PhD Orientation Planning Space

From GSLISWiki

1 Orientation To Do List
2 Orientation Planning Issues
- 2.1 Scheduling Concerns
3 Ideas for Orientation
- 3.1 Unofficial Orientation - Ph.D. Students (Spring 2005)
4 Related Links

[edit] Orientation To Do List

An incomplete list of the things to remember to do when planning the PhD Student Orientation:

Schedule the "official" Orientation
- Decide whether you want to do it in the afternoon following the GSLIS Orientation or on another day.
  - Advantage is that everybody is already on campus because the GSLIS Orientation is mandatory.
  - Disadvantage is that it is a long day for everybody, and some people get tired by the time they get to us.
Decide whether you want to supply food or drink.
- Typically, the school will not pay for food or drink, so we provide whatever the organizers or other PhD students are willing to pay for.

[edit] Orientation Planning Issues

[edit] Scheduling Concerns

A wise man has said "There are *no* perfect times for scheduling. That's an axiom." However, we have encountered a series of scheduling concerns that future planners of Orientation Meetings may want to keep in mind:

This year we chose to schedule the PhD Orientation in the afternoon after the GSLIS Orientation (see New PhD Student Orientation Schedule 2005). We decided to do this because we were not sure we'd be able to lure the new PhD students back to campus on another day before classes started, and we wanted to provide them with information that they would need prior to getting started with the program. However, there is a concern that this makes it too many orientations in one day, and that the new students will be exhausted by the time they get to the PhD Orientation.

There is an additional concern that international PhD students have a lot of extra requirements for setting themselves up as students, and may need the time to devote to such activities.

An alternative plan which was done in 2004, is to take the last hour in the second class meeting of 590HF, the required intro course to LIS, be devoted to a PhD student orientation of sorts.

Another concern that was brought up is that the hour discussion pre-pizza might be too much time.

There are also a series of events that tend to conflict with orientation meetings, which make it hard, especially for some faculty, to attend orientation meetings. These include
- Campus-wide Commencement
- Group Meetings such as this year there was a Metadata Roundtable meeting that conflicted
- National & International organizations' meetings: IMLS community youth services, etc.

[edit] Ideas for Orientation

[edit] Unofficial Orientation - Ph.D. Students (Spring 2005)

This idea came out of the Storytelling class I am currently taking. One of the things that interests me about storytelling is how it can be used to create the culture you want to have exist in an institution. Therefore, I was thinking about how we could create a storytelling program in GSLIS for GSLIS. Since I am a Ph.D. Student, I naturally thought about the Ph.D. orientation, where we were introduced to a number of faculty members and fellow Ph.D. students in the Doc Study. What happened was a series of introductions, and a repetition of some administrative things that would probably have been more useful if put on a handout. So I thought instead, what if we used stories to introduce the department?

However, while I think this might be a good idea, I then thought that a better idea would be for the Ph.D. students to hold their own orientation for the new Ph.D. students afterwards, that evening perhaps. We would need a place that is warm, relaxed, friendly, and, above all, not official--not part of GSLIS. It would be nice to be able to reserve a place like the Melrose Apts. common room (which we have used in the past for PhD student parties), so that it would be inclusive of everybody who is new to the program--unlike a bar.

Theme: GSLIS Culture, but not made explicit as such.

[edit] Official Orientation:

Introduction - go around the circle, each person introduces him- or herself: Name, Role (3rd year Ph.D. Student, Faculty), Research Interests.
Brief Welcome Speech by X
X seamlessly switches from speech to telling the several stories about past PhD students and what they have accomplished in the department, how they did it, and what they went on to do after graduation.
Y describes the breadth of the program, introduces LEEP, Prarienet, and other areas, and tells a brief story about each one which illustrates the character of the group and what they do.
Announcements
Commence eating the pizza and socializing.

[edit] Unofficial Orientation (pot-luck by program members--newbies get in free):

Students are given rides out to location, people arrive over a half-hour time period, are told to get the new students there by X time.
Welcome by A at X:15 or X:30:
- "Normally at our parties we don't have speeches or anything like that, but since we've got most of the new PhD students here, I thought I'd give them a brief welcome, and give a quick overview of what you need to know about GSLIS"
"We have some really cool administrators here."
- Tell a Linda Smith story.
"You can take classes online"
- Introduce LEEP and tell the Brass Monkey story to show the community.
"In my opinion, the greatest aspect of the program is the freedom that you have to research what you want. But the flip side of the coin is that you have to be self-motivated."
- Tell story of a successful Ph.D. student's experience who was able to break new ground and do what they wanted to do out of self-motivation and fitting themselves into the department just right.
- Tell story of a successful Ph.D. student who came to the program unsure of what to do, was introduced to new concepts and things by taking a variety of classes, and became passionately interested in a novel, interesting topic and became a strong contributer to the field.
- Tell the warning story of the Ph.D. students who take forever to finish the degree for any number of different reasons.
End speech, continue socializing, eating, etc.

[edit] Comments

The stories I have included here are more placeholders than anything else. I'm not sure if they are the best fits, but they are the best I can come up with for now. For example, is the Brass Monkey story the best story to tell to demonstrate the community in LEEP?

The goal is to prime the students, by introducing them to the culture, and to what to expect, and at the same time offering examples of how the department expects them to act. The problem is that in (5) I have no stories to tell, because I do not know anybody's experience here all that well because I am so new. I'm working on collecting stories to fill that gap.

Note: I have avoided including complaints about the department in the orientation, because those get voiced often enough anyway. In some ways, the unofficial orientation could serve as a phoenix-like moment of rebirth for the PhD students in the department by reminding them about what is good in the department, and reinspiring them to focus on their research, and perhaps to teach them how to solve problems they are having with doing their research or in focusing their research by story-example.

Ingbert