In 1999 the GSA board announced the National Doctoral Program Survey.  Many
of the graduate and professional students at Miami University participated
in that survey.  Please find below a summary of the survey findings.

I encourage you all to read the survey summary, visit the NAGPS website
regularly, participate and contribute to the GSCA and GSA to bring your
scholarly and professional development needs to fruition.
If you have concerns, questions or ideas the GSCA and the GSA are the
primary advocacy organizations for graduate and professional students on
this campus.

Despite the fact that the graduate and professional student community is
more transitional(we are at M.U. generally 2-6 years) than the undergraduate
community, your holistic development as a scholar, teacher and professional
are no less important.

Brown
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>From: Madelyn Lovell <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: H-Net Humanities Graduate Student Discussion List
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: National Doctoral Program Survey results released
>Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 22:55:45 -0400

>Sender:       H-Net Humanities Graduate Student Discussion List
>  <[log in to unmask]>
>
>From: Adam Fagen <[log in to unmask]>
>
>National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS)
>209 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE o Washington, DC 20003-1107 o 888-88-NAGPS
>For immediate release: Kimberly Suedkamp Wells: (573) 884-8535
>October 17, 2001 Geoff Davis: (415) 206-9670
>Adam Fagen: (617) 970-4971
>Press Kit at http://survey.nagps.org/about/presskit.php
>_________________________________________________________________
>32,000 GRADUATE STUDENTS GRADE THEIR DOCTORAL PROGRAMS :
>POOR REPORT CARDS IN CAREER GUIDANCE, PREPARATION FOR TEACHING
>(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Tables were turned this week as 32,000 graduate
>students and recent Ph.D.'s graded doctoral programs in a
>groundbreaking online survey conducted by the National Association of
>Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS). Students graded their doctoral
>programs' implementation of educational practices recommended by the
>National Academy of Sciences, the Association of American
>Universities, and other educational leaders. Report cards for more
>than 1300 doctoral programs, generated from the survey results, are
>available online at http://survey.nagps.org/.

>"Graduate students often report feeling overwhelmed by the process of
>higher education and helpless to change things," said NAGPS President
>Kimberly Suedkamp Wells, one of the survey authors and a doctoral student
>at the University of Missouri-Columbia. "Our survey is
>important because it provides students with the opportunity to feel
>like they can actually make a difference in their educational
>experience."

>Students are most satisfied in doctoral programs where they have the
>freedom to pursue a broad range of career options, to make informed
>choices about their own education, and to have those choices
>respected. While 81% of students reported satisfaction with their
>programs overall, only 45% are satisfied with their preparation for
>teaching and 38% with career services. According to Adam Fagen, survey
>author and a doctoral student at Harvard University, "even programs that
>excel at research may get an incomplete when it comes to
>preparing students for non-research aspects of their careers."

>"It's a real problem when Ph.D.'s can't function outside the
>university," said survey author Geoff Davis, a Dartmouth math
>professor turned software developer. "Getting science and engineering
>Ph.D.'s into industry is the best way to get new research and ideas out of
>the lab and into the world." While 89% of survey respondents believed their
>doctoral programs are doing a good job of preparing them for academic
>careers, only 52% felt prepared for nonacademic careers.

>A particular area of concern is the lack of information about the
>career outcomes of former students. Only 30% of respondents reported
>receiving information on graduation rates for their programs during
>the application process, and only 35% received information on job
>placements for recent program graduates. Women and underrepresented
>minority students were less satisfied with their experiences than their
>counterparts. Twenty-eight percent of women and 40% of minority students
>said that their programs did not provide supportive environments for
>members of underrepresented groups. "If the climate of doctoral programs is
>not supportive, all the recruiting in the world is not going to make a
>difference," said Kimberly Suedkamp Wells.

>The survey results highlight model doctoral programs, and they suggest
>strategies that faculty and administrators can use to improve
>students' educational experiences. Involving graduate students in
>decisions that affect their education, providing them with more
>information about program outcomes, and providing greater curricular
>breadth in graduate training were all found to increase student
>satisfaction. Most of these strategies are relatively easy and
>inexpensive to implement.

>NAGPS is an advocacy organization representing 900,000 graduate and
>professional students across 200 campuses in the U.S. More information on
>NAGPS can be found at www.nagps.org. The online survey was funded by a
>grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
>###
>Adam Fagen \ [log in to unmask]
>Molecular Biology/Education / http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~afagen/
>Harvard University GSAS \ http://mazur-www.harvard.edu/
>
>
>**********************************************************
>Visit the H-GRAD Website at http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~grad
>**********************************************************

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