the future of graduate education, phd skills and career planning heather zwicker interim dean, fgsr...
TRANSCRIPT
The Future of Graduate Education, PhD Skills and Career Planning
Heather Zwicker
Interim Dean, FGSR
CAGS 30 Oct 2015
How we approached PD• Professional Development Advisory Board struck in 2013
with reps from industry, gov’t, non-profit, entrepreneurial sector, and university (profs and students)
• PDAB had 3 working groups:– Skills and competencies– Planning engagement with employers about graduate
education– University culture change
• Result: Professional Development Strategic Plan, endorsed by FGSR Council – Individual Development Plan– 8 hours per degree of PD
• How: $2.1m grant from Government of Alberta
Four PD commitments
1. Entrepreneurship and Mentorship2. Internships3. Professional Skills4. Curricular Change
- realized through partnerships / collaboration -
1a: Entrepreneurship• Concept: PhD students take an idea, or a product,
or a process, or an algorithm, or a technology….and turn it into a business
• Key partners eHUB (on-campus commercialization centre), TEC Edmonton (off-campus research commercialization) and Business School offer:– Business development courses and advice– Funding and finance – Technology management
• Coming in 2016:– Makerspaces on campus
1b: Mentorship
• Concept: Match those who’ve been there with those who want to get there …. at scale
• Key partners: Venture Mentoring Services (UofA alumni organization that has developed tiered group mentoring); public advisory boards; Senate; IPAC (Institute of Public Administration of Canada); alumni
2: Internships
• Concept: Give students the work experience they need to land their first job
• Not necessarily research internships!• Placements across sectors: industry,
government, non-profit sector• Partners: MITACS, TEC Edmonton,
Career Centre
3: Professional Skills
• Graduate Teaching and Learning program• Mygradskills.ca and Skillsoft Online• Individual Development Plans• Email listserv• PD Week & regular sessions
Coming in 2016:• 8 hour Professional Development requirement• New courses developed with U-Calgary and U-
Lethbridge
FGSR Dean’s Exec
Steering group; establish policies, troubleshoot
issues, provide oversight
PD Advisory Board
$2.15 M Annual Budget Allocation
Entrepreneurship, Mentorship
$425,000: VMS - $200,000
eHUB, AB Sch of Bus. grants - $225,000
Internships
$1,300,000:150 internships @
$8000/ea + one FTE @ $100,000
PD Skills
$350,000:MyGradSkills, Mitacs,
training modules - $250,000Non-academic transcript
tool - $100,000
Curricular Change
$75,000
Entrepreneurship, Mentorship
Partners: VMS; eHUB; Alumni Council; Senate; AB School of Business;
TEC Edmonton
Internships
Partners: CAPS; UofA units; Mitacs
PD Skills
Partners: Campus Alberta; CTL
Curricular Change
Partners: FGSR Council; GEFAC; GSA
FGSR Dean’s Exec
Steering group; establish policies, troubleshoot
issues, provide oversight
PD Advisory Board
Professional Development Activities
4: Curricular Change – Or, The Future of Graduate Education
• The big question:– If we are not training PhD students to be
professors in a discipline,* then what is a PhD for? How long should it take? What does it do that a Master’s degree doesn’t?
* But 15% will be profs…
Program implications…
• Coursework– Some? None? – Accredited PD skills?
• Dissertation:– Is the monograph the best way to demonstrate
mastery? Is writing? sole-authorship?– Consider public writing, practice-led PhDs,
capstone projects (for industry?), the scholarship of application, public humanities …
…program implications…
• Supervision:– Should we permit / pursue non-
academic supervisors?
• Milestones:– Field exams? Candidacy? – Exit points not driven by shame?– Should a PhD be done all at once or
iteratively?
…program implications…
• Teaching– PhD students may not become 40/40/20
tenure-track research/teaching/service integrated profs, but many of them will teach for a living
– Teaching skills are transferable– We know how to credential university-
level pedagogy
…program implications
• Disciplinarity– If we are not training professors in a
discipline, why protect disciplines at all? The future of grad education might be problem-driven, multi-disciplinary and collaborative.
– What mechanisms would we need to support broad-based, problem-driven interdisciplinary programs? (degree-offering FGSRs?)
Future grad = Future academy• 85% of our students are facing a
world of work we can’t imagine: this is (also) exciting.
• The academy is part of this changing world of work.
• Let’s approach the PhD problem in two ways– Theoretically: what do we want?– Pragmatically: how can we get there?
Future academy• Theory (“core values”): My public
research university is collaborative, knowledgeable, broad, problem-solving, outward-facing and bold.
• Praxis: a series of experiments.– The PhD has never been one thing;– Buy-in will only come from the ground up;– We can’t know in advance what will work.
We are getting there
• Many of us work interdisciplinarily• Our supervisory practice is already team-oriented• Popular intellectualism is hot• The funding councils, the OECD and the
Conference Board of Canada are on our side – Canadian academics are ready to ask the big questions.
• Let’s work collaboratively – in institutional partnerships, across disciplines, with postdocs and alt-acs and graduate students and alumni, at all levels of the university – to figure out the answers.
