Religious Studies News

Students’ varied vocational goals and levels of scholastic preparation require that I give them significant individual attention. Whether a student wants to work for a nonprofit advocacy organization, be certified to teach religion courses at the local community college, or land at a Research I university, I must help them identify the skills required and create opportunities to develop them. This has forced me to abandon narrow conceptions of academic and professional success and to think more expansively about what a graduate degree means and what work in a graduate program should look like. Rather than a paper, why not let students craft a syllabus that addresses the questions pursued during the semester, along with a short essay that explains their design choices? Rather than a research paper, why not let students draft a legislative memo addressing a public policy question that relies on ideas from the course? Rather than crafting assignments on my own, why not negotiate assignments that will be useful to each student? And why think of a Master’s-level course as a fully preplanned experience, rather than a work in progress? I have learned that I need to check in to determine whether a class is working: Is the reading load excessive? Is it too hard? Does our time together add value to the reading? Are the assignments helpful for students’ particular learning and professional goals? I ask students about their reading and writing habits, how well they are negotiating course material, and how class sessions are enhancing (or inhibiting) their confidence. I engage them as conversation partners — in an ongoing fashion, formally and informally — to assess how well courses, assignments, and readings function.

The advice to remember that my students are not “little doctoral students” was initially helpful because it dislodged my unspoken assumption that my students were me (and my unspoken fantasy that they wanted to be me). As I have worked with Master’s students in a stand-alone MA program, this advice has helped me rethink the notion that graduate students are self-directed — or, more precisely, to rethink the specific ways and areas in which they should be self-directed. I always assumed that graduate students would require less time and attention, but I have discovered that they require more because it is more difficult to generalize what they need. And in a stand-alone MA program, where professional goals and academic preparation vary more widely, such generalization is even more difficult. This means that the best advice I can offer for teaching in this context is to be mindful of its unique features and to be willing to engage students as individuals. Providing this kind of attention is never an easy task and can occasionally be an unwelcome one. As writing deadlines loom or service commitments impinge, I sometimes find myself resenting the distance between the graduate student of my fantasies and the graduate student in front of me. At the same time, working with Master’s students in such a focused, individualized fashion has made me much more reflective — more self-aware, more conscious, and more intentional — regarding my choices about my identity as a scholar and teacher.

When I was initially mulling over this essay, the metaphor of “gate-keeping” kept popping up as a way to explain the stand-alone MA program’s function. But reflecting on what my colleagues and I strive to do, I settled instead on the image of locks in a canal. Operating a lock is delicate business; it requires acute sensitivity to each ship’s size, shape, and cargo, to where it is and where it needs to be, to how quickly it can be moved, and to whether it needs to cross at all. Thus, like different ships with different cargoes and destinations, students in stand-alone MA programs are specific individuals in a fairly unique context that require careful, reflective attention.