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 Graduate students have a new resource: thesis workshops By Robert Belloir In collaboration with the Savannah College of Art and Design Writing Center, reference librarians and SCAD faculty, the staff members of the graduate studies department are working to provide thesis-writing workshops for graduate students who have passed their thesis review. Recognizing that graduate students could greatly benefit from a workshop designed to address the specific departmental requirements in developing their theses, the department’s staff have brought together a consortium of professionals with the expressed purpose informing and acquainting students with the wide variety of resources available to them at SCAD. With the idea in mind of designing workshops to address the specific needs and thesis requirements of each SCAD department, the deans of the college’s seven schools offered input and a liaison from the department to meet with the thesis workshop team. The liaisons talked about issues and voiced concerns, offered recommendations and informed the team of departmental requirements about the thesis. Patricia Beckmann, chair of the animation department, met with writing center consultant Jennifer Peper and Jen Library reference librarians Anne Dickerson and Caren Agata in December to plan the details of the first thesis workshop. Invitations to the Jan. 28 workshop were sent to all animation students who had passed their thesis review, and 20 students responded to this inaugural workshop offering. The two-hour workshop included a session with Dickerson and Agata on finding reference materials specific to animation from libraries, periodicals, magazines, newspapers and the Internet. The reference librarians encouraged the students to utilize SCAD’s archival library of theses from former animation graduate students and gave them the skills to do electronic searches for additional information. Following the reference session, Peper offered valuable insight on the actual writing of the thesis. Some of the topics she discussed were outlining, documenting, organizing and writing. Of the 17 students who offered an evaluation of the workshop, all said they felt that the workshop met their needs. One student said, “[The workshop] provided a lot of information about research, policy and ideas.” Another said, “I appreciated having different departments in one place to address the thesis concerns.” “I felt the session was really organized and it simplified the idea of thesis,” said a third student. Each quarter, two departments are selected by the deans and graduate studies department to take part in this workshop. The general plan calls for the two-hour workshop to be offered during the sixth or seventh week in the quarter. In the spring, historic preservation and sequential art will be the two participating departments. Andres Gaviria, chair of historic preservation, was so enthusiastic about the spring workshop that he could not wait until the sixth week to have it offered. He requested that the workshop be offered to the historic preservation department’s graduate students April 1 so that the students could have follow-up sessions throughout the quarter. Gaviria recognized the tremendous value of a workshop such as this, and he is not alone. The positive response from the animation graduates who took the offering earlier this quarter has validated the endeavor. One of the goals of the graduate studies department is that every graduate student will have the resources and opportunity to complete the thesis requirement before graduating. This workshop is a significant resource toward accomplishing that goal. Belloir is the director of graduate student involvement. |
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