From Preparing Future Faculty to Full-Service Professional Development: A Success Story at The University of Texas at Austin
Richard
A. Cherwitz
Teresa A. Sullivan*
Communicator, 32 (MAY, 1999)
Communicator is a national publication
of the Council of Graduate Schools.
To respond to the changing professional environment for graduate students, the Graduate School at The University of Texas at Austin has extended the nation-wide movement of preparing future faculty to encompass additional competencies, knowledge, and skills that future professionals will need. Preparing graduate students to teach well in higher education is an important aspect of their professional development, but it is not sufficient. Along with the Boyer Commission, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Association of American Universities, and the National Academy of Sciences, we believe that graduate degree-holders also need to hone effective writing, communication, and other professional skills.
Our Graduate School Professional Development Program built upon our already successful Preparing Future Faculty initiative, developed as part of the first round of grants funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered through CGS and AAC&U. The expanded program's goal is to help graduate students from all disciplines to become confident and competent actors in the academy, the public sector, or private industry. Besides their discipline-specific credentials, doctoral candidates also need additional skills to become articulate and productive members of the larger community. Our philosophy is that the writing, communication, pedagogical, technological, and business skills acquired via the Graduate Professional Development Program are multidisciplinary and transcend employment context.
The program originated from a partnership among the Office of Graduate Studies, the Provost's Office and the Center for Teaching Effectiveness. What first began as a pilot project consisting of three summer courses in 1996 has blossomed into a year-round inventory of 13 courses. Over 600 students from 80 disciplines and every college/school on campus have enrolled in professional development courses. In addition to a full-time instructional staff, dozens of faculty members from nearly every corner of the academy serve as class speakers, resource people and advisory board members for the professional development program. The curriculum includes: GRS 390S Academic and Professional Communication; GRS 390T Advanced College Teaching Methods; GRS 390W Academic and Professional Writing; GRS 390C Academic and Professional Consulting; GRS 390F Professional Internship; GRS 390G Entrepreneurship; GRS 390M Academic and Professional Uses of Technology; GRS 390N Preparing Future Faculty Internship; GRS 390P Multi-Cultural Issues in Academic and Professional Instruction; and GRS 390R Academic and Professional Ethics.
One unique aspect of the Graduate School Professional Development Program is inclusion of three courses tailored to the needs of students whose native language is not English: GRS 389S, The Culture of Academic Communication; GRS 389W The Culture of Academic Writing; and GRS 389T Culture and Communication for University Teaching. These three classes, unlike most English as a Second Language programs, avoid the assumption that the students have a deficiency requiring correction. Instead, the courses provide international students with access to the same professional development program as all students, with specific and more intensive opportunities to focus on issues of cultural difference and perception.
A common thread and pedagogical theme in each of these courses is teaching students how to adapt to a variety of audiences --so that they can write scholarly articles, develop grant proposals, secure book contracts, utilize knowledge to generate informed and responsible public policies, facilitate innovation in commerce and business, and improve the human condition. These audiences might be peers at a scholarly conference, undergraduate students, or potential research sponsors. GRS classes provide students with the pedagogical skills required to lead classrooms, corporate boardrooms and workshops, and other important sites of public discussion and deliberation with energy, passion and rationality. In short, UT offers graduate students full-service professional development -- skills that build upon and enhance what is learned in academic disciplines.
Perhaps even more heartening than the wide array of disciplines in each classroom is what we are learning from student feedback. Besides acquiring skills that may help them become better researchers, teachers, and contributors to the nonacademic world, students inform us that they are gaining intellectually from the cross-disciplinary learning environment of professional development classes. In the words of one student: "This is what I always thought graduate education was supposed to be--the opportunity to interact with students outside of my department, to learn about my own and other disciplines and, in the process, acquire genuine perspective." Such testimonials are common. They lead us at Texas to believe that we can enrich graduate education so that each student is trained to become both an intellectually rigorous scholar and a professionally astute citizen.
__________________*Teresa A. Sullivan is Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, where she is also Professor of Sociology and Law. (note: Effective Fall, 2002 Dr. Sullivan became Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at UT System.) Richard Cherwitz is a Professor of Communication Studies. Dr. Cherwitz founded and administered the Graduate School Professional Development Program until summer, 2003.