This is the fourth story in an occasional series exploring graduate student life.
Graduate students share several of the same academic responsibilities as professors-teaching classes, meeting with students, conducting research-but many graduate and professional students say they work each day in facilities that are inadequate to meet these obligations.
The Graduate and Professional Student Council's student life proposal to the Board of Trustees lists the lack of academic space as a serious problem for the students in several departments and programs. In the long-term, the proposal suggests that the University build additional facilities and, in general, keep graduate students in mind when it considers reallocating existing space.
Several administrators agreed that academic space is critical to the graduate and professional student experience.
"We need to do a good inventory of availability and needs and evaluate these in the context of the overall space needs of the departments and the possibilities for creating more space for them and their grad students," said Provost Peter Lange.
As far as short-term solutions go, the GPSC proposal suggests that graduate students have access to suitable classrooms for the classes they teach and that they should be able to reserve classrooms at non-class times for optional class activities.
Graduate students also have concerns about office space. Susan Jarosi, an art history graduate student, explained that after the departments' graduate student offices were renovated and turned into faculty space, the students were relocated to one office in the basement of the West Duke Building. The rest of the department is located in the East Duke Building.
"[The office is] rarely ever used, I think, because of the miserable environment, and because it is in a different building from all the other art history resources...," Jarosi said.
The report recommends that student offices have improved heating and cooling systems, be cleaned more regularly and include adequate office furniture.
Jarosi added that there is no intellectually-based "common area" for graduate students to share.
"For graduate students in the departments, the experience is extremely isolating-you spend an awful lot of time in the little [carrels]...," said Dean of the Graduate School Lewis Siegel. "Appropriate spaces within departments is something we've always been very concerned about. We do try to deal with that and we'll make a bigger push if we need to. That's fundamental."
GPSC representative Katrina Oie, a graduate student in the department of microbiology, works in the Jones Building and says she has a hard time finding a place to use for reading journal articles.
"I find when I have to do a lot of reading, that it's nice to have more comfortable seating, like a couch," she said. "Also, this may sound petty, but places like [the Jones Building] library or the [Medical Center] library are just too cold for me. It's really hard to concentrate on what you're doing if the temperature is uncomfortable for you."
The proposal also mentions the need for lockable and ethernet-connected carrel space in Perkins Library for students without offices.
Ashley Jackson, head of access services for Perkins, noted that all but five of the 181 lockable carrels in Perkins have ethernet access and that 129 of the carrels are designated for graduate students. However, only Ph.D. students are even eligible for carrel space.
"We only have enough carrels to meet the demand for people with dissertations, and even then we have a waiting list...," Jackson said. "To provide a carrel for all graduate students would require a major increase in the number of carrels presently available."
Even on an individual department basis, many graduate and professional students said they were dissatisfied with their current University experiences.
For example, medical student Brian Ruiz de Luzuriaga said there is no space for changing into scrubs near the gross anatomy lab in the Bell Building-an area that every medical student uses eventually.
"Basically, everyone just has to cram into small bathrooms or unoccupied classrooms in order to change," said Ruiz de Luzuriaga, a GPSC representative. "There are already lockers in the hallway outside of the lab, but the problem is that the regular employees in the Bell Building don't much appreciate a bunch of students stripping down in the hallway."
Medical student Lauretta Bucher said that even the locker space is inadequate.
"We have to share lockers with two or three other people, and they're tiny, not even big enough to fit a decent sized book bag...," Bucher said.
Rami Zheman contributed to this story.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.