This piece from Anne Krook encourages humanities graduate departments to focus “on two problems whose fixes are within our own control.” She identifies the problems as as, first, training “students in too narrow a range of dissertation lengths and types” and second “most often implicitly and explicitly devalu[ing] non-academic job outcomes.” Departments and advisers…
Category: Mentoring
How Graduate Advisers Can Bolster Their Career Guidance
This piece by James M. Van Wyck encourages graduate advisers to actively develop their knowledge of where humanities PhDs work, to look to their own networks as a resource for connecting students with possible post-graduation options, and to adopt a perspective that understands career advising as a team-based approach rather than the sole responsibility of…
How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty
Developed by the University of Michigan’s graduate school in 2018, this guide is a “resource for faculty members who seek to improve their relationships with their students and their effectiveness in working with them.” Featuring ideas for how to communicate expectations and responsibilities, examples of how departments at Michigan frame mentoring and supervision, and suggestions for campus…
Recap: A Tool Kit for Doctoral Student Career Planning
In May 2017, the MLA’s Connected Academics Initiative published a guide for PhD programs and faculty about doctoral student career planning. This past January, at the MLA conference in New York, Kalle Westerling attended a Connected Academics Initiative event on “Doctoral Student Career Planning.” Designed for faculty and advisors in academic institutions—especially those who wanted to advise their students…
Promising Practices in Humanities PhD Professional Development
This report presents findings from the 2016-2017 Next Generation Humanities PhD Consortium that is useful for faculty and administrators interested in professional development. Funded by the NEH and facilitated by the Council of Graduate Schools, the document outlines lessons learned, suggests some practices encouraging career diversity, and includes some ideas about how to go forward…
How to Mentor Graduate Students for Non-traditional Jobs: Advice from the Career Center
By Matthew Woodbury Dr. Clarence Anthony, a career coach at the University of Michigan Career Center, has a wealth of experience working with humanities doctoral students who are considering and pursuing non-traditional employment. As experts in their disciplines, Michigan faculty have a good grasp of how to prepare graduate students for roles in the academy.…
Quick Start Guide for Faculty Mentors
Wondering how to effectively mentor students if your knowledge of careers outside the professoriate is limited? We put together a Quick Start Guide for our website. It provides guidelines on how to begin conversations with your students on professional development.
Walking the Career-Diversity Walk
This Chronicle of Higher Education article asks faculty to consider the unconscious biases and assumptions that often shape their attitudes about what constitutes a legitimate or respectable career path for a person with a PhD. As long as this perception endures, the author argues, attempts to reform doctoral programs to support diverse career outcomes will face…
Doctoral Student Career Planning Guide for Faculty
The Modern Language Association’s Connected Academics program has developed an excellent guide to help faculty members broaden the reach of their mentoring for doctoral students. While the guide was created for faculty in English and other modern languages, it offers useful advice for all humanities faculty who seek to improve the quality of their mentoring…
How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty
Rackham’s comprehensive guide to mentoring graduate students is based on years of research and experience. It provides advice for faculty and departments on how to provide the best possible mentoring in a variety of fields and contexts.