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Faculty-Student Interaction
As a graduate student, your status is quite different from that of an undergraduate student, particularly in relation to the faculty. The faculty will, formally, demand a much higher level of effort and achievement on your part than is customary for undergraduates. This is in response to your expressed interest in becoming an "expert" in your chosen field of study, and in acknowledgement of and with respect for your proven ability to do advanced work in the field.
In return, the faculty accepts you as a "junior colleague" in a variety of ways. If you are a teaching assistant you will find that you are performing duties, which are essentially the same as those of many of the faculty. Your opinions and contributions will be sought and valued at the regularly-held meetings of instructors in the courses, and you will be responsible for such things as test question generation and grading, alongside the senior faculty. In your own course work, faculty members will generally take quite seriously your need for outside assistance, or for guidance in pursuing topics of interest to you, which go beyond those covered in a particular course. When you become associated with a particular faculty member in a research project, your efforts and contributions are likely to put you into an extremely close and mutually dependent relationship with your research supervisor and other faculty and students working on the project. To differing degrees the student and the faculty member accept responsibility for the successful outcome of these efforts.
Apart from these relatively formalized interactions, opportunities exist for informal and social interactions, which contribute to the pleasantness of students' life as graduate students in physics. Students and faculty organize parties and informal social events, both Department-wide and within smaller groups such as research projects. The sense of community, which a small-city campus such as that of Rensselaer makes possible encourages a variety of group and individual informal relationships and activities. Since the Department is of moderate size, with a graduate-student-to-faculty ratio of approximately two-to-one, casual interactions occur readily and frequently, limited only by the individual's inclination and preferences.
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