Today is the day to be in grad school. Today is the day to be a part of a remarkable and wondrous journey.
Across Canada, and across Western, there is a growing recognition of the important contribution to society that will come from a more highly educated population. An amazing effort is underway to substantially increase the number of graduate students.
This is not easy, and it cannot happen just by adding more students.
So, in addition to more numbers, there is an effort to ensure grad school today embodies something more vibrant and exciting than in the past. No longer just dull research.
Changes in the delivery of graduate education may be taking place in many programs across campus, but I can only speak about those to which I am closest – Medical Biophysics.
Some key benefits for students today include the ability to select many more courses as well as better-tailored courses for students of different backgrounds.
To me, grad school is challenging yet nurturing. Higher education comes best only with the right stimuli and within an optimal environment.
In my own environment, the evolution of graduate education is quite remarkable. It is a change that may be mirrored in other programs across campus.
Daniel Goldman, chair of the Medical Biophysics Graduate Program, has emphasized the need for unique new courses that specifically target different career streams within our department.
Medical Biophysics is a very broad program and includes students who will go on to work in highly varied careers. But the program must serve those students who will develop or refine technology (e.g. MRI machines) in the first place, as well as those who will solve the problems identified by this technology.
As well, although graduate students are required to take certain mandatory courses, those with a biological sciences background will have the freedom to select different complementary courses than students from a physical sciences background. To a casual observer the differences may not seem great, but to become the best in our fields, the individual needs of both fields must be served.
The department will also be expanding faculty-student career counselling, something which will serve as a link between the graduate school and the ultimate workforce. The program is striving to find ways to tailor itself to the needs of students, caring for their individual needs and helping them to locate a suitable niche.
In my experience and even with his busy schedule, Goldman is patiently helping every one of us to overcome whatever difficulties arise during graduate school.
Time flies by in the blink of an eye. It is changes like the above that make the whole graduate experience so much more rewarding. I must say that I am a bit lingering at heart now that I am near the end of my graduate experience at Western.
It is willingness to grow and adapt to the expanding role of graduate education on the Western campus – as I believe is taking place in Medical Biophysics – that will contribute to Canadian and international society.
The writer is a graduate student in Medical Biophysics.