Deepa Chari and Geoff Potvin, Florida International University

Graduate school in physics can involve a host of new experiences for graduate students. These new members of the community try to make sense of a department’s culture and understand the practices and members of this community. During this time, it is important that graduate students do not feel overly imposed upon by department legacies and that they successfully pass through departmental benchmarks for progress (formal and informal). Often, departments rely on faculty to support new graduate students to learn about departmental culture and expectations. Additionally, a range of programmatic structures like graduate courses, research meetings, and colloquia may be available for new students, who need to understand the meaning and importance of each.¹ In our studies, we focus on understanding the human practices that makes such programmatic structures socially meaningful in graduate enculturation.

In Community of Practice theory, practices are characterized by norms and viewpoints of the practicing members of a community.² Thus, practices can be studied from existing as well as comparatively new members of a community.³ A study of graduate students’ practices can also provide understanding of what kind of support faculty can offer students in the enculturation into a graduate community.

With this in mind, we interviewed 14 physics graduate students from 4 departments. All students were enrolled in the American Physical Society’s Bridge Program and were in their 1st or 2nd year of graduate school at the time of the interviews. During this period, students typically complete advanced level undergraduate courses and/or graduate courses, and some start their graduate research. The interviews we conducted explored students’ experiences in their initial graduate experiences. These students self-identify as coming from under-represented groups, so this study also contributes to an understanding of supporting graduate diversity.

Graduate course taking was a dominant theme in many interviews. Students described graduate course taking as an advancement of their current knowledge, and that it should be cumulative to the undergrdaute physics concepts. Some students at one department shared examples of difficulties they had initially experienced in a core graduate course. Most members of that group associated the difficulties they encountered with their undergraduate preparation in mathematics. Probing further, students added that they discussed their difficulties with their mentors and, with their support, approached the department’s graduate committee with a suggestion of developing an additional mathematical methods course for them. Students commented that the department had committed to consider this and review the necessary logistics. This is a clear indication that students had not only undertaken the usual practice of graduate courses but had become active agents who were able to identify a barrier to their own success and suggest programmatic changes to lower this barrier.

Another dominant experience of students was the interaction of new (first year) students with second-year students. Second-year students engaged in critical discussions regarding graduate course selection including how many courses newcomers should take. Some of these discussions mitigated new students’ worries about the extra time they invested in supplemental undergraduate course taking. Thus, the earlier cohort was taking up the mantle of more senior members of the community. In sum, graduate students themselves served as active agents in their own enculturation. As a practical concern, faculty make use of this knowledge by providing structures that create regular opportunities for interaction between cohorts and between students and the departmental committees that make programmatic and advising decisions.

Having a good GPA in graduate courses was understood to be a necessary step for continuing graduate school. In the interviews, students emphasized the importance of group work during their first-year graduate courses, some even referred to group work as the key to achieving a good GPA. Students narrated how they initiated and successfully managed working groups during course taking and to avoid isolation. Some of the strategies included moving to different offices to ensure they would be in the company of graduate students who were also taking courses, keeping office doors open to welcome each other, organizing off-campus group sessions for an extended time, strategically approaching assignments, etc. Interestingly, even after the first-term ended, most students continued to follow up on other group members’ progress in other courses, their teaching, and research activities. Furthermore, they felt more connected with other group members during social events at the department. In this way, group work in the first semester courses helped to develop connectedness between students and clearly boosted the camaraderie in the graduate community.

Overall, students we interviewed had thrived in their departmental graduate communities and had navigated through and around the structures as they felt necessary in their enculturation. Departments can be proactive by considering the introduction of such student-initiated practices as standard exercise for future cohorts of graduate students.

Deepa Chari is a postdoctoral researcher associate at Florida International University. Her research interests are graduate education, enculturation studies, and students’ understanding of math in physics.

Geoff Potvin is an Associate Professor in the STEM Transformation Institute and the Department of Physics at Florida International University.

(Endnotes)

¹ B. E. Lovitts, Leaving the ivory tower: The causes and consequences of departure from doctoral study. Rowman & Little field Publications Inc, Lanham, MD (2001).

² P. Bourdieu, The logic of practice. Polity Press Cambridge, United Kingdom (1990).

³ E. Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press, University Printing House, Cambridge, United Kingdom (1991).

Disclaimer – The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.