About the Doctoral Student Forum

Our focus is to bring doctoral students into a community. In Early Childhood Education, we emphasize the importance of community building in a respectful and collaborative manner in the classroom and between teachers. As doc students, this is a necessity. We are all in this journey together, so why not work together building the relationships, the research, and the collegial impact that we can have on one another.

Several fellow doctoral students have mentioned that they feel alone sometimes, or that once they have completed the coursework, they feel isolated. There is absolutely no reason for this. It is not up to the faculty to hold our hands. Yes, they should be advising us, but we are adults, and we need to be proactive in searching for our own path on this journey. We can learn from our international students as well as our African-American students about hermeneutics – a life philosophy. But remember that those of us in the group that are of fair skinned love you for who you are, and not for where you come from. This is the respect of human nature that we nurture.

By belonging to the doctoral forum group, we are offering a place, a space, and the support needed to all doctoral students who need or want others to talk to, to understand “marginalization”, with whom to research, and with whom to build life-long learning relationships.

As an older doc student, I have offered an open ear and heart to many others, and yes we need to complain and vent now and again. We are only human. However, we need to keep the focus on what the doctoral forum group purpose is: to build community, share research, and become critical colleagues.

We are the pioneers at KSU. If we are united and strong in our efforts, the faculty will continue to assist this journey. More importantly for the department and programs, they will make changes for the betterment of all doctoral students. On the other hand, as educators we have the opportunity to make a difference in lives in our community.

Diane