August 9, 2002

Treating Graduate Students With Dignity

By BRIAN P. COPPOLA

A group of graduate students meets with a group of faculty members in a cabin just off the dunes north of Muskegon, Mich., midway up the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The students have developed a set of questions that they have always wanted to ask the faculty members; the faculty members have brought in questions for the students.

One graduate student asks, "How do you manage to work out the problems of time-and-task management?" Most of the students are committed to holding