The Exit Interview

Overall I had an enjoyable graduate school experience in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. There were things I enjoyed a lot, although other things which I had some grievances too. That being said, no program is perfect and every one is unique.

Last Friday I had my "exit interview" with the department head. Having not been in any other programs, I don't know if this exclusively unique to our department alone or happens for many others. For every graduating PhD student, the department head tries to make a one hour appointment to before they permanently leave to cover a variety of topics. The generally cover the following:

• What class was most useful to you?
• What has provided you with the most professional development?
• What was your overall opinion of the program and structure?
• What do you feel was lacking or your least favorite thing in the program?

I've had an exit interview with my advisor. A mix of awkwardness of these are things that you did really well, there are the things that you can still continue improving, what are the things that I (the advisor) can do better, and then these are papers I (the advisor) want you to consider working on still. (The question that never goes away!)

For a department head to ask the similar set of questions shows a desire to improve the program based on a statistical collection of students opinion, rather that just hiring a professor with lots of potential and encouraging the department to increase the number of high impact journal publications. This is a department that will continue to strive to be better not based on research alone, but how it trains the next generation of scientists. Obviously, if you ask the opinion of my classmates, it's not perfect. And it never will be.

In retrospect, I wish I did a similar sort of thing with each and every undergraduate who worked under me as well as all the graduate students with whom I have collaborated with. I won't be the best scientist at the end of the day, but I'll be a better one than I was before.