Jennifer Summit

Graduate students at elite institutions are often at a disadvantage when applying for jobs in public universities, particularly at comprehensive institutions like those in the California State University system, because such students are seen to have less teaching experience and commitment to the access mission than their counterparts from public institutions. Special effort to broaden these graduate students’ professional perspective and experience is required—not only because the narrowed job market requires more broadly prepared candidates but also because many Stanford PhDs would find work in the comprehensive sector to be rewarding and fulfilling. Further, faculty members at comprehensive institutions possess a breadth of expertise from which our graduate students stand to learn a great deal: not only planning and delivering successful courses on a demanding schedule but also reaching out to and addressing the needs of students with a diverse range of backgrounds, preparations, and life experiences and goals. The opportunity to watch and learn from these faculty members is invaluable for the professional development of Stanford graduate students.

This year saw the pilot of a graduate mentoring program that was run through the partnership of Stanford University and San José State University (SJSU). With the support of Stanford’s Center for Teaching and Learning, the vice provost of graduate education, and the School of Humanities and Sciences, and with the generous participation of administrators and faculty colleagues from SJSU, six Stanford graduate students were matched with SJSU mentors from their fields, whom they shadowed for one quarter while meeting weekly as a cohort in a practicum seminar. The graduate students’ weekly and hourly commitments during the quarter varied, according to the individual learning contracts developed with their mentors, but their experience was significant: as well as regularly attending class meetings, the graduate students met individually with their mentors to discuss the design of the syllabus and plans for individual class meetings, observed office hours, delivered occasional guest lectures or labs, and even attended department meetings at the invitation of the department faculty members. In reflective journals and end-of-term assessments, the graduate students agreed that the experience had exceeded their expectations and offered them a richly illuminating perspective on, and preparation for, the next stage of their academic careers.

The assessment of the program revealed that students were granted extraordinarily full access to their mentors’ professional lives, in which they witnessed unexpected challenges as well as equally unexpected rewards. For example, one graduate student, who shadowed her mentor in office hours, observed the daily struggles of students who were parents, veterans, or, in one case, newly homeless; she was moved to observe that her experience at SJSU exposed her to levels of diversity that she had never witnessed at Stanford but were more representative of American higher education in general. Another student, who worked to develop his own comfort in the classroom, took inspiration from his mentor’s warm but authoritative demeanor with her students and observed how effectively they were motivated as a result.

Reviewing the assessments, we were impressed not only with the range of experiences to which the graduate students were exposed but also the depth of learning that they took away. As a side benefit, we noted that the participating students shared their experiences with graduate students in their home departments, thus enriching their cohort’s shared professional perspectives.

Note

Jennifer Summit (Stanford) collaborates on this project with Amy Strage (San José State University) and Rick Reis (Stanford).