)

Last year, a prominent member of President Putin's United Russia party was accused of plagiarizing his dissertation. Neyfakh comments that "more than 1,000 high-achieving , well-heeled Russians . . . have recently been caught plagiarizing large parts of their dissertations." And the majority of these individuals . . . are politicians!!

Apparently, these individuals -- politicians, judges, doctors, police officials!! -- are paying ghost writers to write their dissertation for them. In some cases, the ghost writer copies and pastes someone else's work, passing it off as an original piece of research, and then hands it off to the person who hired them. Neyfakh reports on a number of companies advertising their services as dissertation ghost writers. Apparently, it is big business.

A volunteer organization known as Dissernet is responsible for exposing instances of high-profile plagiarism. Thus far, the group has uncovered 5,600 cases of suspected plagiarism. Consequently, Dissernet has been the target of reprisal by the individuals accused of plagiarism.

The article is brilliant. You might think that this is a spoof, but it is not. Published in Slate -- not The Onion -- I started off shocked while reading, but by the end I was laughing my head off. This is perfect beach reading.


"PhDs Embrace Alternative Dissertations" by Vimal Patel (click here)

In 2014, Nick Sousanis successfully defended his dissertation on visual thinking at Columbia University. The remarkable aspect of this story has to do with the fact that Sousanis wrote his dissertation in the format of a comic book. According to Patel's article,

"For a variety of reasons, humanities programs at many colleges have started to allow dissertation formats to veer from the traditional book-length monograph. These projects have taken the form of a suite of three or more papers, a documentary, an interactive analysis of a text, or even a comic book."

Despite this fact, many departmental hiring committees continue to prefer candidates who write traditional dissertations. They are considered the "gold standard" for tenure track teaching jobs. However, for graduate students not interested in pursuing work in academia, an alternative dissertation may be ideal. For instance, Jesse Merandy, a Ph.D. candidate in English, is creating a "game for mobile devices that tells users about the life and work of Walt Whitman as they walk Brooklyn Heights, where the poet lived." His project proved invaluable in landing a job helping professors and students with digital projects.

I was fascinated by this discussion of alternative dissertations and started to wonder what a non-traditional dissertation might look like in fields other than the humanities. Also, Patel includes an invaluable piece of advice for graduate students -- speak with your thesis or dissertation director about your career interests before you start writing your thesis or dissertation. Your career hopes may be an important factor when deciding to write a traditional or non-traditional thesis or dissertation.