Megan Riksen:

Hello and welcome to the work like a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen, and today we are talking about graduate school and how to be successful in graduate school. When students get ready to head off to college, a lot of information and communication is shared with them on how to succeed. But a lot of that tends to be focused on the undergraduate experience. So today we are really excited to talk about how to prepare and succeed at the graduate level. And we think this conversation's gonna be great for undergrads who might be considering a graduate program, but also all of our amazing current graduate students at Grand Valley. So to do that, we are happy to be joined by Dr. Erica Hamilton, who is the Vice Provost of Distributed Learning, and Dean of the Graduate School at Grand Valley. Hello, Dr. Hamilton.

Erica Hamilton:

Hello.

Megan Riksen:

And we also have current graduate student, Molly Landa. Hi Molly.

Molly Landa:

Hi.

Megan Riksen:

Thank you both for being here.

Megan Riksen:

Let's start with you Dr. Hamilton because I'd love to just hear more about what you do in your role and then also just kind of the role of the graduate school at Grand Valley.

Erica Hamilton:

Yeah, it's a great question. So I'm gonna actually start with what is the graduate school at Grand Valley because that's the most important. I had the opportunity and privilege of serving in the graduate school. The graduate school exists to serve all graduate students across all academic programs and I know we have a question later, but Grand Valley currently has 44 graduate programs and we are going to be adding some more as we move forward. Just really exciting! And we have them in almost every college. So my job is to support all graduate students, all graduate faculty, our deans our division of academic affairs, and really the university to support graduate education. So whether that's curriculum, whether that's policy, whether that's supporting students as they're finalizing their thesis, maybe a dissertation. The intention really is that graduate students from start to finish, have an exceptional experience at GVSU. That's because the graduate school is partnering with every academic college and every academic program. And then my role is to support all of that. So I oversee all of the graduate education policies, I support our graduate program directors, I have the opportunity to serve alongside in our shared governance model with our graduate council. I partner with deans and then I also support the graduate student association as part of student affairs.

Megan Riksen:

Oh, very good. Yeah. Is that a pretty active group?

Erica Hamilton:

It is! They're doing some really, in fact, I'm really excited about some ideas that they have this coming year. We have a meeting coming up to talk about some programming ideas that they have. But yes, the GSA- for short

Megan Riksen:

Yeah

Erica Hamilton:

Is a great organization and it's especially great because it's students from all of the academic areas and disciplines, international, domestic and then they do a lot of planning and their intention is to partner with a lot of places such as the career center to support graduate students and their trajectories as well.

Megan Riksen:

Perfect. Awesome. Great. So before I kind of throw a question over to Molly, can you just give your thoughts on what makes graduate school different from the undergraduate experience?

Erica Hamilton:

Yeah. So as I was thinking about this question, sorry. I've been an undergrad and I've been a graduate student and of course I now work in the graduate school and I'm a faculty member as well in the College of Education and Community Innovation. Graduate school is different because it's much more specialized. I'll be curious from Molly's thoughts as well, because she's living it right now. So in undergrad, absolutely you learn things that are specialized, but you also have this broad depth of knowledge and information and ideas and experiences that really are supposed to support you so that you can learn anything at any point in time. Then at the graduate space is really where you're diving in. So for example, in our speech language pathology program, you are being, you trained to be a speech language pathologist and you're building on everything you've learned as an undergrad to do that. The same as in you know, our biomedical sciences or in being an accountant to be be a certified CPA, it's that specialized knowledge that's different than at the undergrad. But we absolutely, you need your undergraduate degree because you're building on that.

Megan Riksen:

It's the building block. .

Erica Hamilton:

And for some students, their undergraduate degree is not related to their graduate degree. So being able to have been, have been, been successful as an undergraduate student, knowing how to study, knowing how to learn, having the ability to work with lots of different people and then have this other specialized knowledge is also a benefit. So you don't have to have an undergraduate degree, for example, in one discipline to go on to another. Sometimes you do, but sometimes you don't. Yeah.

Megan Riksen:

In a lot of cases. Right. Yeah. You don't have

Erica Hamilton:

To. Yeah. And sometimes we have students, a lot of times it's a misnomer. Students don't always come to graduate school Right after they go from undergrad. Yeah. A lot of times they, they go and they work. I would be a good example of that. I was a K 12 teacher for quite some time.

Megan Riksen:

Oh, you were?

Erica Hamilton:

Yeah. So I taught, and then I finished my master's degree and then I was teaching for a while and then I went back and I got my PhD. A lot of times it's students coming back after having experience which tells them that this, yes, this is the path I wanna go. Here's where I wanna specialize because the work experience has helped them figure that out.

Megan Riksen:

I think that's certainly really valuable in many cases to have that. A little bit of a gap maybe between your undergrad and your grad. Molly, let's bring you in. Can you tell us about your background and the graduate program you're a part of? And then if you've noticed some of these differences between being an undergrad and now a grad student, just talk to us about it all.

Molly Landa:

Yeah. So I did my undergrad degree here at Grand Valley. I got my Bachelor of Arts and Communication studies and a minor in writing. I graduated in December 2023. I loved my undergrad degree. It was a great choice for me. During that time I worked in so many on campus jobs.

Megan Riksen:

I will jump in. You might remember Molly from a previous episode on, on campus jobs and how she had done, I mean, how many did we end up? Six? Getting to six different positions at Grand Valley.

Molly Landa:

So I worked so many on campus jobs, loved my time in the career center. Through all those experiences, really discovered what higher education was, discovered what student affairs was, at the time I was going to be an education major I realized I didn't wanna do that, but I still loved education. I just didn't know what that was gonna look like for me. So I then found out about the Master's of Education in Higher Education program here at Grand Valley and just immediately knew that this is what I wanna do. I wanna work with college students. I wanna support them during their time at college and just help them be successful. So I'm about to enter my second year of that program.

Megan Riksen:

You're so close.

Molly Landa:

I'm gonna graduate in May, which is exciting. So hard to believe that it's already, I'm already halfway done, but I am.

Molly Landa:

So that's what I've been doing. And so some of the similarities and differences I've maybe noticed is graduate school. You're in a cohort system, so your classes are smaller. You're also taking classes with a lot of the same people, which was not my experience in undergrad. A lot of the times, or majority of the time, I didn't know anyone in any of my classes each semester, just because the communications program is big here at Grand Valley. Whereas at Grand Valley, my cohort is 10 students, I think so we're all taking the same classes together. We have three faculty members. So I'm also really close with a lot of the faculty members in the program, which I didn't have those relationships with my undergraduate professors and I think that helped me a lot with just getting acclimated to graduate school because it is different than undergrad. Which I know will go a little bit more in depth with as the podcast goes on. But that helps also with that transition of graduate school work, making friends and just feeling connected to that program. And I think that was probably the biggest difference I noticed between undergrad and graduate school.

Megan Riksen:

That's great. Yeah.

Erica Hamilton:

I was gonna say, Molly makes a good point about the cohorted piece. So you're absolutely right that, that we have graduate programs that have cohorts, which means, right. You start together and hopefully you end together and sometimes students have to take a pause or life happens and, you know, their plans adjust. And we do have programs that aren't cohort based at all as well. So in some cases it would be exactly what you've described. And in other cases it would be a little bit more similar, where you might recognize people from another class, but it wouldn't be all of the same students. So some degrees are designed that way in some, and some programs are not. But you're right, the cohorted piece can be a real valuable, it can be an asset, certainly because It does give you a sense of community, I would say, in any graduate program, because the numbers are typically smaller. There is a sense of community, and of course it's still up to the graduate student to be able to cultivate that and wanna engage. And it does matter too, if you're face to face, if you're online, if you're hybrid there's still lots of opportunities for interaction and connection regardless of the modality or your program.

Megan Riksen:

Okay. So Dr. Hamilton, what are some typical challenges new graduate students might face when they're kind of just starting that program?

Erica Hamilton:

So I'm gonna tell a story and then I'm gonna, I'm curious to have Molly either say, oh yeah, that's totally right, or Nope, you are completely off. Or maybe somewhere in the middle. So one of the things that I would say is a challenge, well, there's time management, but that's true at any season of life especially when something is new. So managing time. One of the things we didn't talk about though, in terms of courses or credits is for a graduate student, for example, nine credits is considered full-time. Yes. Versus as an undergrad, 12 is considered full-time and many of our undergrads take more than 12 a semester so sometimes people think, oh, it's nine credits. It's, you know, not 12, it's not 15. But those nine credits are a lot more, there's more, I mean, you're, there's just, there's more learning, there's more content, there's more opportunity for connection and for potentially, hopefully field work or clinical experiences or internships.

Erica Hamilton:

But I would say that for graduate students, a lot of times you do the undergrad, you feel good about that. You've graduated, you either go straight on or you go into the workforce and then you come back and you're either coming back part-time or full-time because that's the other piece is we typically have more of our undergrads are full-time. We have a good portion of our graduate students who are part-time and then others who are full-time, but it's imposter syndrome and so you get into this space and you think, I mean, I might be really excited about it, but oh my goodness, this is a new level. Can I do this? Do I belong here? Can I learn all of this? Can I do all this work? And the answer is, unequivocally, yes, you belong at Grand Valley.

Erica Hamilton:

You belong in your program and we want you here, and you will be successful assuming that, you know, you're willing to do the work. But the, just wondering about the, the ways in which, you know, how are, how am I gonna get this all done? What's this gonna look like? That's true at undergrad too. It doesn't matter. Starting something new and then wondering about whether or not can I actually really do this at the beginning? And I would say too, cultivating community, again, for our part-time students, a lot of them are working and so they have other communities outside of the institution and our full-time students are looking for community off in the West Michigan area, if they're here or if they're in other places, we like to say place committed. Which means they're, you know, committed to another place they call home, then those communities and trying to just be intentional about connecting with your colleagues and learning new things. And I will say too, sometimes students don't always feel like it's okay to not know the answer. I'm in grad school, I'm suppose to know everything.

Megan Riksen:

I should know everything.

Erica Hamilton:

The thing is, you're in school. If you're in school, that means you need to learn something and you get to learn something. So those, I would say those are some of the typical challenges and for those who are moving, for whom West Michigan hasn't been home before it's acclimating to a new space and I'm biased West. Michigan's amazing and it's a great place to live, it's a great place to work. .

Molly Landa:

I would agree imposter syndrome is definitely something I myself felt my first semester. And I know talking to other students in my cohort I feel like majority of us felt it in that first semester and it feels we are talking about it with other people because am I the only one who feels this way? You haven't really established those friendships yet where you feel comfortable confiding in those other students. So that 100% is something that I feel like needs to be just normalized for all grad students everywhere. So I'd echo everything that you have to say. The other thing that came to mind when this question was asked is just figuring out the expectations of grad school based on the professor and just the coursework that's something that I think it took me a little longer to figure out, because in undergrad I had one way to study and one way to take notes and one way to have my homework.

Molly Landa:

And in grad school, based on the professor I have, it may change how I'm taking notes. It may change how I'm reading the content based on their setup of the class. So I feel like in that first semester, that was probably one of the biggest hurdles that I had to face personally trying to figure that out. So I mean, just like advice for students for that in the future- is it's okay to try something and have it not work. I think for one class I tried three different reading methods for the content that we were reading each week until I found something that stuck and worked with me. And that is okay! And you can also rely on others and get advice from them. Also, talking to your professors, like your professors are there to help you and especially, I mean, not just undergraduate, but graduate school as well. So feel free if you are struggling. At one point I even went to my professor and was like, I am reading this content outside of class, but it's just going over my head I don't understand what's happening and through that conversation, I was able to adjust some things and it helped a lot. So that's something that definitely I would maybe tell students too, maybe that's something that you could run into.

Megan Riksen:

For sure. I, that reading piece, the amount of material so much

Molly Landa:

Yes.

Megan Riksen:

To get through was a very big difference when I was in my graduate program compared to undergrad as well.

Erica Hamilton:

Well, I was gonna say, Molly, you bring up a good point too, because faculty and staff at GVSU, I mean I'm biased. I think Grand Valley's an an exceptional place to work, and it's an exceptional place to learn.

Molly Landa:

I agree. Yep.

Erica Hamilton:

And our faculty care deeply about students and care deeply about their learning and so it does require some vulnerability but that is a really good skill to have and to be able to say, I need help, or I'm confused, or I need more context. Or, you know, what recommendations do you make? And faculty can't read students' minds and so I teach undergrad, I've taught undergrad and graduate students, and that's been true actually for undergrads as well. You have to help me help you. So I think what I heard you say was that advocacy piece and that is really important and that's even more important at the graduate level because there's a much higher level of independence and there's an expected level of independence. I expect graduate students to be advocating, to be communicating and telling me where they're at, and especially when we have them in internships or practicums or clinicals and those are all words for having essentially work experience that's associated with your graduate education. You have to be able to advocate and you have to be able to communicate and, so, we want students to do that, but we also don't want them to flounder because we want students to be successful and I will say GVSU is special in that way, not that other schools, that's not the case because we have great faculty in other places too, but Grand Valley faculty are, are exceptionally, they're pretty dialed in.

Erica Hamilton:

They're pretty amazing and our staff are rock stars across the university. They really stand up in support of students in ways that are often hidden, but are the ways in which students navigate systems and get help and get their questions answered. And so I just wanna make sure I give a shout out to our staff as well.

Megan Riksen:

Good call. Okay. So let's take a little bit of a step back and kind of think about the process of preparing for graduate school. Molly, what do you think, what are, what can students do to best prepare for going into a graduate program?

Molly Landa:

Well, first I think I would just say that you're not gonna be a hundred percent prepared no matter what you do.

Molly Landa:

Something's gonna get thrown at you that you weren't expecting and that's the beauty of being adaptable. So first of, I would just say, don't expect to know everything going into it. But some ways that, or some things that I did that maybe helped me going into my program have a little bit, have my footing underneath me. I guess I would say I like, looked at that curriculum and I studied it. So I kind of had an idea of what my next two years were gonna look like and that could always change, you know, programs go through curriculum changes. Sometimes some classes aren't offered. But I feel like that gave me a good idea of, okay, I have a blueprint of what I'm going to be doing for the next four years. And I think that helped me a lot. Just not feeling so like all over the place. I would say also, I went to all the orientation events before my program started.

Megan Riksen:

Good job, Molly!

Molly Landa:

But I think that also helps too, just, especially if you didn't go to Grand Valley during your undergrad and you don't know the institution. Fortunately I did and I think that helped me a lot. But that's not the case for all students. So going to those graduate school orientation sessions, or if your program has that one specifically for their program, definitely I would recommend doing that as well and then I had one more and it kind of escaped my head. Do you have anything to, to add? I maybe as I try come up with it,

Erica Hamilton:

I'll add and then you can remember and then you can share. So I would say a hundred percent Molly, you're right. The, those orientations where you can, the word orientation, you think, oh, well, another meeting, another meeting. It's not true actually. So, because actually it's great segue. The graduate school is hosting an orientation for our graduate students. We have a lot of our campus partners coming to those orientations too, so students can get access to and learn about the career center and our e-learning team and some of our other resources, our counseling center, health and wellness. So it's helping graduate students become oriented to your point, to the university and to being a graduate student. The other piece of that is, I think being patient. So your point is, you, you're not gonna know everything, but also be patient when everything is new, it can feel overwhelming. And you're right. When a new campus and a new place, it's just gonna take time. And so being patient, extending yourself some grace again, asking questions. Ask questions if you don't know something, ask a question. People, I've never been on campus, and if I've, there's one building on campus on our our valley campus that I, inevitably I've been in a lot of times I still struggle to find my way around there and inevitably I have to ask somebody. Okay. Can you remind me one more time how to get to...

Molly Landa:

Yeah, where's that wing of Mackinac? Is this the building?

Erica Hamilton:

Yeah, it's that one. Yep. The building that shall not be named.

Erica Hamilton:

It's, and so, and it's partly, it's just, it's been added onto. And so, and my brain just does not quite figure out, and I'm not there enough either but I have asked so many different, I've asked students, I've asked staff, I'm like, can you just please help me? And so making sure that you ask questions, you give yourself some time and patience and be realistic about the time it's gonna take. Like it's grad school. If you're in graduate school full-time, it is full-time. It's not, you know, oh, I only have three classes and I only have, you know, this many hours, nine hours a week. Right. It's full-time. And the expectation is you're training for something that is specific and you're, you're delving deeply into content and knowledge and experiences in ways that the undergraduate experience doesn't give you. Both are good, but both are different. Did you remember what gonna say?

Molly Landa:

Oh yeah.

Erica Hamilton:

Did we get there?

Molly Landa:

I did remember. The other thing that helped with me is I fortunately had people around me who were either in the program that I'm currently in now or have graduated and I was able to rely on them. Not everyone has that. So I will say you can reach out to current students I maybe don't know who are in the program now. For example, the graduate school association, I'm sure they would be more than happy to talk to an incoming graduate student, just about how do you find housing off campus, how do you get a meal plan? Stuff like that. I know I'm on our E-Board for the Student Affairs Graduate Association, which is the grad association specific to my graduate program and I had a student who's an incoming student this year, didn't know them before this.

Molly Landa:

And they reached out to me and say, Hey, I saw you're on the E-Board. I don't know how to find housing off campus, can you direct me some apartment complexes? And I was more than happy to do that because that can be really tough if you're not from the area. So another good way to prepare is if you know people in the program get their advice and if you don't know, we have amazing Student Org design campus and our usually grad, our graduate students are, will really willing to help Yeah. Incoming students as well. So never be afraid to even reach out to the graduate school to get connected, reach out to the graduate association, because that can really help as well.

Erica Hamilton:

Well, and Molly, your point about, so there's the GSA right? That's the Graduate Student Association. So that's for any graduate student at Grand Valley and then what you're describing is what was called an RSO. So it's a registered student organization that is specific either to your field or to a particular interest and we have a number of RSO's in addition to the GSA as well. And so, yes, finding your people so to speak and reaching out and then being able to rely on them because there's professional learning opportunities, there's also social pieces and faculty are always help, happy to help in terms of connecting you to other students. Sometimes, you know, I wouldn't necessarily know where the best places are to live in Grand Rapids but I certainly could find somebody that could help and, you know, our housing and our student, our student life and student affairs division has so many great resources and so many great colleagues as well and so, yes, you're right. But asking questions, giving yourself time, and being willing to not know everything is probably good start. Yeah.

Megan Riksen:

Absolutely. All right. So you both have already started touching on a lot of this, but talk to me a little bit more about some of the supports at GVSU that are specific to graduate students.

Erica Hamilton:

Yeah, so as I mentioned, the GSA, which is the Graduate Student Association, it's a great organization to connect with other graduate students, the graduate school really we work to partner well with our campus partners. We offer, I have to look at here because we've changed the name so I have to make sure I wrote it down, so it's professional development with a graduate school, so their graduate students can sign up. There are free professional development sessions it's there's things even for mindfulness training, for example. There's been wellness trainings or looking and thinking about mental health and supporting one's mental health. We partner with the writing center, which supports both undergrad and graduate students. We certainly, we partner with a career center.

Megan Riksen:

Yes, you absolutely do.

Erica Hamilton:

That career center is especially for grad students. I cannot recommend the Career Center enough because it really is a place.

Erica Hamilton:

And you're not here as long as you are for an undergrad. And so you really are thinking about internships, you're thinking about experiences and even resume building and that type of thing. The other thing I was gonna say too is we have a statistical consulting center on campus that supports graduate students, especially those who are engaged in research and sometimes STATS or doing the quantitative research piece is can be intimidating and our colleagues are exceptional in that space. We also have the health and wellness. There's the University counseling center. One of the things to remember as a graduate student is every resource that is a student resource is available to all students. It's not an undergrad or a grad. It is a student resource.

Megan Riksen:

That is really good to know.

Erica Hamilton:

It's not, there's nothing unique if you're undergrad or grad. We have a university counseling center. It's here for every single student.

Megan Riksen:

So I think I'm gonna end with a question for both of you just to kind of, any closing thoughts or what advice you would give to graduate students who are just getting started. Molly, let's, let's start with you on that one.

Molly Landa:

Yeah. I think my biggest piece of advice, and this can really go in so many directions, would be don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone you know, you may be in a completely new environment, you may be at a new school, you may not know everyone, so you're really gonna have to push yourself and maybe do some things that you're not really comfortable with that first. But doing that is just gonna make a world of a difference. And your experience here at Grand Valley will truly change. Speaking from experience, I went into my grad program not knowing anyone, and I was able to make some friends form relationships with professors, which is something I never really did before, but I found out I kind of had to just because the nature of graduate school and I feel like that's the reason why I just had such a positive experience last year because I got out of my comfort zone. I had to meet new people, I had to do new things. And also my other piece of advice is just to get involved on campus anyway that you can whether that's through, if you do get an on-campus job, a graduate assistantship, you get involved in the various Student Organizations that we have on campus. But just finding a sense of belonging or a place on campus where you can go and you feel comfortable is really, really gonna help as well.

Megan Riksen:

I think that's so key because I think that's something that graduate students don't always think about. That they can also feel that belonging in community at Grand Valley. Not just in their program, but at Grand Valley as a whole as well.

Erica Hamilton:

Well, and that's, I think Molly really summed it up, right? You wanna find your people and you wanna find your places and so that's true wherever you are in whatever season of life you're in and I, for me, I value relationships and I wanna be in community with people because you're having this shared experience and that's the whole point. It's shared. If you're trying to do everything by yourself, then that's not maybe as you can, but it's isolating and it definitely doesn't, it doesn't enhance your graduate experience and I would say too, practicing patience and paying attention to what it is you wanna do and having an eye toward that next job. So definitely, and I know that this is a career center podcast, but I would've said it anyway. Is really partnering with resources such as a career center.

Erica Hamilton:

To be thinking about that next step in those next places. And one of the things that I keep telling students when they graduated and their alumini's is, once you are a Grand Valley grad, you have access to the career center forever and ever and ever. And you can come back and you can get supports and resources for job transitions or for resume building and so if you're here on campus, you should be taking advantage of that opportunity because the whole point of graduate school is then to go on. Well, for some it's to get a PhD at a different institution, but for others it is to get a job and so we wanna position folks well, so people and place and then make sure you're making plans.

Megan Riksen:

Awesome, Great. Well, thank you both so much this was a great conversation. Thank you!

Erica Hamilton:

Thank you. This was a lot of fun. And I'm really excited about the incoming welcoming our new students, which I get to start doing next week. Which is exciting.

Erica Hamilton:

I know. It's always, I love when students are back full, full on campus. Spring and summer is fine, but that's, we, that is who we serve.

Megan Riksen:

Exactly.

Erica Hamilton:

There's something about fall semester, it's special campus is just amazing. And the newness of everything and we're here and you get to learn and what privilege of this.

Megan Riksen:

Absolutely. Great. Well, I know that this episode will be so helpful for students who are either jumping right into a graduate program or considering one in the future. Of course, you should check out our show notes. We will list all the, many, many resources that we've talked about today. So you can access those and would just like to say thank you to everyone for listening and we hope you tune in to a future episode soon.