The Two-Year Track

Don't Waste My Time

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By Dana M. Zimbleman

Those of us who teach full-time at community colleges sometimes find ourselves going back to graduate school. For the most part, graduate schools of education welcome us and make an effort to offer courses and programs compatible with our needs and busy schedules.

But those of us who seek additional education in the humanities and social sciences often find returning to graduate school a tedious, unrewarding endeavor. That's because the programs are designed primarily for full-time students whose lives revolve around the university -- which poses a problem for community-college instructors like me who want more education but have no interest in participating in the grad-school scene.

It's high time that a few departments redesigned their programs and courses to deal with this problem. I think it would go a long way toward developing a better rapport between university faculty members and community-college instructors.

I've thought a lot about this topic lately after my own failed attempt to earn a second M.A. in history. I already have an M.A. in English and a full-time teaching job at a community college. I didn't need another degree to obtain employment, but my interests in English and history are so intertwined that I wanted to earn the second credential to pursue a number of professional goals and to be a more knowledgeable teacher.

And while I don't actually need graduate school to read and think, I wanted some guidance from specialists who had immersed themselves in particular academic areas. I respect their commitment to research and was eager for them to share their expertise with me.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm soon dwindled after I realized that my own duties as a full-time instructor would make it difficult to meet many requirements of the history program in its current form.

Besides a long commute to the twice-weekly seminars, many classes required group projects with other students, meaning I would have to spend even more time on the campus than I had anticipated. In addition, there were a number of mandatory social events I was required to attend. Plus, a few professors didn't bother to adhere to the starting times for their seminars and routinely held classes 30 to 45 minutes late.

Given those time constraints and other disappointments, I decided to withdraw rather than try to fit graduate school into my hectic life. But I was extremely dismayed that I couldn't find an institution interested in a graduate student like me.

I've spoken to other community-college faculty members who are equally dissatisfied with the graduate programs available to them and frustrated in their relationships with their university professors. They, too, complain about professors who seem oblivious to our needs as students. Like me, they sometimes wonder if graduate school is a place where social interaction is valued over academic rigor.

And so, I've compiled a list of recommendations to any graduate schools that might be interested in improving the educational experience for community-college faculty members.

Treat us with respect. We're not novices lacking academic experience. We do the same things that our graduate professors do: teach, hold office hours, serve on committees, scrap with administrators over budgets, write and present papers, and read professional journals. We acknowledge that our graduate professors have more subject-matter knowledge than we do and much higher publication requirements, and we respect their work. But we also view ourselves as their professional peers, not their apprentices.

Because many graduate programs are dominated by those new to advanced study, some professors get in the habit of treating students like children instead of adults. While some of the younger students may need hand-holding -- or scolding -- to remember to submit plans of study or pick up graduate catalogs, we don't.

One other point about respect: University professors need to stop giving young graduate students the impression that pursuing a career at a two-year college is a step down. Most of us enter the community-college career track by choice and wouldn't trade places with you. We're quite proud of what we do.

Offer a few courses that aren't mired in theory. I'm not suggesting that theory isn't important or that every class isn't shaped around some theoretical premise. But if I sign up for a class on Victorian poetry, am I out of my mind to expect that we might actually discuss, say, Victorian poetry once in a while?

I recall quite vividly my own Victorian poetry class in my English graduate program. The professor, fresh out of graduate school himself, spent the entire seminar discussing one theorist or another; we were left to understand the poems on our own. I now teach Tennyson and other Victorian poets in freshman and sophomore-level courses. Sadly, I cannot say that that graduate seminar has aided my teaching in the least. I look back on it as little more than a required hoop through which I had to jump to get my degree.

Clarify your mission. Some professors at the graduate level are offended by the suggestion that they have an obligation to "train" teachers at the high-school or community-college level.

But let's get one thing straight: That's not what we're asking of you. We don't turn to university professors in English and other such disciplines for "training" as teachers. Schools of education do a fine job of preparing interested educators in things like classroom management, course design, and so forth.

When we enroll in a master's or doctoral problem in a more traditional field, we want and need immersion in subject matter.

We hear the "I'm a scholar, not a teacher" mantra over and over, yet what do graduate departments do? They require us to attend seminars once or twice a week in which the primary activity is class discussion and interaction with the professor. There's nothing particularly research-intensive about many seminars. In fact, the worst ones are more like academic socialization rituals.

When I returned to graduate school, I would have liked nothing better than to have avoided some of the seminars devoted largely to theory in favor of spending my time reading in the library and fashioning an academic argument. It would be nice if graduate programs offered more classes that required students to go off on their own for a few weeks to immerse themselves in their topic and then return to the seminar room near the end of the semester to share what they have learned. As a teacher, I would have benefited more from directed intensive study like that than from the weekly seminars that sometimes seemed more like kindergarten competitions for who could become teacher's pet.

Nobody wants to take responsibility for improving content instruction at the high-school and community-college levels. Yet university professors are often the first to complain that high-school students and community-college transfers are ill-prepared for academic work at four-year institutions. University graduate programs could do more to help us do our jobs better.

Consider offering a few graduate programs online. Few universities seem willing to embrace online instruction for graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences.

The excuse I've heard is that humanities graduate programs want to create a "community of scholars" who develop a close bond with one another. Well, why can't that happen online?

Some of us think this is just an excuse created by graduate faculty members resistant to change. Done correctly, online seminars could require graduate students to do what good scholars do -- argue a point effectively in writing.

Don't require student bonding rituals: Yes, I know that some of the younger students need an introduction to the culture of academe, and I wouldn't deny any of them the pleasure of socializing with one another. I remember my own years as a graduate assistant fondly, and I am grateful that my department scheduled such activities. It was enormous fun for me -- 15 years ago.

Unfortunately, many professors assume incorrectly that all of their students live near the university and desire to hang out at the local bar until 3 a.m. talking about poetry, philosophy, and other deep thoughts. Those professors fail to realize that many of us already have rich intellectual lives outside their universities.

Nobody has to require me to attend intellectual functions because I do so at my own campus. I also go to museums, art galleries, and lectures. Graduate professors shouldn't presume that all students need an introduction to those pursuits.

By articulating these ideas, I sincerely hope that a few graduate universities out there will do more to reach out to students like me who are extremely eager to learn but who are also unwilling to waste precious time and energy on activities that undermine rather than enhance our intellectual growth. Please help us to be better students.