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Edited on Tue Feb-21-06 04:01 PM by Lisa
Luckily, our department is still fairly small, and easygoing -- and even the profs who aren't as approachable are professional enough to pay attention to students who are getting postgrad-level marks. So by the time they reach the grad school application stage, interested students tend to have found faculty who can be references/mentors, who have active research projects, and may even be hiring lab assistants (yet another thing which I can't do, since I lack funding).
I don't know if what I'm doing counts as "networking", but if a student claims to be really interested in a particular topic or study area, I try to remember who is doing what in our department, and ask whether s/he has ever taken classes with the profs who have the most overlap. I can't claim definite successes, since so many other people -- the TAs, the sessionals, etc. -- are passing along referrals about potential references and supervisors that it's easy to forget who introduced whom.
A lot of the faculty try to be encouraging, even if they are snowed under with work, or heading out into the field -- so if there are still students wanting a reference from me, even after being given some alternative suggestions, it's generally because they have left it to the last minute. That, or the prof has declined (and in that case I don't want to know the details). The guy in yesterday's situation is actually a mature student -- he's been out in the workforce for awhile, I assume -- so I don't think that shyness was an issue for him, anyway. (One of the secretaries told me that he hasn't been reluctant to approach them, or any faculty member who happens by, about all kinds of matters.) I still think that he ought to have talked to "Mike", who teaches natural hazards, because a recommendation from him would look better for a disaster planning degree, plus Mike is quite respected and has lots of academic contacts -- and he is really nice about writing references on short notice. I guess it's possible that he didn't do well in Mike's courses (though Mike's been known to say nice things even if you only get a B-minus)... but in that case, I'm surprised that he'd be able to qualify for that specialized program.
p.s. I've been looking around for that Far Side cartoon -- no luck, but I'll post it if I find it. One of my colleagues told me that there's a book out with just Larson's caveman cartoons, "Prehistory of the Far Side" -- I'd bet it's in there. As I recall, the other skills the interviewee was claiming were fire-making and mammoth hunting ... and then he hits that unfortunate snag with the non-hominid references.
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