Oak Room Interview with Graduate and Professional Student Council President Elayne Heisler

This interview, with Graduate and Professional Student Council President Elayne Heisler, is the third in a series of Oak Room Interviews, designed to shed light on the personalities of campus figures in an informal setting. The interview was conducted by John Bush, editorial page editor of The Chronicle.

JB: What's a typical day for you?

EH: If it's good, I wake up at 5:30 and go to the gym. Then, to be in my office in sociology between 8 and 9. I check e-mail, which is both sociology and GPSC. I find that a lot of what I do in GPSC is e-mail correspondence.... Then, I usually will do a lot of my academic work.... Generally, I work for most of the day. Two days a week, I teach Hebrew school. Mondays and Wednesdays I have class.... Then, some meeting at some point in the day. Usually, I take care of my to-do list, but a lot of GPSC is e-mails responding to this or responding to that.

I get a lot of e-mails from myself; I hate myself for it because I'll send out e-mails to the GPSC list or the different programs when you need to publicize something. One of our bigger issues is that there isn't a central list-serve that can get to all professional and graduate students, so I have to send it to the GPSC list, then grad women and so on. By the time that I'm done, I'll have gotten the message four times.

JB: What are the biggest problems facing GPSC?

EH: I think that the communication issue is really really key because we can plan, organize, do whatever we want to do, but if no one knows about it, it's not going to make a difference. That's definitely one that's key.

The impending current debt and how that's going to affect graduate students because there are going to be choices made and what those choices are is another issue. That's something we've been working on, but there's really not as much tangible we can do beyond just being involved and keeping ourselves out there....

Also setting up some type of an institutionalized structure that would not bring in random people every year, that there would be a lot of continuity in leadership, in programming....

EH: New Jersey actually.

JB: How did you wind up at Duke?

EH: Duke was known for having good areas in aging and in medical sociology, two of my interests.... One of my professors was very gung-ho on the side of Duke. I applied and really did not think that I was going to come. I knew people at every other school I was applying to.... Anyone would have predicted that I would be going somewhere else.

So, it boiled down to the visit, the weekend of the national championships [in 1998]. They had the whole class come down, which is fun because these are the people that you will be spending time with. So, I watched the basketball national championship game and thought that we'd never campout for basketball--what was that about....

JB: How similar or different do you think that Cornell is to Duke?

EH: The residential college aspect was a major difference. The Cornell fraternities are off campus, and that we had a version of Franklin Street--night clubs, bars, eateries and different things going on with a natural spillover from campus--so not a lot of heavy drinking was on campus.

Student wise, it's very similar. Very bright and driven people....

JB: Were you a sociology major?

EH: Actually, I wasn't. I was in human development, which is a combination of sociology and psychology. I wound up writing my senior thesis under sociology, and I took a bunch of sociology courses.... But I haven't had a problem at all in grad school.

JB: What made you choose to go to grad school?

EH: I was very interested in studying aging and the older populations and there was a... concentration at Cornell. There was a lot of multidisciplinary coursework, and it turned out that I liked the courses that were within sociology.... And then I really got into the idea of grad school.... I had spent a semester in Washington, D.C., and really liked the idea of doing policy research.... I'm very interested in policy issues, but I also wanted to get a Ph.D. because I thought that this would give me more options.

JB: What had you gone into Cornell thinking that you were going to do?

EH: Probably more psychiatry. I had worked in a nursing home the summer before I had started college and liked it--probably part of the premed flirtation. It was more psychiatry, clinical and counseling.

JB: Were you involved in student government at Cornell?

EH: I was not. I was involved with a bunch of different things, but not with student government.

JB: Why did you get involved here then?

EH: I went to the first GPSC meeting.... And they were one of the groups that was trying to publicize what they did.... And the person who was the social chair had resigned, so I decided to do it. They were looking to put people on committees, and they were looking for someone to be on the search committee for the new vice president for institutional equity, so I volunteered and had no idea what I was getting myself into.... I remember going to a basketball game, opening up the program, seeing all of the chief officers and realizing that I had met almost all of them through the course of being on this committee....

JB: Why did you want to be GPSC president?

EH: The National Association of Graduate and Professional Students has a conference each year, which I [went to last Thursday]. I went with Cybelle McFadden, who was last year's GPSC president; she was looking for someone who was involved to go with her. She [later] kept telling me, "You should do this. You should do this."... Then from September to March-time, I started thinking, "Yeah, I could do that."

JB: I haven't heard any GPSC campaign slogans.

EH: Our elections in the past haven't been incredibly contested, and it's a shame because I have had a phenomenal experience doing this. I've had a lot of fun; I've met a lot of great people. I've gained a lot of skills: public speaking, organizing.... I'm hoping that I can use some of my enthusiasm to recruit people to do it. It's really a great experience.

JB: Do you feel graduate and professional student events should be on campus or off campus?

EH: Whatever works. I don't think that events need to be on campus because we're situated off campus. The idea of something being central really isn't so much the case.

JB: You've written about how certain parts of grad school turned you off, particularly the attitude. Could you elaborate?

EH: There's a certain amount of reality that graduate school isn't always fun and that it is hard work. A lot of students in their first year talk about how they have to go home and do homework. I realize that I don't consider it homework because it's all just work. It isn't localized to being done at home. In grad school, you don't end, where, as an undergrad, you can slack off because you'll be in different classes next semester. With the exception of writing a thesis, you don't have that continuity every semester, but in graduate school, there's always something I'm doing. It doesn't end. Summer is, "Oh good, I can do more reading."...

There are a lot of people who work that up, that they are going to do their schoolwork [at home]. Grad school should be a job, and you should set up definite hours.

JB: What surprises you most about this job?

EH: How receptive people have been. Over the summer, I went to [Executive Vice President] Tallman Trask's office and wanted to make an appointment. Five minutes later, they call me back and say, "Sure, what time are you available." There's something about that that makes it amazing.

I think that I had a pretty good idea of the magnitude of the job in terms of within the scope, but the power has surprised me. I don't feel like I have power, but I think that people perceive it of some of us. And the visibility has also been interesting....

[Former GPSC President Tomalei Vess] really laid the foundation for a lot of what's happened now. She just was an incredible advocate for graduate students specifically and then also for graduate and professional students in the wider community. It's amazing to see what she's done, and she's still really passionate and involved. It's been great to have her and Cybelle around as resources.

JB: Do you feel that grad students need additional rights?

EH: I think that the rights have been outlined as part of best practices. The next step is just making sure that they're enforced. It differs a lot across departments, across professors. Some professors are amazing to work with and give the students everything in the world, and some professors I've heard horror stories about....

It's so hard because you really can't enforce them; you really are in a lot of ways beholden to a major professor because that is the person recommending you, helping you out and launching your career.

JB: What do you feel about unionization?

EH: Thus far, we have not had any unionization, and I'm hoping it stays that way.

JB: Have you followed the current on-campus housing changes at all?

EH: I'm very interested in the implications of that. I feel bad for you guys who were in the old plan... and I think that there are some people who are going to move off campus as a result. I have undergraduate neighbors now who don't bother me at all but who do bother [neighbors]. There are implications in that for those of us who do live off campus.

JB: Conflicts in housing?

EH: I think that the issue is less trying to get the same housing and more prices because if it drives up the prices, graduate and professional students are already taking out tremendous amounts of loans and a lot of the undergraduates are not as cash-strapped. My biggest concern is what it's going to do to the housing market.

JB: What made you start teaching Hebrew school?

EH: I was sort of involved in the Jewish community and Hillel in college. And then a good friend of mine was teaching at the Yeshiva school right before my junior year, [but] at the last minute, he couldn't do it but was like, "I have a friend who'd be perfect." So, I did. I taught first graders, and it was really a great experience.... It was a great way of getting connected to the community. I didn't do it my first year here. I thought about it, but decided against it because of the transition. And then my second year, I did it.

JB: What do you plan on doing when you get out?

EH: It definitely changes. I think I would like anything in policy because I'm still headed in that direction. The model [for grad school] is to be a professor, and I have not totally ruled that out.

JB: What do you want said about GPSC in a year?

EH: I'd like to see GPSC increase its visibility in a positive way and do more things that mean something to every student, to have people in the law school or med school say, "Yeah, GPSC, they really helped me with this" or "They did a good job with this event."