PAGE TURNER
by Amanda Arroyo and Tony W. Cawthon
In their new book, A Handbook for Supporting Today's Graduate Students, editors David Nguyen and Christina Yao, along with contributing authors, have created a guide for an oft-overlooked segment of the student body. The book addresses a variety of topics relevant to the graduate student experience while purposefully folding in the voices of underrepresented populations and discussing the immense changes affecting the field in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the text clearly identifies the most pressing matters that institutions and individuals need to understand when working with graduate students as advisers, faculty members, or supervisors. Higher education often focuses on the experiences of undergraduate students, supporting their development and growth, while graduate students can remain an afterthought. This text reminds readers of the unique challenges they face and challenges traditional ideas about graduate students as it aims to explain and offer solutions to the systemic issues they face.
Part 1, “Navigating Contexts and Identities,” examines the academic challenges faced by graduate students. The first chapter scans historical data and patterns and examines trends in graduate education, focusing on the idea that we must see graduate students through a lens of intersectionality and holistic development rather than from a monolithic perspective of needs and experiences. Utilizing years of population data, the author of this chapter dispels the myth of postgraduate education as an option only for privileged white men from the upper crust of society. In addition, the analysis of more than 10 years of data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics studies illustrates the longstanding trend of students with varying backgrounds enrolling in graduate education.
Chapter 2 establishes online graduate education as a new reality for most higher education institutions and outlines existing challenges in the context of the pandemic, including the lack of support that students experience when participating in an online program and the pedagogical challenges instructors face when pivoting away from face-to-face interactions with students. Graduate students working online face issues such as loneliness and a lack of camaraderie, and the chapter offers solutions that faculty and administrators can implement to address these issues. Chapter 3 highlights the importance of mentorship opportunities for both domestic and international graduate students of color. The authors’ insightful examination of power and inter- and intra-communication is essential in understanding the mentor/mentee relationship, which has a significant impact on graduate students' self-perception and on their overall success.
The next three chapters spotlight the challenges faced by specific segments of the student population. The authors not only provide perspective but also underscore the responsibility that institutions have in supporting and recruiting first-generation graduate students and Indigenous graduate students by recognizing different life experiences and cultures as assets that students bring to the graduate experience and the work they perform. In addition to all the academic challenges presented in earlier chapters, graduate students must also confront the hidden curriculum of graduate education: navigating unspoken, and often powerful, norms, expectations, and values within institutional and cultural contexts.
Part 2, “Addressing Academic and Professional Skill Development,” concentrates on developing graduate students as professionals. Chapter 7 emphasizes that efforts should be on developing these students as future professionals rather than focusing on their experience on campus, with particular attention paid to how student teachers and graduate students might be trained for multiple career paths, as some will become faculty, but many others will become practitioners. Chapter 8 informs readers about the inclusion and participation of graduate students in scholarly activities, offering suggestions specifically on how institutions can support, maintain, and enhance writing programs necessary for their success. The authors maintain that encouraging students to engage in research and scholarship results in professionals with stronger identities both as practitioners and scholars.
Chapter 9 underscores the importance of graduate students’ participation in professional societies as critical avenues for identifying mentors and establishing professional networks, while Chapter 10 emphasizes the importance of engaging them in international educational opportunities. Participation in these programs helps graduate students expand their worldview and exposes them to new solutions for global problems.
The final section, “Supporting Graduate Students Beyond the Classroom,” examines issues related to the personal development of graduate students. Chapter 11 illuminates mental health issues and the effects of the high-stress environment of post-graduate programs. Chapter 12 accentuates how faculty, staff, and other campus partners impact the career development of graduate students, while Chapter 13 explores a range of topics, from financial literacy to emergency resources and budgeting. The authors are quick to remind readers that, for many graduate students, this is the beginning of their financial education. Chapter 14 emphasizes the importance and benefits of engaging graduate students in student organizations and programming, which can serve as a starting point for creating a supportive environment of peers, and the final chapter offers strategies for creating work/life balance.
Nguyen, Yao, and their collaborators bring a refreshing intersectional perspective to working with graduate students and present important strategies that should become standard practice for graduate student advisors, supervisors, and mentors. One strength of this book is its flexibility. Readers can pick and choose chapters addressing issues pertinent to their own campus and do not have to read the entire book to find it helpful, though they should at least read the first chapter, as it provides an excellent overview of changing demographics and contexts that impact graduate education, both historically and currently, thus setting the tone for the remainder of the book.
Overall, this is one of the most useful and comprehensive texts for individuals working, serving, and housing graduate students. While an initial glance might make it seem like this text was designed primarily for faculty working with graduate students, in reality, it provides meaningful recommendations for numerous stakeholders, offering extensive suggestions and recommendations for institutions, administrators, faculty, staff, and even graduate students themselves. The strategies offered could easily be incorporated into a wide range of contexts, from the residential curriculum model to professional development activities and staff training. Given that residential life programs offer graduate student housing or employment, housing staff could benefit from assessing how successful they are in employing strategies for these students; in fact, housing professionals are an ideal group to provide campus leadership in designing programs for them and collaborating with faculty, staff, and students to implement programs and activities that effectively socialize graduate students to their professions.
Amanda Arroyo is a graduate assistant in cooperative education at Clemson University in South Carolina. Tony W. Cawthon, Ph.D., is an Alumni Distinguished Professor at Clemson. "Page Turner" is a recurring column that pairs Cawthon with a graduate student or professional colleague as they review books and scholarship of interest to campus housing and student affairs.
