Deans' Weblog: Dalhousie Graduate Studies

Intercultural Communication

The Faculty of Graduate Studies serves all graduate students and post docs (at least the ones we know about!) here at Dalhousie University. Most of the time we deal with them indirectly, through the routine administrative systems handling applications, admissions, scholarship applications, grade results, convocations preparation. For many of the students, the only time we actually see them face-to-face is at convocation. And that's usually a good thing, not because we don't enjoy contact with students, but because it means that everything has gone as planned.

Of course, not everything goes as planned. As the old proverb has it, "man plans; God laughs". When a graduate student's program goes off the rails, or there is confusion about requirements, that is when the staff on the team come to a renewed understanding of educational administration as a contact sport. More contact than sport, really.

Today all of the staff of FGS got together as a group for a professional development session. A trained facilitator collected data before the meeting on where we are regarding our understanding of the challenges of intercultural communication. Then she took us through some theory and practice. An interesting business, to be sure.

It's easy to dismiss these kind of sessions as nothing more than a mildly amusing morning out of the office away from the phone and email. After all, something in the order of 80% of our students are Canadians. And when you reflect on the contact we might have in a year with the other 20% of the students, the vast majority of the communication is respectful, straightforward, and apparently successful on both sides of the exchange. I have nothing in the way of empirical data apart from my own thoughts about overhead conversations between staff and students, and the regular exchange of information we have as a team. But if I had to guess, well over 90% of the exchanges are non-problematic, probably over 95%, if we include email. Problem intercultural exchanges are probably less than 1-2% of them.

So what's the big deal? Why invest any time improving the effectiveness of intercultural communication?

There are a couple of reasons that spring to mind.  First, there is a trap in the phrase "apparently successful". This is not quite the same thing as "successful". Second, we have a special obligation to the international students - the ancient (and some would say sacred) obligation of hospitality. Third is the question of simple human compassion in the context of our mission to support students in the search for success. We have invited these students to study with us, notwithstanding the obvious and not-so-obvious challenges. Fourth is the question of risk management.

Risk management?

Yes. My good colleague Jack Duffy (professor emeritus from the biz school) and I have done research on the serious risks to Canadian faculty members. One of the patterns that emerged is the increased risk of threat where there are serious differences in power, high levels of frustration, cultural disconnects, and high stakes. Failing out of graduate school as an international student is, for some cultures, higher stakes than even for North Americans.So getting the communication right for the small number of students with serious problems (and those that aren't so serious) pays off.

 

Frankly, there are other reasons to give us pause to think about how to anticipate the possibility of a misunderstanding in intercultural communication. Improving our skills in this area by suspending judgment, thinking about alternative ways of understanding the situation especially from other points of view, looking for variety of solutions before coming to judgment - this has got to be good for communication with people we don't normally think of as coming from a different culture.

Say someone like me, from Alberta. Or someone from Cape Breton.  Or Toronto. Or an accountant, a lawyer, an engineer, an economist, an actuary. All different cultures. Each culture presents  opportunities for mistaken judgments enabled by communication disconnects.

I used to have long drawn out painful arguments with a business partner, Brian Harrington, who was not at all shy about telling me I was wrong. After 18 months of excruciating exchanges, he finally said to me: "you realize I'm an engineer, don't you?"

"Of course," I replied, "what has that got to do with anything?"

He patiently explained. "When an engineer says you're wrong, most of the time it means that he didn't understand what you said."

A major intercultural communication barrier evaporated.

So the big lesson for me today was one I already knew. The most common thinking mistake there is, and likely the most important one in terms of impact, is rushing to judgment before exploring.  It's an easy thing to forget when your in-box overflows with requests for judgments, and as soon as possible. And that improving intercultural communication might just improve communication period.

That would be a good thing.

 

Sunny

 

“A Wakeup Call for Science Faculty” or “Time to Decide: The Ambivalence of the World of Science Toward Education”

When I was a D.Sc. ("Privatdozent" or "Dr. med. habil.") candidate in Germany some time ago (I won’t tell you exactly when, but it has been a while), Bruce Alberts’ text on the “Molecular Biology of the Cell’ was required reading for every graduate student and PDF in the area of cellular physiology/biochemistry/biophysics. Since that time, my focus has changed several times, from primarily researcher to primarily teacher and, most recently, to academic administrator. Still, I’m trying to integrate the experiences from previous careers (some successful and some not so successful) into what I do on a daily basis in my role as academic administrator at graduate studies. Thus, it may come as no big surprise that I bookmarked a 2005 "Leading Edge Commentary" by Bruce Alberts (Cell 123, December 2, 2005) ( Download Alberts' Cell article as PDF file). Its summary really struck a nerve. It reads, “By changing the way we teach the introductory science courses in our colleges and universities, we can attract many more talented students to science careers. At the same time, we will be fostering positive public attitudes about science that are critical for a successful modern society.” Being unsure of what to make of it when I bookmarked Bruce's 2005 Cell commentary shortly after my appointment in graduate studies, I kept it on the backburner. Now, for reasons outlined below, it seems to me that such a change in attitude toward science education may prove to become a critical tool in rejuvenating and recruiting to Dalhousie’s undergraduate and graduate programs.

Now, seriously, what triggered me to revisit a 2005 article in Cell? First, it was my last blog on mentoring and that mentoring of future research stars should start early in their undergraduate years (as successful examples at Dalhousie suggest). Second, more importantly, it was the rapidly increasing frequency of concerns in all kinds of media about the ambivalence of the world of science toward education -- especially at research-intensive universities. The most telling one was the executive summary of a recent study from the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) entitled “Science education vs. research: a zero-sum game?” It concluded, “It appears, then, that many universities -- and by extension, their faculty -- treat research and teaching as a zero-sum game: as more time and energy is invested in one endeavor, the amount of resources that can be allocated to the other drops. Since most scientific funding and prestige are bestowed upon faculty for accomplishments in research, education may fall by the wayside as scientists strive for success in the lab rather than the classroom.”

The NPG in its Nature Education Position Paper suggests that, in order to improve scientific education, “this contradiction must be resolved. In order to excel in science generally, education and research should not be at odds with each other. Academic institutions must take a look at their priorities to determine whether their hiring and workload policies are in fact detrimental to student success.” The graduate studies team is well aware of this issue and is trying to address it as good as possible in the current environment of economic challenges to academic institutions. Such times are daring, to say the least, but they also provide great opportunities for change.

Ultimately, the graduate studies team at Dalhousie wants all students (graduate as well as undergraduate) to succeed and prosper after graduation and we're working hard to achieve this goal. Especially during convocation, we don’t want Dalhousie graduates to wonder if the implications of the recent cartoon on the title page of “The New Yorker” (see below) are, "Ho, ho, now everyone is coming home after college, even graduate students." [See The Chronicle of Higher Education for debate.]

Finally, the graduate studies team also wants to ensure that another possible implication of the cartoon isn't that Dalhousie Ph.D.'s are worth as much as third-place ribbons [next to the Ph.D. we see (in my case with a strong magnifying glass), a scotch-taped award for being "Student of the Week," a third-place ribbon for some undefined achievement, and a fourth-place award for golf, a poster of a rock band, a spelling trophy, a toy car, etc.] -- or are as easy to obtain. That said, I leave it to qualified Ph.D.’s to (over)analyze a cartoon.

Over and out.

Dieter

Social Networking?

Great excitement at FGS, we have a one year position to work on a graduate recruitment strategy. As I have mentioned before, recruitment at the graduate level is a tricky business! While the university has a brand, each department is, in some sense, a niche market. The highest priorities reported by applicants for choosing a university for a graduate program are the faculty members, the program, and funding. This makes university wide recruitment for graduate students problematic. There is only so much impact that can be made at the overall brand level while activities at the department level can be quite effective.

Back to Melanie, our planner. She has a big task, to identify techniques, strategies, and best practices that have been shown to be effective at the graduate level and then to engage individual departments so that they are tailoring their approach and making the best use of their recruiting efforts. At the same time, she will need to work out how we can best represent the entirety of our graduate programs. One year, suddenly, does not seem long enough!

So this morning, day 3 of her tenure at FGS, we began with a discussion on how we can use social networking in this context. Lots of ideas and lots of energy around linking our facebook for new admits to twitters and gradstudent blogs, using our new videos on YouTube, etc. I am confident  this will get done but how to measure success is another matter.

This made me reflect on how we use social networking not only for, well, social networking, but also more and more for other objectives. A story this morning in Inside Higher Education reports that 60% of profs use one or more social networking channels and that about half use it for teaching. Interesting, but is that social networking.

I propose some tags for non-social networking uses for social networking. First, I'll tag "outgoing", these are messages meant to be received but not necessarily responded to. Good example of outgoing are many institutional blogs and tweets which have followers but do not follow other tweets or blogs. A great way to make processes and institutions more transparent I suspect. Second, I'll tag "seasonal". These are short-term targeted channels, blogs, tweets, Youtubes, and facebook. For example, facebooks set up just for newly admitted students leading up to orientation, or applying students before accepting offers, or students in a class even. Once the target or date arrives, channel closes. Third, I would label "monitoring". Social networking channels are can be used effectively to check the pulse of action on some specific issue without bothering to contribute to the conversation. So people flag one or more concepts and monitor by getting notice of  tweets, blogs, videos, etc, etc, with those tags or keywords. This puts "just checking" on a whole new level. Finally, of course is "sales pitch" where social networking is used to sell something; an idea, a process, or goods and services.Not my favorite use but inevitable nit seems.

Hard to tell, at this point, where social networking will lead for engaging potential students with our universities but for sure it has become way more than checking in with our friends!

Carolyn

GERMANY: Nationwide Bologna Protests

On Nov. 18, 2009, I came across the following headline in the New Zealand Herald. “85,000 students protest in Germany.” Being German, this headline definitely caught my attention. Thus, I checked out the article and read the following in the opening paragraph. “Tens of thousands of university students are protesting across Germany against changes they say have made the educational system worse.” Now this topic had my full attention, although I was puzzled by the fact that it hadn’t shown up in the national Canadian newspapers or in any of the educational news feeds, Carolyn or I subscribe to. In any case, I decided to follow up on this issue consulting German newspapers and talking to my 84-year-old father-in-law in Germany.

In summary, students are protesting the introduction of tuition fees and the bachelor’s and master’s system into German universities, the shortening of college prep. school programs, and what they describe as the increasing commercialization of their education. Historically, reforms transforming European education, called the Bologna process, signed by 46 European countries, call on countries to integrate their education systems and implement a credit transfer system by 2010. Continental universities have had to replace their own degree systems with the bachelor's and master's degrees of the Anglo-Saxon world. While supporters say this will increase the competitiveness of European universities and increase mobility for European students, the student strikers argue that the changes have made study programs inflexible and have reduced universities to factories producing workers for the economy. At the heart of their protest, said student leader Schmidt, is the worry that education is becoming less about seeking knowledge and more about preparing to fill a need in the economy. Whereas before these reforms took place, "you went to university for yourself, to gain knowledge ... now people are studying for the labor market."

Again, this week, tens of thousands of students took to the streets to voice their anger over the way the Bologna reforms are being implemented in Germany. Opposition to tuition fees was also clearly reflected in the motto "Education is not for sale.” The student protest has met with at least a partial response by government officials who are now considering restructuring of new courses and better financial support. More than 80,000 students took part in the protests. There have been sit-ins in lecture halls and partial university occupations at more than 20 universities throughout the country. Students are calling for the new bachelor’s programs, introduced in the context of the Bologna process, to be abandoned. They complain the courses are too rigid and crammed with contents. Contrary to the Bologna objective of enhancing mobility, there are claims that present credit transfer regulations are making switching from course to course or university to university more difficult, let alone allowing students to go abroad to study.

This week's demonstrations marked a climax of the autumn protests although further activities are planned for early December, including a partial blockade of the City of Bonn where the Conference of Cultural Affairs Ministers is to meet.

Conference President Henry Tesch said he sympathized with much of what the students were saying and offered to talk with their representatives.

"These campaigns should really have started years ago," Tesch said. "Much of what has been done is like pouring old wine into new bottles. You can't press what used to be a 'Diplom' [standard German qualification in engineering and several other subject fields] program of at least eight semesters into a six-semester course."

In a conference declaration, Tesch stressed that opting for Bologna was certainly the right move, a sentiment that is generally backed. But the implementation process needs correcting. The conference is also urging for better government financial support for students via Germany's BAFöG student grant system as well as a strengthening of the student welfare system.

German Federal Education Minister Annette Schavan conceded that "technical mistakes" had been made in implementing Bologna. Schavan also announced the government was considering raising the level of BAFöG support.

According to a front page article in the "Frankfurter Rundschau" from November 25, the Chair of the German employers' association stated to the German Chancellor that industry would appreciate increased government investments in university education and social reforms over tax breaks.

Interesting times. Stay tuned.

Over to Carolyn (from the US, China or India, wherever she may be) and once more to Sunny (before he leaves us, regrettably, for a full-year sabbatical).

Dieter

How do we choose?

Open House activities have turned my thoughts to how it is that we choose one school over another not only for our undergrad experience but for our graduate experience. In my case I went to the university my family went to. It was close and familiar. Then an astute department chair suggested I might be interested in trying out the "new" discipline Computer Science at the graduate level, even though I had never even seen a computer before. It turns out to have been a good choice for me but I can't say I did a lot of comparison shopping!

A recent exit survey of Dalhousie graduate students shows that location and program are the top factors in why they chose Dalhousie. No doubt for thesis programs, individual researchers and funding are also very important.

So then, if we want to promote graduate programs at Dalhousie, what can we do at FGS? Each faculty and each department, in the end, has to attract ("sell")and process ("hold") prospective students to their programs. Is there a role for more general visibility and promotion of the opportunities that Dal offers and perhaps the attraction of doing a degree in the "East"? Probably. The big question is how and where. We have made a modest start with the big banners promoting all grad programs that you may have seen at the Open House. But we would be really interested in hearing stories about why you chose Dal and any ideas you may have on how to promote our programs better.

For everyone who may be graduating this weekend - Congratulations!!

Carolyn