Berkeley is a place where scholars from diverse fields gather to create and evaluate master works of art, music, and literature, debunk historical myths and confirm historical truths, formulate social policies and improve our educational systems, search for cures, save the earth, and explore outer space.
Its many research centers and institutes provide intellectual avenues to connect senior scholars and their projects. But what about graduate students, who are just beginning their research careers? How do they find a community of scholars that will support their research interests?
Graduate students in the sciences are often absorbed into the intellectual communities in their laboratories, where they may even find a long-term research associate. Students in the humanities and social sciences, however, may not have regular contact with other researchers working on related issues, especially during the most critical stage of their graduate career, the dissertation.
Recent national studies report that such isolation may impede dissertation progress for many students; Ph.D. completion rates tend to accelerate when students form peer support groups, small communities in which they feel comfortable sharing their dissertation proposals, ideas, problems, and progress.
Two ongoing dissertation support projects, unique to Berkeley, provide ways for graduate students with research interests in common to find one another and lessen their isolation.
Cooperative Adventures
The first project locates and gathers small groups of scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools for thematic dissertation workshops each semester. These workshops were developed by David Szanton, executive director of International and Area Studies (IAS), and adapted for the Berkeley campus with Maresi Nerad, director of the Graduate Division's research unit. Most are cosponsored by IAS and the Graduate Division.
"The idea behind these workshops is to help people recognize that they're not alone either in the process of writing their dissertation, or intellectually," says Szanton, who created the workshop model at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in New York.
The second project, a collaborative effort between IAS, the Graduate Division, and the Library, offers students an opportunity to search a database of abstracts of UC Berkeley dissertations in progress to locate students working on similar topics in different disciplines and schools across the campus. Hopefully, they will establish contact and set up regular meetings to share their research pitfalls and progress. Seminar rooms in the Library have been reserved for this purpose.
Both programs encourage graduate students to create interdisciplinary support communities throughout the dissertation process. Such communities also offer possibilities for long-term academic partnerships or collaboration, particularly as the demand for interdisciplinary research continues to grow.
Collaborative research is of great interest to Szanton, who came to Berkeley from the Social Science Research Council six years ago. Since then, he has helped expand International and Area Studies programs and has promoted academic endeavors that have joined scholars from research units all across the campus. Soon after he arrived, he met Nerad and became more aware of the specific problems facing Berkeley graduate students.
"When I learned from Maresi's research how isolated graduate students felt, especially during their dissertation writing, it seemed absurd to me, given what's available at the University," recalls Szanton. "It also runs counter to any notions of collegiality that should be central to any good college or university."
Although there were mechanisms for uniting senior scholars for interdisciplinary projects, few existed to unite doctoral students. Szanton thought his SSRC workshops might serve this purpose and worked with Nerad to redesign them for the Berkeley campus.
"The workshops are intellectually stimulating and uplifting," reports Nerad, who has attended several and who codeveloped a recent one on higher education and social change. "I haven't seen anything like this anywhere else in the country."
Workshop topics may emerge from searches for thematic clusters on the Graduate Division's database of dissertations in progress or from faculty and graduate students directly. The Graduate Division's database is particularly helpful, because it also provides the names of dissertation committee members, which helps locate faculty interested in the workshop topics.
After a theme is chosen, Szanton and the cosponsoring faculty prepare a workshop announcement that is distributed to the likely departments and to students whose dissertation topics in the database seem relevant.
The three-day workshops are fully funded and are held off campus, at a guest ranch outside Sonoma, to minimize distractions. In order to have an effective workshop, the number of participants is limited to 12 students and three to five faculty members who jointly select the students.
Applications for each workshop consist of two copies of a current curriculum vitae and two copies of the dissertation proposal. If the work is well underway, students may submit a statement of no more than 10 pages detailing specific issues being addressed, the intellectual approach, and the materials being studied. Students need not be advanced to candidacy to apply, but they must have completed at least a draft of the dissertation research proposal. They also may be well along in their research and writing.
Intellectual Fireworks
"We try to choose students whose research looks intellectually interesting, seems likely to engage with the others, and who also represent a spread of disciplines, world regions, time periods, and gender," says Szanton. "We're building communities of students and faculty who are coming at the same sets of issues but from different perspectives."
For example, the students participating in two workshops this spring come from eight different departments on campus and are doing research all over the world.
The number of workshops per year has increased from two to four since they were initiated five years ago. Some past workshop topics include: "The Cultural Construction of Health and Disease"; "Expression, Legitimization, and Critique: Art as Politics"; and "The Politics of Social Entitlements."
The two workshops this spring are on "Globalization, Culture, and Urbanism: The Social Construction of Cities" and "Work, Workers, and Worker Organization in the Global Economy."
To participate, students must agree to have their proposals and curricula vitae circulated among the group several weeks before the workshop. Participants are asked to read all of the proposals and then to imagine themselves as editors of a book, with each proposal representing a chapter in the book. They're asked to write an introduction to the book, to be distributed to all the participants before they meet in person at the workshop.
"This gives us a head start on the intellectual engagement," explains Szanton. "Before everyone arrives at the workshop, they have read, thought, and written about everyone else's work. They have also discovered how others have read and interpreted their work."
Exchanging materials beforehand also enables students to see how their research relates to other projects. One student, a medievalist scholar, on discovering all the other projects were on contemporary issues almost withdrew from the workshop since her study seemed so unrelated. Her historical material and approach, however, turned out to be of great interest to the others and became the centerpiece of the workshop. In fact, both students and faculty urged her to complete her dissertation quickly and turn it into a book so that they could use it in their own teaching.
Chris Benner, who is finishing his course work and exams in city and regional planning, helped organize the workshop, "Research and Social Action," held last fall. This spring, he will participate in a workshop relevant to his research on changing forms of work in Silicon Valley.
"Departmental support during the dissertation stage is somewhat haphazard, and many have to figure out their own way through the process," notes Benner. "It's been helpful talking with other students, especially at the workshops."
Benner also spoke on having benefited from three days to review his research steps with professors in the workshop's relaxed setting. Some students only manage to meet with their advisers once or twice a year after they begin their dissertations. Interactions with faculty at the workshops often help them reconceptualize their goals and provide inspiration and momentum needed to complete the work.
A Larger Audience
"One of the strengths of an interdisciplinary workshop is it forces you to communicate with people who don't speak your academic lingo," Benner adds. "You have to learn to address a larger audience."
The first evening of the workshop is devoted to introductions. The next day is divided into twelve half-hour slots, six in the morning and six in the afternoon, for discussion of the proposals. However, instead of presenting their own work, participants present another student's work, summarizing the key issues being addressed, and raising some questions. During presentations and discussions of their work, authors are not allowed to speak. Instead, they will have time allotted the next day to talk about their work and comment on the prior discussion of it.
"This way, students learn to listen attentively to comments on their work rather than becoming defensive and closed to new aspects," Nerad explains. "This is a skill worth learning for their future as scholars."
This format forces everyone to listen to how others perceive their work; many have been writing their projects with a single professor in mind, notes Szanton.
When assigning presentations, Szanton tries to achieve an interesting mix. For instance, he might ask a student who is approaching the topic from a broad research perspective to present a project more limited in scope.
Faculty remain relatively quiet during the initial presentations but take active part in later discussions. Students may or may not know the faculty participants beforehand. To ensure a relaxed atmosphere and easy discussion, students' dissertation advisers are generally not used as faculty participants.
In addition to structured discussions, there is continuous informal exchange during meals and walks and while people relax in the evening by the fireplace.
Many groups have continued to meet long after their initial workshop. One group met every month for over a year and then invited faculty to critique their job talks at a second workshop that they had organized. Another group plans to host a campuswide panel discussion in the near future. Funds are available to facilitate further meetings between workshop participants and to arrange for special events and guest speakers.
The workshops are funded primarily by a Ford Foundation grant. Various campus units have cosponsored workshops, and the Graduate Division also offers some support. Szanton encourages UC Berkeley centers, institutes, and programs to initiate and cosponsor workshops since he can only organize three or four per year in addition to his other responsibilities at IAS. He welcomes ideas from both faculty and students and is available to advise groups on how to set up additional workshops.
The success of the workshops has also prompted the Graduate Division, IAS, and the Library to create a database of "UC Berkeley Dissertations in Progress" on the World Wide Web. The database began with abstracts from students in the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools, but it is now open to students in all departments on campus.
Only students who have entered an abstract can search the entire database, using keywords of their choosing to locate projects related to their own. Abstracts run 200 to 250 words in length, and authors' names and contact information are included.
The database is intended to encourage and facilitate the formation of dissertation writing groups, but its success is dependent on student initiative.
As Szanton notes, "We can't require students to do this, but we certainly hope they will submit an abstract and then search out other people working on related topics."
Access to the database is restricted to computers networked to the Berkeley campus and to doctoral students and faculty with campus e-mail accounts.
"Imagine finding a group of people in other departments who are interested in your project, who'd like to meet regularly to talk about each other's work, and whose eyes don't glaze over when you start to talk about your dissertation," says Szanton. "Many students have found this type of collegiality in the thematic workshops, and we hope others will find it through the database."
Before submitting an abstract, students must sign a release form, available from the Graduate Division Degrees and Petitions Office, 302 Sproul Hall. For more information on the database, contact Cathy Ratti at 642-7330.
For information on IAS dissertation workshops, contact David Szanton by e-mail: szanton@uclink.berkeley.edu.
For more information on other IAS projects and events, including interdisciplinary teaching programs, visit IAS online (http://garnet.berkeley.edu.4241), or call 642-9656.
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