On January 30, the Project Directors from the various institutions participating in the NEH Next Generation Humanities PhD met to discuss the progress of their projects. In morning and afternoon working groups, each institution’s current obstacles and action plans were discussed among the project directors.

We want to share the Graduate Center’s takeaways from these discussions, as they will serve as a key point of discussion for our February Project Steering Committee Meeting.

Obstacle

• Keeping faculty engaged from satellite colleges. These faculty number about 1400 and tend to skew younger. Graduate Center faculty number about 140.
• Strategic planning: too many exams and course requirements; exigencies of funding impact curriculum and requirements

Action Plan

• Research career options
• Make career information available to faculty to include in introductory courses
• Group event in May: What constitutes humanities today?
  • Create buy-in from different programs
  • Exercise: focus on milestones (e.g., comprehensive exams) and consider broad knowledge, basic knowledge, professional development, ethics, goals, and outcomes across disciplines
• Consider expanding non-curricular activities such as nonprofits engaging students in projects (e.g., a seminar structured around a specific project)
• Public humanities research lab
• Explore implications of student internships (i.e., Can the university afford to release someone who would otherwise be teaching?)
• Explore project-based activities for students
• Pilot a public engagement
• Consider admissions criteria and the possibility of selecting for openness to this innovation