Georgetown: “Sustaining the Public Humanities PhD Model: Teaching, Mentoring, and Placement”
- Push to institutionalize any changes
- Create a public humanities certificate program and humanities center
- Four pillars of humanities center—global/interdisciplinary/digital/public—ground the program in the community
- Important Questions and Considerations
- What does public humanities mean?
- What does a PhD in public humanities look like?
- Think about ideal as both intellectual and professional
- Humanities for the common good
- Advising in a Public Humanities Program
- Allow advisors from other departments
- Limit the number of students per advisor
- Be explicit about what we mean with mentoring/advising
- What does good mentoring look like?
- Care about students personally and their general well-being
- Most research on mentoring is dedicated to undergraduates
- Utilize the MLA toolkit
- Mentorship
- Enduring personal relationships
- Reciprocal relationships
- Provide direct career assistance
- How does it differ from sponsorship?
- Students need to be coached into seeking out mentors
- What should the minimum expectations be?
MLA: “Rethinking the Dissertation”
https://connect.mla.hcommons-staging.org/rethinking-the-dissertation/
- What is the purpose of the dissertation?—lots of confusion
- Contribution of knowledge to a field
- Demonstration of research chops
- Kind of transformational document—intellectual transformation
- A relic?
- Simply a basis of the monograph
- Closely tied to the system of publications
- Dissertation standard can’t change unless the monograph standard changes
- Create connections to local cultural sites and institutions—complexity that demands collaboration
- Questions and Considerations
- Who is it for? What is its basis?
- How is the dissertation serving the students?
- Does it need to be bound by discipline?
- Dissertation as a showcase—of self, of knowledge, of capability,
- Should it be viable for other careers—more versatile
- Interdisciplinary?
- Rename it a doctoral research project?
- Showcase or platform?
- At some level the dissertation interfaces with potential career possibilities
- Assumption that changing the form of the dissertation lowers standards
- What would it mean to DECENTER the dissertation?
UCHRI: “Sustaining Resistance: The Discourse and Work of Community through Humanists@Work”
- How to create community? Sustainability? Sustainability depends on staff and faculty
- Resistance to certain models of sustainability
- Anecdotal Evidence
- Grad students—anger, frustration, perception that they are less supported
- Faculty—resistance to entrenchment of neo-liberal university and these activities that spring from that
- Resistance to incorporating staff into conversations, not just resources or support, but thought creators and collaborators
- Faculty resistance to ownership of mentorship, to talk about things they’re not experts in (“I don’t know enough about that”)
- Solutions?
- Community and community empowerment—create solidarity and support
- Give students some voice in institutional debates
- Ethical responsibility to provide job opportunities and support grad students in pursuing other careers
- Potential Initiatives
- Networking tutorials
- Resume language workshops
- Community
- First step—bring the conversation to the forefront
ASU: “Internships for Humanists: Reimagining Career Pathways through Transferrable Skills”
- Internships for PhD Students
- Starting Questions
- Is there value in structuring internships around project-based deliverables for internship professional development?
- How can we articulate the value/purpose of internships to diverse audiences: students, faculty, administrators, internship partners?
- What does an internship look like that is mindful of inclusion and diversity? Is there a fundamental framework necessary for establishing community involvement?
- How to integrate internship into PhD program curriculum and courses?
- Documentation? Reporting? Evaluation? as part of student internship experience
- Values of Internship
- Student provide a voice; input is valued
- Collaboration
- Open future opportunities
- Tangible outcomes
- Application of skills/knowledge in meaningful setting
- Developing transferrable skills
- Discover skills/talents you didn’t know you had
- Pushed outside comfort zone
- Job crafting—able to shape internship to personal interests, goals, etc.
- Criteria for Internships
- Breadth and depth of the experience
- Opportunity for students to apply principles learned in and outside the classroom
- Opportunity to observe professionals in action
- Opportunity to develop specific skills
- Supervision and processing time
- Safe work environment
- Environment free from discrimination and sexual harassment
- Preliminary Steps for Internship
- Discuss expectations, job description, learning objectives
- Share documents
- Formulate structures to create job transparency
- Best Practices
- Structures, paperwork, documentation, benchmarks
- Provide both project-based internships and task/skill-oriented
- Find/create variety of internship opportunities and partnerships
- Oversight
- Allow students to create own internship experience
- Encourage independence to pursue informational interviews and network of contacts
- Questions of terminology
- Internship vs fellowship—What do these terms imply to students and faculty
- Need to rebrand?
- Starting Questions