Resolving Student Readiness Issues at the Graduate Level >Drew Ross

When we admit graduate students, we take on the responsibility to continue the academic journey that another academic institution—sometimes more than one—has already begun. Our new degree candidates come to us from literally hundreds of different institutions: state universities, private liberal arts colleges, proprietary colleges, foreign universities. Most often, at least two of these categories are represented on the same transcript. While this diversity of experience is not a problem, it makes it difficult for us to diagnose our biggest problem: student readiness for graduate-level writing and research.

As an open-enrollment institution, this is a challenge we face across the board, in every school and degree plan, so in some ways, graduate-level readiness concerns are not unique. At the same time, as the second, third, sometimes sixth or seventh postsecondary institution along a student’s learning trajectory, we are in an awkward position when we encounter a student who struggles to write a clear, focused sentence or paragraph. How do you tell someone with an accredited bachelor’s degree that he or she cannot write well enough? Quite frankly, it is impossible to do this directly, without indicting the candidate’s prior education in the process.

At the same time, when students come to us with clear career goals and an enthusiasm to begin work, we cannot ignore a lack of readiness and pretend it does not exist. It is a problem that rarely resolves itself, and worse, it often creates enormous frustration and anxiety in some of our most motivated and eager students. So we find ourselves looking for a solution that both helps the student and does not point a shaky, accusatory finger at his or her undergraduate institution. When this does happen, we repeat our readiness mantra, "Blameless and beneficial. Blameless and beneficial." as we look for ways to help.

What we have found with new graduate students is that, even when they want to improve their writing skills, they often resist taking advantage of affordances that are successful at the undergraduate level, and most especially, anything that feels too much like remedial assistance. So we balance and temper what we do as well as how we do it. Sure, we send students to the Writing Center in epic numbers, but we do it in a way that focuses on research skills—and particularly, use of APA style—a skill that students seem to have an easier time admitting they don’t have. Students go to tutors for help learning how to cite references, but they stick around when they discover how much better their assignments are when they spend time revising them. Call it sneaking the pill into the peanut butter, but the bottom line is that it works.

As we move into a new year when we anticipate enrolling dozens of students with similar readiness issues, we are thinking about better ways to prepare them—gently, perhaps sneakily, and above all, blamelessly. We are discussing creating a two-course ‘bridging term’ for students who struggle with writing and research during their first term, as well as expanding pilot programs that pair dedicated writing tutors with students in a particular course—making the intervention feel focused on course content and less on general writing or research weaknesses. For graduate students in particular, this method seems to be very successful.

We are also expanding our Resource Center alongside pilot programs, so that when graduate students bristle at being paired with a Writing Center tutor, we can give them options to bolster their skills on their own, using the static and interactive tools that our Resource Center provides. Sometimes this is all a student needs, and sometimes—in the best cases—a few rounds tooling around (and crashing) in the Research Race environment is enough to prompt a student to think seriously about seeking more assistance. From our perspective, this is the ultimate best case scenario, when our graduates can feel empowered to ask for what they need without feeling insulted. Nobody has asked, "Who taught you how to write?" only, "How can we help you do it better?"

Drew Ross is the Dean in the School of Graduate Education.

Did you know...

Drew is a food writer in his spare time? The biggest shock here is that Drew has spare time!