Easing the Way for Graduate Students: A Guide to Successful Departmental Activities in Support of Graduate Students, Graduate Division, University of California at Berkeley.
This comprehensive notebook was compiled for departmental chairs, graduate advisers, graduate assistants, and graduate students at UC Berkeley. It is intended to be a resource for all doctoral programs and a means for exchanging ideas for activities that help graduate students successfully complete their degree programs.
How do departments attract the best students? What mechanisms do they use to inform students about requirements and offering? What factors make students decide to come to Berkeley? This section includes a sampling of departmental recruitment activities.
Beginning a graduate program and becoming assimilated into the academic and social life of a department takes time and effort. This chapter contains a sampling of orientation programs.
This section describes departmental mechanisms for keeping students in the PhD program—assisting them in meeting coursework and research requirements, and encouraging peer support and interaction.
Since this examination is considered a major hurdle by most students and precipitates much stress and anxiety, this section includes departmental strategies to help students prepare for and survive the examination.
Chapter V: Research and Dissertation Writing
The dissertation-writing stage is difficult for students in all fields. Isolation is a common problem for students in the humanities, social sciences, and professional fields, and financial support is the exception rather than the rule. This section contains examples of workshops on dissertation-writing.
Chapter VI: Opportunities to Present Research
Presenting research is an integral part of the academic career. This chapter contains examples of events that provide students with opportunities to practice oral presentation skills.
There are several components of the job search: identifying open positions; writing and presenting a research talk; constructing a curriculum vitae and forming a dossier; and preparing for an on-site job interview. This chapter contains examples of services offered by different departments.
Chapter VIII: The Graduate Student Handbook
This chapter contains examples of Graduate Student Handbooks that reflect a variety of approaches to providing information to students.