Spring 2000 1 Message from the Dean
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GraGradduatuatee News and information for UCLA graduate students u a r t e r l y volume 9 number 3 QQ Spring 2 0 0 0 In this issue 3 ■ Placement Data Show UCLA Doctorates Highly Employable 5 ■ Turning PhDs Into Professional Employment 8 ■ Graduate Student Profiles 12 ■ Chancellor Honors Distinguished Scholars 14 ■ Funding Your Research Abroad 16 ■ Graduate Student Accomplishments Papers/publications/ awards 22 ■ In Memoriam Laura L. Kinsey Victoria A. Fromkin University of California, Los Angeles Graduate Quarterly, Spring 2000 1 message from the dean Dear Graduate Student, Graduate Division For the past 50 years or more, American universities have enjoyed an international reputation for excellence in graduate education. This success Dean’s Office may have led to some complacency and the assumption that our practices Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and styles of doctoral education are optimal and require little or no revision. Vice Chancellor Graduate Studies During the past decade, however, the graduate education community has Dean, Graduate Division begun to express concern about a number of important issues in doctoral education. These include: lengthening time to degree, attrition rates, the Jim Turner narrowness of curricula, a failure to accommodate training to the career Assistant Vice Chancellor options available to graduates, the level and type of financial support Phillip Channing Robin Fisher, Associate Dean provided, and other issues. One reflection of these concerns is a 1990 report by the Association of Graduate Schools (AGS) entitled Institutional Policies to Improve Doctoral Shirley Hune, Associate Dean Education. This report contained a number of specific recommendations and was motivated, in part, Graduate Programs by the projection of a significant shortage of PhDs, particularly in science and engineering. Kathleen Komar, Associate Dean A few years after the AGS report, a variety of new reports began to appear suggesting that there was overproduction of PhDs in many disciplines. These reports attracted significant attention by the Glen Winans, Assistant Dean media, which often provided illustrative stories of physicists driving taxi cabs and philosophers Administration flipping hamburgers. General questions regarding optimal PhD production in varying disciplines, and the extent to which job market conditions should be a major factor in enrollment planning, have Academic Support and not yet been fully addressed or resolved. Information Services Perhaps the only consensus emerging from the ensuing debate is that most projections regarding Jim Turner/Lynn Roych the academic job market over the past 30+ years have not proven accurate, that the available data on Interim Directors doctoral placement is inadequate, and that academic institutions should develop more systematic procedures for tracking the employment aspirations and outcomes of their doctoral degree recipients. Information Technology In 1994, the UCLA Graduate Division began efforts to establish a comprehensive database on Carol King, Director the initial employment status of all our doctoral recipients (i.e., one year after degree completion). This issue of the Graduate Quarterly is a preliminary effort to begin informing current graduate students Graduate Admissions / about the employment experiences and options of their colleagues who have recently completed their Student and Academic Affairs degree. I am pleased to note that UCLA doctoral alumni seem to be doing very well in terms of placement in both academic and non-academic employment sectors. It is also clear from the available Daniel J. Bennett, Director data that there is an expanding nonacademic job market which is attracting an increasing number of students in a variety of disciplines. Indeed, many of our doctoral recipients are actively pursuing rather Graduate Student Support than simply “settling” for positions in a variety of non-academic settings—not just in the traditional Lynn Roych, Director areas of government and industry, but across a broad range of appealing and rewarding careers. I welcome any suggestions from students as to how our placement data could be further analyzed Graduate Division Website and distributed in ways that would be informative and helpful. http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu Sincerely, GraduateGraduate QuarterlyQuarterly Patricia Jordan, Editor Claudia Mitchell-Kernan Jacqueline Tasch, Writer Vice Chancellor Graduate Studies Features and Profiles Dean, Graduate Division quote for thought The Graduate Quarterly is published Fall, Winter, and Spring Quarters by “Surely it is a part of academic duty—maybe even the central part—to prepare students the UCLA Graduate Division. We realistically for productive and rewarding lives. If we cannot do that realistically for our own welcome suggestions and comments, doctoral students, we have failed a basic obligation. Yet the scientific community and the which may be printed selectively in universities have both refused to face up to this problem. Full and honest disclosure of the future issues. employment prospects in the field, as best they can be known, is surely one important Please send correspondence to: institutional responsibility. In addition, departments should be required to tell their incom- ing graduate students several important facts about the history of their training programs Graduate Quarterly before the students make their decisions. The first critical item of information is the UCLA Graduate Division percentage of students entering the program during the past decade who have earned their 1252 Murphy Hall degrees. The second is an accounting of the average time taken to obtain the degree. Box 951419 Finally, the department should report, for each member of some substantial cohort of Los Angeles, CA 90095-1419 doctoral degree recipients, his or her employment history.” E-mail: [email protected] Phone: (310) 206-7386 Donald Kennedy (1997). Academic Duty. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, pp. 57-58. © Regents of the University of California 2 Graduate Quarterly, Spring 2000 doctoral placement feature Contents Placement Data Show UCLA Features Placement Data Show Doctorates Highly Employable UCLA Doctorates Highly Employable ............................ 3 Ninety-eight percent obtain employment Data are collected or go on to postdoctoral fellowships from degree Turning PhDs Into Professional recipients’ he issues surrounding doctoral em- ents from Win- Employment ........................... 5 departments ployment have been discussed in gradu- ter 1994 through T following the Graduate Student Profiles ate schools since the boom of the 1960’s Spring 1998. In waned. Are we producing employable doc- that time period award of the Durell Bowman ....................... 8 torates? Will that employment be appro- UCLA awarded degrees, which Theresa Delgadillo .................. 9 priate for people who have earned doctor- 2,811 doctoral allows time for Cindy Mediavilla.................... 10 ates or are they taking lower level positions? degrees. Place- the former Should universities continue to produce as ment data have students Chancellor Awards many doctorates as they have in the past? been collected to have begun Distinguished Scholars Is the training given to doctoral recipients for 2,494 (89%) their professional Frederick Allain .................... 12 appropriate for the types of employment of those doc- employment. they will find? Michael Bartberger ............... 12 toral recipients. Many national studies have been done Survey results showed that UCLA doc- Anthony Heaney ................... 13 on these issues and reports have been is- toral recipients are employed (76%) or are William Moore ...................... 13 sued. Bowen and Sosa (1989)1, using avail- going on to postdoctoral fellowships (22%) Zoltan Nusser ....................... 14 able data predicted that employment in the after their degrees are completed. Of arts and sciences would boom as then cur- those going into employment, as differen- Papers/publications/awards rent faculty aged and retired. The Com- tiated from postdoctoral fellows, more than Graduate Student mittee on Science, Engineering, and Public 50% are going into higher education insti- 2 Accomplishments Policy (1995) issued a report that critiqued tutions while another 32% are in non-aca- 1998-2000 ............................ 16 doctoral programs for being too narrow and demic settings. Looking at the list of em- not preparing researchers for the needs of ployers and higher education institutions, st In Memoriam the 21 century. UCLA doctorates are being sought by ap- Much of this research has not been able propriate employers. (See sidebar lists on Laura L. Kinsey .................... 22 to tap into databases showing where doc- pages 4, 6, 7, and 8.) Victoria A. Fromkin............... 24 toral students actually are employed and at The first question asked of doctoral what level. While the National Research recipients is if they are employed. For Council collects expected employment data this group, only 1.4% of the total doc- On the Cover on the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), toral recipients were reported as unem- there is some concern that the timing of ployed, while 76% were employed and Graduate student profiles in this this data collection is inopportune. Many issue explore the job-search 22% were in postdoctoral positions, and doctoral recipients do not know at the time experiences and approaches of the remaining 1% were continuing in students with varying career