Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

September 5, 2018

Simon Goodacre | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Hear the first episode of the Highlights Podcast with Dean Chasalow's welcome back for students. He speaks about ongoing initiatives at GSAS, upcoming events and workshops, and the importance of keeping an open mind during graduate study.

Transcript

Simon:                   

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Highlights Podcast! I am Simon Goodacre, the Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This is a new initiative that we're trying this year to provide spotlights on staff, faculty, and students. And who more fitting for our first guest than the Dean of the graduate school, Eric Chasalow? Eric, thanks for making the time.

Eric:                         

Thanks so much, Simon.

Simon:                   

I wanted to start by, of course, letting our listeners know that the music they just heard, the introductory music, was actually composed by you. I've heard some interesting descriptions of it from colleagues. Enigmatic, mysterious, but I think my favorite was, "It sounds like the soundtrack to a Western movie that also has zombies."

Eric:                         

Oh, I love it!

Simon:                   

I thought that was pretty good.

Eric:                         

That's great, I'll take it.

Simon:                   

But I did want to ask what the inspiration was for that piece.

Eric:                         

Well, I wanted something with a little bit of a pulse to it, so it would feel a little bit like a news program. And so I thought that ostinato, that repeated pattern in the guitar that comes out of the sort of electronic sounds, had just the right kind of quality I was looking for.

Simon:                   

I see. And if students are interested in hearing more, is it ericchasalow.com?

Eric:                         

There is ericchasalow.com, but I would direct them to my SoundCloud page at this point.

Simon:                   

You provided your welcome to incoming students on August 24th at orientation this year. And you talked a little bit about keeping an open mind throughout your graduate studies, but I wanted to give you a chance to share that with the broader audience.

Eric:                         

Sure, sure. Well, one of the messages I really had in mind when I spoke was thinking about your graduate school career in a lot of different ways. So, first of all, we all know we come to work in a discipline and we're really focused on the thing that we really want to study and get credentialed in and dive into very deeply. But the message I really wanted to give was that there are all kinds of serendipitous experiences we have and to pay attention to those and even to seek those out.

So everything we do from writing grant proposals to informal things, going to dinner with colleagues, giving talks at conferences, maybe that job that you got on the side to make a little extra money. All of these things can be really important in helping us make our way out of the academy and into careers of various kinds. But the world is very complex and there are lots of opportunities for people with graduate degrees. That's really the message.

Simon:                   

I believe that this coming year will be your fifth as Dean. Do you have a priorities for the school leading into the fall semester and throughout the year?

Eric:                         

Absolutely. So first of all, we've, for a couple of years, been in a thought process about strategic goals for the university. Lots and lots of different community members have produced self-reflection documents that went to President Liebowitz and he's been having a dialogue with literally hundreds of community members and I think rather soon he's going to be launching a document that will talk about what his strategic priorities are for the university.

Eric:                         

So I will just say as a little sneak peek that one of the central themes in the graduate school strategic vision is certainly going to be opportunities for working across disciplines for real interdisciplinarity that's organic, that makes sense, that helps prepare people for lots of different career outcomes.

Simon:                   

Did you also want to discuss our access to mental health services? I understand that's been a bit of a priority for the graduate school over the summer and moving into the year.

Eric:                         

Right. Well, one of the things that I certainly think about quite a lot is the fact that traditionally research universities have focused, in terms of student services, very much on the undergraduate population and they've tended historically to leave graduate students and figure, "Well, grad students are adults. They can deal with all the things they've got to deal with. With housing, with transportation, with healthcare issues and all of those things," and we know that's not the case. That leaving that up to chance is not okay. That you've got people coming from across the world, actually, to graduate school from outside of the region. They're not familiar with this area. Those transitions are hard for people. And our students, our graduate students, need robust support services. So we've been working hard to try to really beef those up, think about them, talk to students about what they feel they need and we are going to be having many more conversations this year. And the reason earlier I mentioned mental health service to you is because that's one area we've heard from students. We were already thinking about this as a team, but we've heard in no uncertain terms from our graduate students that this is a priority for them as well and we're looking at how can we lower the barriers to access? So that grad students can reach out when they're in a moment of crisis or they have a friend or a colleague who seems to perhaps need help. How can we make those connections easy, transparent and lower the obstacles?

Simon:                   

In terms of upcoming events and maybe some resources that we wanted to mention during this podcast. We've got quite a few different things. We've got some updates from our center of career and professional development. We've got some updates on academic affairs and also just a couple of updates on staying connected with GSAS now that the semester is underway. Did you want to mention some of those?

Eric:                         

Sure. So many things happening and I just want to make a commercial for the Highlights email, and I know people don't like getting emails and a lot of people these days don't even read them. But there are all kinds of opportunities there that can help you professionally and it's supposed to be two-way. So as we talk about communication, if you see something in Highlights and it and it makes you think, "Ah, well I do a kind of work they really should be featuring here," or, "I'm working on a project that I want to let other people know about," the grad school can help you do that. You just have to email our host here, Simon Goodacre, in the graduate school or any of us, and we will do our best to tell that story.

But there are some specific things I'll just touch on briefly. We've just joined, as a new institutional member of the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, and that center has support mechanisms including graduate student support modules. And Alyssa Canelli, our assistant Dean for academic affairs will be doing the next podcast. She'll talk about that in detail. We're also going to be launching a digital pedagogy certificate in the spring funded by the provost teaching innovation grants and there'll be an application process for that that's going to get going mid-October, so look for that.

We have language workshops. Many of you may know this, but if you don't, this is incredibly useful because so many degrees have a language requirement. This fall we'll offer again French, Hebrew, and German. You can find more information on that in the student section of the GSAS website.

And then I want to give a big shout out for the Mellon funded dissertation prospectus seminar running again this fall. It's an interdisciplinary seminar. It's a not a heavy lift, but it gives you a place you can go and meet students from other programs and see how they're dealing with the issue of creating a prospectus.

Simon:                   

And then we do have some updates from the Center for Career and Professional Development as well.

Eric:                         

Well, I think the message here, Simon, is really that everyone, if you haven't done it yet, get on to Handshake and activate your account because this is the portal where you are going to get guidance through your experience. And don't wait until you're about to write a dissertation or you're finishing a dissertation and say, "Oh, I’ve got to think about what's going to happen next now." Think about this through your entire career here, your entire graduate experience. And one way to help you organize that is to get onto this portal, to Handshake.

Some of the things that you'll find listed there and that are going to be happening coming up are Career Conversations. There's a series of these conversations with Brandeis alumni. So obviously that's an opportunity to hear about what people who've been in your shoes, what their pathway has been, where they've ended up. Also a chance to network. And then there are career labs talking about coaching for how to take advantage of the resources that we have and other resources that are out there to help you figure out where you're headed. And I think I'll let people log on or contact our career counselors here in GSAS who make appointments and will meet with you for a counseling session. I encourage everyone to do that as well.

Simon:                   

And the career labs that Eric mentioned, we have two coming up in September but they will be continuing throughout the semester, so, to keep your eye on those, just keep reading our Highlights emails. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well. It's facebook.com/brandeisgsas and our Twitter handle is also @BrandeisGSAS and we'll keep you up to date with all of that information.

Next episode we're going to have Alyssa Canelli, as Eric mentioned, speaking about the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, and she will talk about the resources there for graduate students. So definitely keep your eyes open for that podcast.

Before we sign off, and thank you again Eric for making the time for this, I would like to just say that we are currently hiring for a Graduate Communications Assistant who will be working with me to help put together some of the content that appears in Highlights, including perhaps some of these podcasts. If you have any questions about it, you can email me at sgoodacre. that's S-G-O-O-D-A-C-R-E, @brandeis.edu and of course I would welcome any feedback or thoughts or suggestions for future podcast episodes as well. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.