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My father is a construction worker, a member of the mysterious order of sheet-metal fabricators. In my mind’s eye I see him with a tool in hand, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and a piece of elbow duct overhead. The elbow duct is a crucial item in the system he is installing: It will enable a 90-degree shift in the circuit of return air flow. But today it is not fitting according to the blueprint. For five minutes he tries to wrangle the elbow duct into position according to the specifications provided him. Then he brushes aside the blueprint, reshapes the duct, and maneuvers it into place. When the blueprint failed to match the reality in front of him, it took him only five minutes to abandon the blueprint for a new approach.
In graduate education we work with blueprints too, although we are seldom clear about where they come from, and we are rarely willing to brush them aside. But occasionally we notice that the blueprint fails to conform to the reality in front of us, and we rethink our approach. During the six years that I served on the graduate faculty in the Department of American Studies at Saint Louis University, I worked with my colleagues to redesign our graduate programs, with special attention to the Ph.D. Our modest efforts may contribute to the national conversation about doctoral education in the humanities.
Rethinking the Ph.D.
For most departments, particularly in the humanities, the greatest barrier to change in how we do business is the lack of clarity among faculty and students regarding the nature, purpose, and goals of graduate education. An exhaustive study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 1999 and summarized in the report At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Today’s Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral Education (2001), reveals a highly uneven system of mentoring, training, and preparation that leaves students mystified about the institutions they in-habit, the purposes of the degrees they pursue, and the processes by which they connect to the vocations that impassion them.
Fortunately, a growing movement has developed to reconceptualize graduate training in the United States, particularly at the doctoral level. In 1993, the Council of Graduate Schools and the Association of American Colleges and Universities launched the initiative “Preparing Future Faculty” (PFF), funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Science Foundation, which helped selected universities intensify the mentoring of graduate students who aspired to the professoriate. Meanwhile, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation initiated its “Responsive Ph.D.” project in 2000, in which it translated research findings on doctoral education into 41 best practices. Likewise, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching began the influential “Initiative on the Doctorate.” Essays from that project were been gathered into a useful volume, Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline (Jossey-Bass, 2006), edited by Chris Golde and George Walker. Finally, Jody Nyquist, the former associate dean at the University of Washington who directed the Pew-funded “Re-Envisioning the Ph.D.” project there, examined the current state of graduate education in her Change article, “The Ph.D.: A Tapestry of Change for the 21st Century,” (November/December 2002) and compiled a roster of best practices for reforming doctoral education (at http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/).
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Joseph Heathcott is an associate professor of urban studies at the New School. Until recently, he was on the graduate faculty of the Department of American Studies at Saint Louis University. He has contributed essays to a wide range of journals and magazines, including Academe, Cultural Survival Quarterly, City and Community, The Journal of Social History, Planning Perspectives, and The Journal of Urban History. Heathcott is co-editor of Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization (Cornell University Press, 2003).
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