"Graduate Studies in Science Expand Beyond the Ph.D."
(page 3)
The key, says Jesse Ausubel of the Sloan Foundation, is to
broaden the faculty's knowledge of nonacademic workplaces. Law
professors have a clear idea of what goes on in a law firm,
and journalism professors know what a newsroom looks like. In
contrast, he says, many scientists have little understanding
of industrial workplaces.
Getting professors to visit businesses, however, is way down
on the list of priorities for many of these programs.
Administrators said they would be happy just to get them to
teach these new master's students. Most of these programs have
shed the traditional master's thesis and graduate committees,
comparing the new degree to the M.B.A. But administrators
acknowledge that getting scientists to buy in to a type of
graduate education they were never a part of is a major
challenge.
Mr. Smith of Georgia Tech says earning that coveted "faculty
buy-in" has been the hardest part of getting the professional
master's degrees off the ground. Faculty members, he says, are
reluctant to spend one-on-one time with a professional
master's student.
At Michigan State, Charles R. MacCluer, a mathematics
professor, suggests that including professors' pet courses as
part of the curriculum gets their attention -- and brings more
students to the courses that might otherwise not have enough
to be held. But junior professors have reasonable concerns
about participating in such efforts when they seem to fall
outside the bounds of what they'll be judged on at tenure
review time.
"My solution," says Mr. MacCluer, "would be to not let a
nontenured person be involved in this type of program. It's
death."
At the University of Arizona, the curriculum resembles other
professional master's degree programs. After starting with the
same core curriculum as Ph.D. students, the Arizona program
adds an internship, laboratory research, and a colloquium
series that has brought in speakers from science-related
careers, including a patent lawyer and a marketing manager
from a pharmaceutical company. "The most interesting thing is
that it's graduate school without being a Ph.D.," says Feliza
Sibayan, a student in Arizona's applied bioscience program.
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