Graduate Students: Frequently Asked Questions
What is the neighborhood surrounding Loyola like?
The Loyola Lake Shore Campus is located on the far north side of Chicago, in the Rogers Park neighborhood. Most graduate students live in this neighborhood, or just to the south in Edgewater or Andersonville. Rogers Park is known nationally for being one of the few neighborhoods in the country with no ethnic majority. This area is served by the Chicago Transit Authority's elevated train, the Red Line, which runs to downtown and to the south side 24 hours a day. There are also numerous 24-hour bus lines in these neighborhoods (in addition to plenty of bus lines without owl service), including the Broadway and Clark buses, which serve other popular neighborhoods in the city. Regarding safety, there are certainly blocks in the neighborhood in which one needs to be cautious, and of course urban living requires a certain amount of common sense.
What is the graduate student community like?
A distinctive feature of our department is the nature of our graduate community. There are both academic and social components to our relationships, each aspect enriching the other. There are department-sponsored events, as well as gatherings that are purely social in nature. At any given time, grad students are involved in reading groups with other grads and/or professors. Our graduate students are very supportive of each other's work, and friendships cross disciplinary boundaries. For more detailed information on particular AGSP events, scroll to AGSP section of this site.
What kind of support is available for graduate students who are teaching?
The 2000-2001 academic year was the first year that graduate students still taking classes were required to teach. In addition to the university sponsored orientation (whose value is debatable), we are currently developing a day long workshop in the summer in which graduate students who have taught will address issues in teaching with those facing teaching for the first time. Workshops are also underway for more formal university concerns. We are also planning continuing workshops throughout the semesters where professors are asked to discuss issues anywhere from designing a syllabus to pedagogical strategies. The issues to be discussed will arise from graduate instructors' own concerns. Graduate instructors also choose a mentor with whom they work, consult, and who also observes them in a classroom setting and offers feedback.
What are the possibilities of taking classes outside of Loyola?
One of the greatest advantages to being in Chicago is the vast number of prominent scholars (in addition to our own) who teach at area universities. While Loyola will not grant credit from these other universities, it is possible to sit in on classes at other universities under the guise of a directed reading. In the recent past, students have taken classes at Northwestern, University of Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago.
