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.

Professional Development for NIU Grad Students

It's a buzz-phrase you might see a lot in department emails, on university and corporate websites... and The Graduate School at NIU is no exception.  They are riding that "Professional Development" train!

I want to talk about some ways to professionalize yourself, i.e. gain work experience, while you're here -- some of these opportunities are through the Graduate School, and some are within your own department. (In all likelihood, your department is riding that train too.)

Graduate School Programs and Resources

So many programs!

The Graduate School at NIU has recently increased their offerings for professional development programs, including mentorships, workshops for teaching assistants, internship opportunities, and assistance with developing a teaching portfolio. Their goal was to centralize your professional development experience by using Grad School tools to track progress and find resources. Their redesigned home page has a "Professional Development" drop-down menu, under which you can find links to workshops and programs. Here are a couple important ones you should look into:

Individual Development Plan
An individual development plan can address your specific goals for graduate study. For those studying in healthcare, an IDP is mandatory.  But anyone can create one! The plans helps you bring together all your own programs, workshops, and degree progress, to get a sense of what your strengths are and what else you need to do before you leave us. Attend a workshop to see if an IDP is right for you.

Future Professoriate Program
According to the Grad School:

"The Future Professoriate Program was designed for two purposes:

1. To recognize the efforts of doctoral students who prepared to enter the professoriate.
2. To supplement on-going training and mentoring efforts."

Doctoral students with any kind of assitantship are eligible. You must attend workshops and work with a teaching mentor, and the program earns you a Certificate in College Teaching. The program provides excellent support for teachers in training, especially for those whose departments might not be as involved with their TAs. (You likely won't find a long-term teaching mentor in the department! Why not sign up for one who is dedicated to you?)

Workshops
Numerous workshops are going on at the Grad School, every week. Learn about ethical research, how to work with a mentor, how to do lunch with professionals, and even how the heck to write a dissertation. Some workshops are formal while others are discussion based. There is even a suite of research workshops that will grant you a certificate in Research Integrity. (And some of them offer free pizza. Always a necessity.)

Thesis and Dissertation Support
The Thesis and Dissertation Office (that's us!) should be your go-to for thesis and dissertation support. While we may refer you to an admin or to someone in your department, we know who gets what done. And we are staffed by graduate students who are currently writing dissertations!  We offer a unique peer perspective that administrators cannot, when it comes to everything from cutting through red tape, getting the writing done, and navigating the thesis/life balance. What's that got to do with professionalization? We are the last stop on the way to your degree, and we are the ones who will help you produce that final document, and make it look awesome.

Departmental Development Programs

While the Grad School has a noble goal (and a sound program) for devloping NIU's future innovators and teachers, don't forget that specialized career development is important too. What does professional development for a graduate student look like within the department? Well, it has to be cobbled together dependent on availability of opportunities, and on department resources. It can range from being a humble participant, to being in charge of something bigger than yourself.

For me it looked like this:

• Attending and presenting at conferences on literature (my subject), and on pedagogy.
• Attending and presenting at my department's "First Fridays," where we shared lesson plans and classroom ideas.
• Co-Chairing (organizing, planning, choosing presenters) MCLLM 2014, the NIU English department's annual international conference.
• Being a GA "junior" committee member running the 2014 International Virginia Wolf conference.
• Mentoring new TAs.
• Producing artwork and graphics for conference literature and department book covers.
• Serving two years on the First-Year Composition Committee and the assessment sub-committee.
• Editing and publishing two editions of Y1 Writes: A Journal of First-Year Composition Essays  (after being editorial staff for a year prior)
• Teaching, teaching, teaching! (Here as a TA, elsewhere as an adjunct, doing summer camps...)

This list may seem Herculean, but I've been here six years. You can see that much of my professionalization happened within my department. However, the activities I did were quite varied in nature: publishing, assessing (the behind the scenes of university outcomes, metrics, etc!), creative services, and more. And of course, teaching. You should absolutely teach or run a lab, if that's at all possible for your GA duties. The best way to make sure you know how to do something is to teach someone else how to do it. 

A final note: 

MA students: The Graduate School's programs are well-supported and goal-oriented. If you only have two years here, lean on the Grad School for your professionalization, and dabble in the department. Your career goals are likely non-university, and being professionalized is probably more important to get to within those two years! 

PhD students: If you are doing a dissertation, you have plenty of time here (trust me... you have plenty of time). Look into what Grad School professionalization programs work best for you -- especially the Future Professoriate Program --  but lean on your department for opportunities and guidance. If you are sticking with academics and researchers, the department is where to find them and learn to be among them.

Go get professionalized!

Me teaching a poetry lesson.
After six years, no classroom fears!

To Choose or Not to Choose … A Director, That Is!

This is the first of a two-part series on thesis and dissertation director styles and different models of working together. We hope to help those beginning their thesis or dissertation can choose their best director for the long haul. In this post, I will use the terms director, advisor, and supervisor interchangeably; in the second post, I will offer my thoughts on some possible differences in those terms’ meanings.

Lack of Direction in Choosing a Director

I don't know about you, but I never thought about a director's "style" when I began my dissertation. Some time into my project, I joined the MOOC "How to Survive Your PhD," which covered the topic. Since then, I've noticed that publications discuss director styles only briefly, if at all. In The Portable Dissertation Advisor, Miles T. Bryant talks about the importance of one’s thesis or dissertation advisor, saying that the “advisor is a key factor” in a student’s overall program (4). Then he quickly moves to topic selection and components of the study.

And I recall having a hard time choosing my dissertation director. In my department, I felt comfortable with any faculty member within or near my field of study. I held great respect for all the professors who could have directed my study. I finally chose my director based on our coinciding interests as well as her expertise in such matters, which is actually quite logical! Plus, I wrote the term paper that led to my dissertation topic in her class, so I felt she had a stake in the project. I learned along the way, however, that I got lucky in terms of my director’s style, and our compatible working styles, considering some of the unpleasant stories I've heard from students all over.

So How Should You Choose a Director?

I've found that writers on this topic mostly agree: students typically choose an advisor based on departmental hearsay. I'm wondering if this is a good method, as my experience differed from some of the stories I'd heard "around."

However, R. Murray Thomas and Dale L. Brubaker, authors of Theses and Dissertations: A Guide to Planning, Research, and Writing, state that departmental buzz is a good method of determining how a director will direct, and they list “fellow graduate students who are farther along than you are” as one of the “best sources of information about advising styles,” which includes professors “who are willing to talk about their colleagues’ modes of guidance” as the second best source (11).

Okay: maybe getting other peoples’ input on your prospective directors is the place to start, but I still wish to give you ideas on how to assess a director’s style with a bit more precision.

What to Ask Regarding Different Styles

Thomas and Brubaker say that “at one end of a monitoring scale” there are advisors who “closely control each phase of the student’s effort”; while at the other “end of the scale,” some directors may simply “tell students to work things out [… even] to finish a complete draft of the project before handing it in for inspection” (10).

Wow, that's quite a range! I’ll bet that most advisors fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, but I would definitely recommend asking your director how often and at which stage/s he or she will want to monitor your writing.

Thomas and Brubaker also point out that directors “vary in how available they are when students need them” (10), and that professors “differ in the way they offer advice and criticism” (11).

Again, these are good topics to ask prospective advisors about, though I'd guess that some professors may not agree exactly with the general opinion as to how they assess student work :)

A Link to One Supervisor's Thoughts on Best Style

And what are directors' thoughts on this issue? We should probably ask ours, but I've got one source handy. Dr. Inger Mewburn is the author of The Thesis Whisperer blog and has worked with thesis and dissertation writers for over ten years. In one of her posts called “Supervisor or Superhero,” Mewburn addresses the expectations and concerns of advisors or, to use her term, "supervisors," on this matter.

In this post, Mewburn first mildly chastises supervisors who stop learning about their role; she feels it is their duty to always improve in that capacity as in any other. Next she includes an expert’s checklist of the things that supervisors should do and know. Here, Mewburn becomes reflexive, wondering whether she herself needs more training or if those particular demands are just too great for one person. Finally, she borrows a student’s comparison of a supervisor to Rupert Giles from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer series, saying that Giles models the best director style. Read Mewburn's post to get her take on the topic.

What Can Directors Do to Help?

The Oxford Learning Institute insists that directors explore “with students their expectations of supervisory style, so that any differences in styles do not lead to miscommunication.” 

The Oxford Learning Institute further refers to a study of four main supervisory styles, which are detailed on the Australian National University website and plotted on a quadrant by coordinates of how much support and how much structure a director offers the writer (e.g., high support with low structure vs. high support with high structure, etc.). Click the ANU link if you want to learn more.

The ANU writers also believe that mentoring characteristics, such as long-term interest, enthusiasm, and sensitivity to a student’s personal and professional needs, are even more valuable than any supervisory traits are for most students. 

The Take-Away, "Writer" (?) Beware

If your prospective director doesn't bring up any of the above issues, you should. Do your research, ask questions, and try to select a director that matches your needs and style. I’m glad my director is supportive, helpful, and understanding; however, you might want an advisor with a different style. I believe that with some knowledge and probing, any “pairing” should work--at least, it should work better--when we students know a little bit more about what to expect.

Please share your ideas or stories of your experience if you'd like (no professor names, please!).