Student ESC Survey ResultsHere is the survey that I somewhat haphazardly threw together along with a tally of responses and how the percentages broke down. I did this because it is important that the student voice be heard and understood when making decisions for this institution. Unfortunately the survey in tally form obscures some of the finer points. What you can’t see here are some of the hidden correlations. For example, of those respondents who regularly attend and whose advisors regularly attend, most went on to say that their advisor going was not a big factor in their decision to go. However, of those respondents who do not regularly attend and whose advisors don’t attend, most said that they would be more likely to go if their advisors went. I have attached a long list of quotations that give a more rich representation of opinion. Also note that:
There were many helpful suggestions for improvements and I have added a list of thoughtful and memorable quotes from students at the end. I would like to highlight some themes:
Quotes from studentsI may be hopelessly nostalgic but I used to enjoy the
Lamont Hall setting better. It was more intimate and convivial with
the speaker much closer to the audience, and the exchange of questions-answers
was more natural and candid. The speakers seem to often go way too long and
too much detail for the broad audience. It seems that only a few of
the speakers knew how to give
a clear and informative talk. No - although I think any student should be encouraged
to attend any talk anywhere that is interesting or relevant to their
academic background. If a grad student is not smart enough to figure
this out then they will not do very well in the academic world will
they? The colloquium is supposed initiate the habit of regularly attending
talks in early grad students, but in my opinion in fails dramatically
in this purpose, at least for me and the other paleontology students.
The largest problem (other than the major inconvenience to non-Lamont
people) is that this department is very multidisiplinary and it is difficult
to fit everyone's interest category. People benefit from the Colloquium
to differing degrees. Some people probably find it highly valuable.
Hopefully, it benefits most. On the other hand, I am among the least
benefited and forcing us (the least benefited) to go is mostly just
detrimental to productivity. New York is a big place and there are plenty
of good substitutes (e.g. many of the CERC seminars). Perhaps attending
an academic conference(s) during the first years of grad school would,
in my opinion, be an appropriate substitute for attending colloquium
for many students. In my early grad years at Florida where I got my
Master's degree, going to meetings and hearing talks and meeting other
scientists and grad students was one of the greatest catalysts for learning
that I have yet experienced. I'm sure most other students who have attended
meetings will agree. TGIF should occur BEFORE colloquium and should be more
based on EATING rather than drinking beer.
Especially in the winter, when a snack in the mid-afternoon is
much nicer than drinking cold beers on an empty stomach at 5.
It seems like the only people who show up regularly to TGIF are
a few hard-core australian types and a handful of dedicated grad students.
At least during the winter, move the colloquium to 4, have snacks
and coffee before for a half hour, and people can still drink beer later
if they want. Maybe we should draft a document of "Guidelines
for Lamont Colloquim speakers" and pass it around at Lamont so
people know that colloquium can get better. in practice the talks are almost always too specialized in one particular field for most students to really get anything useful out of it. One thing that might help the attendence and the talks
is if the speaker or the Stork-Doherty fellow prepared a _really_ short
abstract describing the talk, and posted it to the news. it could be
along the lines of the short blurbs at the front of Nature that desrcibe
in one small paragraph what the key findings are of that week; these
are supposed to be general enough that anyone, even a non-specialist,
can understand the significance of the result. I also think it would be really good to have a "student
colloquium" maybe every 2 weeks, in which a student presents her
results in a colloquium style to all of the students. We could even
invite students from nearby schools. why is it so important to understand what speakers
are talking about? it's b/c grad students often suffer from self-doubt
when faced with the formidable task of following a talk. sometimes in a talk, as i know is the case
with others, i become lost and start to wonder if i should even be here
in the first place. I believe that it's important to think about many fields,
as a stretching excercise for the brain.
Also, sometimes the talks I expect to be really exciting are
bad talks, and talks I wasn't looking forward to are really great (eg,
the Mendocino Trip-Junc talk last spring). That's almost impossible
to predict or control. Colloquium is absolutely essential, especially here
at Lamont, where we are all in our little buildings and the cafeteria
(one place we could talk to each other) is expensive. It may be the
only time some of us get out of our boxes and have contact with people
working on other things, and that is important in earth science, and
especially in this time of increasing cross-discipline collaboration. I don't think the move to Monell was a good one (though maybe hard to undo), for several reasons: 1) the room is too big for 9 of 10 speakers' audiences, and makes even a decent turnout disappointing; 2) the speaker is too far away, whereas in Lamont Hall there was more intimacy, and the speaker was much more approachable after the talk; 3) ambience - Monell has none, and going to Colloquium there feels very anonymous and like nodding through talks at a big meeting - LH felt much more like a unique coming together of a community unlike any other, in a place which is part of our own history. (Not that lil' ol' me complaining about the fancy new room with the broken screen is likely to change anything!) I do like the idea of having rotating leadership and student input - keeps the topics from being repetitive, and pushes us students to be more involved in choosing topics we'd like to hear. much better this year than last year (the year of the
oscillation) but could still use more talks on general geology,seismology,
hazards, ... or how about a mining or exploration talk? The talks are WAY too long!
Very few people are able or want to sit through an hour and fifteen
minute talk. No matter how interesting the material is.
It is my understanding that the true reason the colloquium time
was moved is that people were having trouble making the bus on time.
In other words, the talks were going too long. More specifically, what this really means is
that as time has progressed, these talks have been getting longer every
year -- thus the issue of making the bus on time became larger with
each year. I don't believe that this was as big a problem
several years ago, or it would have been dealt with then. Suggestions? Move
the time back to 4:00. The 3:30
time is way too early. Limit
the speaker to ** 45 minutes ** for the presentation, and then allow
15 minutes for questions. Done by 5:15 -- plenty of time to catch the
bus. No. It does
not matter. Since I register
colloquium as one of my graduate credit, I attended during my fall semester. And I will attend this semester, too. My
understanding on colloquium is listening the lecture from the edge of
science. For me, the idea of
colloquium is very valuable, but the topics were too specific to enjoy
listening for me, unfortunately. Since pre-orals students don't seem to care about the
colloquium even when they are registered, one might as well remove this
requirement. The colloquium
is very good. At this point
I don't go when other work demands my attention at the time of the colloquium.
Personally, I like the broad range of speakers brought to Lamont,
and think it very worthwhile. If you are going to have dept. talks as well as colloquium
then time becomes an isue. If
you attend mulitple dept. talks regularly, then colloquium becomes even
more or a stress. I think people
should be strongly encouraged, but not forced to go.
It is good to hear from various fields, but we only have so much
time in a day/week etc. Yes. Even though I don't attend now as often as I should,
broadening one's knowledge is always an asset. Plus, to a student
early on in their degree, it may provide insight into fields they know
little about but might like to pursue. Our degrees are in earth and
environmental science not paleo-oceanography or tectonics. In the end I feel like the poor colloquium attendence
reflects our lack of coherency as a community/department. This is seen
in the poor attendence at TGs as well, even though the colloquium time
was moved to promote higher attendence. Granted since we are a very
large and diverse department, which is always sold to students as an
asset, it is difficult to interact with everyone. We don't take advantage
of this asset. We don't even have a lecture room that would hold our
department should we all decide to attend one day. No- too early in the afternoon, particularly if there
is a more relevant talk in my field earlier that day. Has moving it paid off my increased attendance at TG? Yes it has value, but not as great as it could potentially.
I was fortunate to experience one exceptional year of Colloquium
talks and it has left a positive impression that has offset 2 absolutely
awful years and the last 2 lukewarm years. If the goal is to improve attendance, the nature of
Colloq. talks must become consistently exceptional, i.e. generally accessible
yet exciting and challenging (e.g.
the Ramanathan lecture last Fall).
(A lot to ask, I realize). This
involves setting standards for both the topic and the speaker: is it
currently a requirement that topics be cutting edge, recent developments
on ongoing controversies, etc.? Has the recommender heard the speaker give
a talk previously? Quality is more important than quantity.
No one wants to waste their time on a Friday afternoon. A short abstract from the speaker should be mandatory
as titles are often misleading, uninformative, or incomprehensible. In this case maybe 5 or so sentences.
If they can't summarize it in that, the talk is probably not
appropriate for Colloq I think that
the biggest problem is that the topics are very often 'rock-related',
so those of us who are not geologists have no idea what is goin on when
we get there because we don't know that much about rocks, why would
we? We srudy climate and/or
vegetation. How many geologists
would understand in depth and very specific lectures on plant ecophysiology
or climate related topics? Most
of us just don't have the background. If these lectures were more accessible, we would go, afterall, we're
all here because we WANT to learn.
If we're not going, it's because we're not learning anything
by going. I think Bruno has
a couple of EXCELLENT ideas on how colloquium could be much more useful
to us. Hope this helps! i think it's valuable. with so many hot topics out there in geosciences, etc., it is difficult for: a) first year students like myself, who are struggling to figure out research topics and keep on top of classes, to keep tabs on all the other sorts of research that are going on in our community; and b) more experienced students who are focused in on their research to pull back from their specific subject and see a connection to others' research where they never expected it. where else am i, a marine geology student, going to hear talks guaranteed to span so many different aspects of earth/enviro sciences? Lamont likes to say that it fosters multi-disciplinary work and, in my opinion, colloquium is one of the first steps in that direction. |
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