"What the students think is important and matters," said Harvard University professor Richard Light in his keynote lecture Jan. 18 at a Center for Learning and Teaching symposium.

In his talk, "Strengthening Communication Between Graduate Students/Postdocs and Faculty at Cornell," given to about 100 people in Kennedy Hall's David Call Auditorium, Light explained how he studies teaching and advising from a simple business approach by "asking the customer." In early Harvard Assessment Seminars, first targeted at undergraduates but later expanded to include graduate students, the customers, he said, are students who engage in one-on-one interviews.

Light, who is Harvard's Walter H. Gale Professor of Education, asked faculty and administrators in the Cornell audience what their attitudes were toward their graduate students.

"Is your attitude ... that grad students are grown ups ... and they will have to sink or swim on their own?" asked Light. "Or, do we provide them with the programs and interventions to help them along?"

Light explained that Harvard has adopted the philosophy of "helping every student succeed." After two months into their first semester, for example, new graduate students are asked in the assessment seminars to record how they spend their time over a two-week period. The students then share their time sheets with their faculty advisers. They are also asked to grade and comment on an exam (or essay) written by a former first-year graduate student. Afterward, the students read the actual exam grade and comments and discuss their thoughts with an adviser.

These examples, Light pointed out, not only enhance students' communication with their advisers early in their graduate-student careers, but also give them an opportunity to discuss something more "personal" with their advisers while learning to avoid common mistakes that new graduate students have made in the past.

A follow-up workshop on "Strengthening Communication" is slated for Feb. 8 at 4:45 p.m. in 213 Kennedy Hall.

Other upcoming Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) workshops:

For Faculty:

For Graduate Students:

All workshops will be from 4:45-6:15 p.m. in Kennedy 213.

For more information on upcoming CLT events, see http://www.clt.cornell.edu.

Graduate student Sandra Holley is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.