National University Podcast Series

ETHE Ep. 42: JFK School of Law - Housing Clinic with Ora Prochovnick

July 27, 2021 Ora Prochovnick Season 2 Episode 42
National University Podcast Series
ETHE Ep. 42: JFK School of Law - Housing Clinic with Ora Prochovnick
Show Notes Transcript

Ora Prochovnick, Director of the Housing Clinic at the JFK School of Law at NCU, shares the ways aspiring law students give back to their community, while also sharpening their knowledge.

Samantha Wilcox  0:04  
in higher ed, my name is Samantha Wilcox, and I'm your host for this podcast. Joining us today is Dr. Henrik Larsson, Professor of the graduate school at North Central University. Dr. Larson works directly with our dissertation completion pathway students. Today we'll be discussing this ABCD or all but dissertation population. Welcome, Dr. Larson.

Dr. Henrik Larsson  0:27  
Thank you. And thank you for having me. Let me jump right in there. Why when we say, a B, do all but dissertation might, you know, there's some, we're sort of implying that the the student is missing something that the person's kind of incomplete? Not entirely hold? Why. So I tend to rephrase this add as aiming beyond dissertation. Why? Because we welcome the students, they are not as missing a component or missing a part of themselves, but as whole people with a lot of important experience and a lot to offer. 

There's nothing missing there. What we just need to aim them beyond that dissertation. So they can go out in the world with a doctorate and make a difference, which they already are. But make a difference as a PhD, and speak with gravitas that comes with this degree towards the problems that we face in our everyday life. So ABB at ncu means aiming beyond dissertation.

Samantha Wilcox  1:28  
Aiming beyond dissertation, I love that. Now you've been working with this population for quite some time, what are some barriers that these students identify when speaking to you?

Dr. Henrik Larsson  1:40  
Well, I kind of boiled them down to four barriers, right that I hear about life. One is, of course, life. The other is institutional, third is academic. And then finally, we have the psychological barriers that may be not articulated. So directly, well, life and institutional barriers, they tend to conspire against the student, like, for example, we just have a student coming to us to the bridge program, to the dissertation completion program, that couldn't continue at his own institution, because his deployment to one of the theatres of war that we engaged in making age out of the program. So if you have a person that is giving it all, they're giving more than most, and, you know, life is in his way. And for some, how can you say somewhat bureaucratic reasons, he is not able to finish his PhD. 

That doesn't make sense at all. I mean, a person like that has a lot to offer why, and we should welcome people with experiences like that and and particularly people that has proven that they're willing to put themselves in front of problems right and putting the world and society first and themselves last way. So that's how life like a deployment and institution policy kinda sometimes conspire with with each other wide, and, you know, during my encounters writers, many tales of students suffering illnesses, or homelessness, or other life problem either in a serious, right, and that they somehow ended up in tangled in some bureaucratic process that, you know, May at some level be justified, but at the individual personal level, the certainly doesn't feel like a at your situation, right. So these two important, right, and then one of the big ones that are here that we classify under academic, I would say, is like this right in when I was a kid, I almost said when I was a dissertation student, why we sort of was thrown out in it right? and say, hey, go now write your doctorate and come back when you're done. Right? 

And you know, some of us did, and some of us didn't, right. So still in many places, writing a doctorate dissertation is like getting a a do it yourself assembly kid from IKEA, if you're familiar with that furniture chain, like you have to put the whole thing together yourself. However, the installation instruction is not there. I so many of the students why they feel this academic barrier is that they introduced to various things. Here's a little bit methodology. Here's a little bit literature right? Now go Go do your doctorate why, but the installation instruction of this component is missing by and that I think is is one of the more significant academic barriers that the that we don't know exactly.

Dr. Henrik Larsson  4:47  
What we are going to do why, you know, I compared it to a situation just imagine that you are paid, let's say $100,000 to climb Mount Everest, and you show up in the Kathmandu airport where you're going from There's no one there to greet you. Right? You thought they were coming. But no, because you're Sherpas have changed three times. And you go to the information point to give you a map. Okay, so you find your way to Basecamp. Right? And then you ask your, your, your crew there. 

So how are we going to do this? How we're going to climb this mountain? And they look at you say, well, didn't you read the website we had? Then you read the website before you came? And I said, no, maybe not really, right. But it would be nice if you told me what to bring and how to pack and how to prepare, then they start climbing up, right? And all of a sudden, right, the climate the student gets stuck. And, and he or she looks at this map and realize that it wasn't the map to the summit of Mount Everest, what they got was the map to Splash Mountain in Disney World. Right? And they have no way of getting to that summit, then they asked the crew, sorry, I'm stuck here. And somebody are told, well, maybe you're not a very good climber. Maybe mountaineering is not for you. Right. And that is the same that I hear from from many students, right, that they have been told that maybe they're not good writers, or maybe PhD is not for you. I read a study, although is OLS conducted 10 years ago, it clearly said that while the completion rate of PhD program is at the very best in the 70%, then the results also show that almost every single person in a role in a PhD program have the academic abilities to complete that program. Right. So it's not only you it's also us, right, you know, there's there some, some some to be said for that. Right. 

So that was a little bit of mountaineering, the wine. And for many does feel like they are standing in front of a mountain that they have to climb. But why is this? You know, look at many of the programs that we go through, you know, you hand in an assignments one week, two pages, next week, one pages, and you talk along, you think you're doing great, your GPA is 4.0, right? You're on top of this, I got this why, then when you paid 80% of your tuition fees, and you're 80% done, then it goes like this. And then you say, so now it's not two pages, it's 150 pages, thank you very much. And that is sort of like a change of gear without appropriate many times guidance without a detailed instruction. And without, as one of my students sit here the other day, without scaffolding. Right. And this, I think, is what makes our dissertation completion program different. It is it provides that scaffolding light provides that guidance. In a way step by step. Sometimes you may feel that it can be a bit instructional, like, you have to do this, or this is how we do things, right. But my experience is that most students when they come to us, they don't feel that they had too much instructions, they don't feel that they're being too told too much about how this is done. 

And this is what we try to do here. Like, we try to both demystify this, we try to show where the nuts and bolts are. And we provide the roadmap or the famous furniture, assembly instruction, what components goes on top of its components, how it links in line. I mean, I know that for myself, I, you know, if I get a piece of furniture you have to put together, the last thing I look at is the instruction. And what happens, there's always five pieces left. And the thing doesn't work. Right. So so that's what we try to do. We try to provide that guidance in a loving but also firm way to make sure that the student succeeds, right. And they come with different topics, different interest. And what I usually tell the students who said, I'm not particularly passionate about any particular topic. I'm passionate about you completing this program, whatever your topic may be. Because most of these students we have they deserve to complete, because they are fighters. They're survivors. And they want to make a difference. So who are we to say that they can't do that, right?

Samantha Wilcox  9:39  
Absolutely. Now, you you touched on this a bit but what makes the MCU DCP or dissertation completion pathway, different from other institutions out there?

Dr. Henrik Larsson  9:52  
Well, of course, I'm biased, right? So I'm going to illuminate all the good things right. First of all, we professors who know what we are talking about why? Because we all have many years of experience between us. We all published professors, we have published research literature, we have published the Reese researchable topics, right? So we have a congress a scholarship behind us, and not only our dissertation, right? So first of all, more of that bring some, some actual competency and skills to the table wide. And I think a lot of students they feel a certain degree of comfort when they see that their professors are scholarly, actually in publication, right. So that makes a difference, right? 

The quality of our thoughts, right, if I may be so. So bias, but also, as I said, Before, we really tried to move the curtain that way so the students can see what is actually behind it. What what kind of component goes into a, a social research design, by How can this be conducted in a straightforward way? And I think that, as I mentioned before, we are perhaps more the guiding, and more instructional in our approach. And then the final point that makes that possible, it is that we have what most other universities don't have. We have a one to one model. So each student is a class of one person. I there's not a cohort, right? It's not that. I mean, I've been a dissertation chair. In other programs, we have like 15 students chugging along in a cohort with 15. Totally different topics right here. One student, one class. Right. And I think that point, combined with the other things that I mentioned, about our guidance, is what makes this a different experience. A class of one, four unique person.

Samantha Wilcox  11:57  
Absolutely. Absolutely love that. Now, again, we've touched on this a bit. But what can EBD students expect when completing their dissertation with MCU? And the distribution completion pathway? How is it structured? What does that look like for students?

Dr. Henrik Larsson  12:15  
Yeah, I mean, the the bridge program is, in a sense, quite simple. There's three courses. The first course is really about helping the student finding a researchable problem, and finding out what research gaps exist, that that is the key components, right? What is worth researching what can be researched, and what needs to be researched about that issue, right. And that's what we do in the first course. And in that process, of course, bringing the student up to speed on where the literature is. Now some of our students have been eight years away, a lot of things have happened in the literature. So that's also part of that process, why? And then, of course, that leads into the second course, which is about design. That's where we take what we have learned from scoping around in the current literature wide, and building that in to a design. 

That is basically what the student intends to research and how the students intend to research that. Then we have another class. We call it the intensive, right, it sounds so dramatic, right? But the intensive is, has typically been an on ground, face to face interaction, where we go into depth on a more intimate and personal level, with regards to the students designs, and how to use the resources that we have. It's not like one of those, what we would call gatherings that most online programs have where you have hundreds of students sitting and listening to lectures or droning along about some topic, like it's a very hands on it's very, very oriented towards the students specific. Completion needs, right. So that that is the pharmacy, typically cherry on top of, of the ice cream or, or the pie. I can't remember the American expression. But there's there's a cherry and mold in there. Right. 

And it's on top of something like and I have not encountered that students that have come out of that saying that, oh, that was just like before, all of that was, you know, why did we go here, every single student that I ever talked to have come away with a an experience of having all of the things that we've taught online in those other classes come to life and make sense and also have the opportunity to interact with other students and faculty and librarians and other people that they may not, not have. I mean, people are different, right? Some people are better face to face, and then some people are better. And an email, right? So this accommodates all of that. Right. So that's that's, I would say what both the structure of the program but, but also what they can expect them. That's another thing I'd like to mention, right? Because I remember how it was when I was a dissertation student, where I kept getting a new chair, I kept changing chair committee members why it was like a revolving door of I remember, the last year I had, I think it was the third, I said the person down would say, Listen, I am going to finish now in six months. I, so no monkey wrenches in the machinery here.

Dr. Henrik Larsson  15:43  
But that also meant that you have the situation where you often have to hunt for your committee members, you have to beg people to serve on your committee. Oh, please, when you're so like committee, and I was looking for months for a committee member, right? And then of course, when you finally get one, why'd you have this thing where you're not really willing maybe to challenge them too much, because you're afraid they might leave you. Please stay, please stay out, be a good student. But I MCU while you get ready in the mate, ready in the made box, distinction committee, you don't get to choose your committee members, you don't get to choose your chair. But what you get to is not to suffer through the agony of hunting for people who graciously agreed to volunteer there to facilitate your academic journey. You finish with me on the other professors in the bridge program wide. And then Wallah, we will give you a committee from day one, nothing to worry about their wide. But you know, that's I haven't had an experience where a student have said to me, we would rather have wanted to spend six months finding our own chair, it never happened. Right? 

There's sometimes a question, Well, you know, I would like to have this person in my committee, but it's never really coming up to that level, where it cancels out the advantages of just being allowed to progress with a stable community of people that are there from the online. So so that's both, you know, leaders into the structure from coming out of the bridge program, kind of like graduating out of this pathway, why? And then on the other side of it, there's a committee, welcome committee, or dissertation committee, waiting for, for you right to pick you up. And you know, I'll show you along on the next journey, and we are standing there back at the bridge and waving goodbye. But we were still there watching right. And hopefully, we will see all of you I'd walking across the stage right that in the not so distant future. So I guess that you know, that's a little bit what you can expect and a little bit about the structure and and why we're here.

Samantha Wilcox  18:01  
Oh, I love it so much. I know you and the other faculty members and leadership are really impacting a lot of students who sometimes come in with not a ton of hope. So thank you for everything that you do for our students as they complete their dissertations. And like you mentioned, get to join us and walking across the stage. Again, thanks so much for your time today, Dr. Larson. It was a pleasure. Call again. Absolutely. Be on the lookout for additional episodes in the coming weeks from others in the MC community. Until next time,

Transcribed by https://otter.ai