“If you can’t write, how did you get into graduate school?”

This comment, posted on my university’s Facebook page, encapsulates some people’s response to graduate writing support. Graduate students, the thinking goes, should have learned to write as undergraduates, and if they didn’t, then they need to “tough it out.” Graduate learning communities might sound even more foreign to many. Learning communities—an educational initiative that has students travel together through core (often linked) courses as a cohort—have been adopted by many schools to improve retention rates among undergraduates. Such initiatives defy our most sacred notions of graduate education. Graduate students should be self-starters. If they can’t “hack it,” then they should make way for those who can.

Research in TESOL/applied linguistics, however, has challenged these assumptions. As many ESL specialists know, graduate programs in English-speaking countries have enrolled an increasing number of nonnative English speakers. Not only must these students learn to write dense research reports in their second language, but they might also need to continue publishing in English after graduation if they want their work to receive international recognition (Tardy, 2004; Wood, 2001). For this reason, numerous universities offer graduate-level language support for nonnative English speakers, often through English for academic purposes (EAP) classes.

Recent research on graduate literacy practices has further argued that even native English speakers are struggling in graduate school. U.S. universities in particular have noticed rising graduate student attrition rates. As Golde (2005) indicated, 40 percent of students who begin doctoral programs fail to complete them. In part, this trend is due to changes in doctoral education worldwide. Graduate students are under increased pressure to publish before graduating, to secure research funding, and to dive into academic life very early (Aitchison, Kamler, & Lee, 2010; Kamler & Thomson, 2006). Compounding the problem is the isolation many students report feeling in graduate programs (Golde, 2005). In short, the “sink or swim” mentality in many graduate programs is part of the problem.

Whereas larger universities may have the luxury of creating separate support mechanisms for nonnative-English-speaking (NNES) and native-English-speaking (NES) students, smaller universities such as New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech, or NMT) must be creative in developing programs that simultaneously meet the distinct needs of these two populations. One way we have addressed these needs at NMT is by piloting graduate learning communities via linked science and technical communication courses, an initiative funded by a Title V: Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans development grant. The goal of our graduate learning communities is to encourage collaboration among all graduate students—nonnative English speakers and native English speakers—and to model ways in which graduate students can provide each other with both technical and linguistic support to supplement feedback received from their advisors. The enhanced graduate community also provides struggling students at risk of dropping out with a more robust support network.

In this article, I describe our institutional setting at NMT and our efforts to create graduate learning communities. Because this program is still being piloted, I provide some of our initial results in this article. My goal in this article is to present universities with similar graduate student concerns with one model for building community among NNES and NES graduate students.

INSTITUTIONAL SETTING

New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is a small but reputable public science and engineering research university. NMT has 28 graduate programs (at both the master’s and doctoral level) and is known for research in astro- and atmospheric physics, earth and environmental sciences, and petroleum and natural gas engineering, among other fields. NMT also operates the Magdalena Ridge Observatory and the Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, and hosts the administrative headquarters for the Very Large Array, the radio telescopes featured in the Jodie Foster film, Contact.

NMT enjoys a small, intimate student body—just 1,262 undergraduates and 390 graduate students in fall 2010. International students, the vast majority of whom are nonnative English speakers, account for 30 percent of the entire graduate student body; 11 percent of the graduate student body identify themselves as ethnically Hispanic. Historically, NMT has had few resources for ESL students. Given this situation, faculty and administrators alike recognize an overwhelming need for ESL support. Further, like other U.S. universities, NMT has witnessed rising attrition rates in its graduate programs, particularly among minority students. For example, the 3-year completion rate for master’s degree programs at NMT dropped from 67.8 percent (for students in the 2004-2007 cohort) to 58.6 percent (for students in the 2005-2008 cohort). Three-year completion rates for Hispanic students in the same time frames dropped from 57.1 percent to 41.9 percent. As a result, our program goals have involved not only creating language support for ESL graduate students but also fostering a nurturing, collaborative environment to support all graduate students.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Our graduate learning communities program is a cross-departmental initiative organized by our recently restructured Center for Graduate Studies, which is also responsible for overseeing activities funded by our Title V grant. Though the grant has been tremendously useful in creating the necessary infrastructure for this program—before this grant, we had no one on campus trained to teach ESL—our learning communities initiative has, perhaps, benefitted more from an initial group of energetic faculty across campus contributing to the effort. Faculty from the Communication, Liberal Arts, Social Sciences (CLASS) Department, which houses the school’s technical communication program, assumed a large role in the project. We also benefitted from a few highly motivated professors in the Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering departments who recognized the need for graduate-level communication resources on campus. As we develop our program, we will need to devote more energy to convincing faculty from other departments that these initiatives are worth their students’ time. However, we anticipate that the positive experiences of those professors involving themselves in this project’s early stages will go a long way in helping make these arguments.

As part of our graduate learning communities initiative, we are creating course links between science and engineering courses and graduate technical communication courses (“Communication in the Sciences” and “Communication in Engineering”). In fall 2010, we piloted two such links, one with a graduate quantum mechanics course in the physics department, and one with a required graduate seminar in mechanical engineering. Students enrolled in the science and engineering courses were strongly encouraged by their advisors to take the communication courses taught by faculty in our CLASS Department. Because of logistical issues with scheduling, we did not require every student enrolled in the science and engineering classes to enroll in the communication courses, though all the communication students were enrolled in the linked science or engineering courses. Seven of 12 students enrolled in the physics course enrolled in Communication in the Sciences; 12 of 21 mechanical engineering students enrolled in Communication in Engineering. (In the future, once we have worked with departments to clear up room in students’ schedules for the communication courses, we might consider requiring dual enrollment.) Over the next 4 years, we will create eight more linked courses with science and engineering courses in various departments across campus.

Though the communication courses carried their own content, they shared several writing assignments with the science and engineering courses. Thus, in the physics/communication link, all students wrote a conference abstract proposing a course research project on a quantum-mechanics-related topic. Further, all students wrote a popular science article on this topic and participated in a mock double-blind peer review exercise, imitating the review process for academic journals. Students enrolled in Communication in the Sciences also worked collaboratively on proposals (in response to actual calls for proposals in their field), wrote literature reviews on their course research projects, and gave conference-style presentations to an audience of faculty and students in their department.

Though enrollment was open to both NES and NNES graduate students, the engineering communication class did not have any NNES graduate students this time around, though we expect this situation to change in future courses when working with engineering departments with larger NNES populations. However, the science communication course enrolled three nonnative English speakers (two of whom were international students) and four native English speakers. Further, three students were first-year PhD students and four were first-year MS students. The Communication in the Sciences course blended instruction intended for NES and NNES students. Two textbooks were used: Paradis and Zimmerman’s The MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication (intended more for native English speakers) and Swales and Feak’s English in Today’s Research World (intended more for nonnative English speakers). Both native- and nonnative-English-speaking students completed readings from each book. We did not shy away from discussing issues relevant to nonnative English speakers in the class. In fact, the diverse nature of the class allowed for discussions comparing the experiences of native and nonnative English speakers. Further, because of the course’s collaborative nature, many NNES students’ linguistic concerns were addressed on a more individual basis by students or by the instructor as students collaborated on course projects.

I should note that the linked courses are not the “learning communities,” per se. Rather, they are an opportunity to build community and model collaborative practices that will aid students throughout their graduate careers. Students not only were shown how to peer review in the class, but were provided with tips on creating peer writing/review groups outside class. Our goal is for students to continue collaborating with each other after the linked courses have ended, which is ultimately a more sustainable model of language support.

These linked courses accompany a bevy of other graduate student initiatives, including an English for academic purposes (EAP) class specifically for NNES graduate students, graduate hours at the NMT Writing and Oral Presentation Center (with an ESL-trained writing tutor), graduate writing groups (in collaboration with NMT’s Graduate Student Association), and a Thesis/Dissertation Boot Camp for end-stage graduate students. Ideally, these other initiatives dovetail with the goals of the linked courses and provide ways to extend the benefits of the graduate learning communities to those not enrolled in the linked courses.

INITIAL RESULTS

Though it is important to offer students the option of an EAP course for nonnative English speakers, the linked course model for both native English speakers and nonnative English speakers has several distinct benefits for ESL graduate students.

Unlike many EAP classes, which may be composed of students from disparate fields, the linked courses consist of students from the same field. The disciplinary homogeneity provides more opportunities for instructors to assign supplemental readings from the students’ discipline, allowing for extended in-class analyses of discipline-specific language practices. For example, in the physics/communication link, students read a short Science research report on a replication of a classic quantum mechanics experiment and compared it with a video of the study’s primary investigator explaining the experiment’s design and significance for a nonspecialist audience. They also read a chapter on quantum mechanics from Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, a popular science book shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Though such activities are possible in classes with mixed majors, they are slightly more effective when they correspond to concepts from a common course students are taking.

Furthermore, the similarity in students’ disciplines allows for more focused collaborative work on “real world” writing tasks, and provides ESL graduate students with opportunities both to learn from other students and to mentor native English speakers. One group, consisting of two PhD students (both nonnative English speakers) and two MS students (both native English speakers), worked collaboratively on a proposal requesting telescope time on the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA). One NNES student in the group took the lead on the project, as she had the most developed individual research agenda and would need to write such a proposal in the near future. The two MS students, both novice astrophysics students, received their first exposure to the logistics of astronomical research. One of the MS students, in particular, reciprocated with very useful advice on sentence construction and word choice. In short, the students learned to trust and seek out each other’s expertise—even on language-related matters. This same NNES student took other opportunities to share her expertise, at one point providing fellow students with a short LaTex tutorial, a document preparation program used by many physics journals. These experiences bolstered her own confidence in her professional skills and helped create a collaborative class environment.

Granted, not all of the ESL students’ language needs could be met in the class itself, though many of these needs could be met individually in student-teacher conferences and through the Writing and Oral Presentation Center. (Both communication professors serve administrative roles in the Center.) One NNES student had to give two presentations to her physics colleagues over the course of the semester―one as an assignment for the communication course and one at her advisor’s request. She received input on her presentation style, language use, and PowerPoint design from both an oral presentation consultant and from her instructor, in addition to the input she received from both NES and NNES classmates during her dry-run in class.

Admittedly, we are still in the initial stages of our graduate learning communities program. Though students in the linked-course learning communities worked well with each other in the fall semester, it remains to be seen whether they continue helping each other in ensuing semesters and whether the students in the pilot learning communities continue to enroll as students. We plan to survey learning community students in spring and fall 2011 to determine the extent to which they are continuing to collaborate. (I will report on our program assessment in future articles.) Also, the physics professor, who will have students from the physics learning community again in spring 2011, plans to collaborate with the NMT Writing Center on writing assignments building on the goals of the linked courses. Further, we acknowledge that our work publicizing this program’s benefits for students has just begun. Though the general response among faculty and department chairs has been positive, many might still be reluctant to shuffle program requirements to accommodate the linked courses. We anticipate continuing these discussions on campus well after our program is established.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The graduate learning communities and other graduate student initiatives at New Mexico Tech are funded by a Title V: Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans development grant from the U.S. Department of Education. I would also like to thank my coresearchers/coteachers at New Mexico Tech: Julie Ford (CLASS Department), Warren Ostergren (Mechanical Engineering), Sharon Sessions (Physics), and Michaelann Tartis (Chemical Engineering).

REFERENCES

Aitchison, C., Kamler, B., & Lee, A. (2010). Publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond. New York, NY: Routledge.

Golde, C. M. (2005). The role of the department and discipline in doctoral student attrition: Lessons from four departments. The Journal of Higher Education, 76(6), 669-700.

Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2006). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. London, UK: Routledge.

Tardy, C. M. (2004). The role of English in scientific communication: Lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3, 247-269.

Wood, A. (2001). International scientific research: The language of research scientists around the world. In J. Flowerdew & M. Peacock (Eds.), Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (pp. 71-83). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Steve Simpson, ssimpson@nmt.edu,is assistant professor of communication and Writing Center coordinator at New Mexico Tech. He teaches technical communication for undergraduate and graduate students and English for academic purposes, and he works with the Center for Graduate Studies developing graduate student programs and initiatives. He also serves on the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee on Second Language Writing.