Working With Faculty
Collaboration is critical to your success
Learning at the College is a collaborative enterprise in which students can benefit from fellow students as well as from faculty. For this reason, students should develop study relationships with their fellow students, perhaps participating in study groups in which the collective wisdom of the group produces benefits for each individual member that they otherwise would not enjoy. Even students who are naturally shy should try to overcome this to develop relationships with a study partner or group. Furthermore, in the doctoral program we emphasize learning by doing. Students engage in the research process as well as mastering existing research-based knowledge through reading and lectures. In this light, doctoral students are advised to develop relationships with faculty members fairly early on in their careers here, with a view toward collaborating on research with one or more faculty members. Students will have opportunities for research linked with their thesis, area paper, or dissertation, and in some cases research done in connection with employment as a research assistant. Students should, however, also consider other research, perhaps on topics of their own choosing, that could be done collaboratively with faculty or other graduate students. They need not wait for a faculty invitation, but can initiate a meeting to discuss a proposed project. Students can identify faculty members likely to be amenable to potential project by going to the College Web site and reading faculty vitae and descriptions of their research interests. The sooner these relationships are established, the better. Doctoral students planning on academic careers need publications to compete for good jobs, and those with publications beyond those generated from their dissertations are in a better position than those without.
