I received the message below in an email and am sharing as the text requests because having more information on humanities graduate programs would benefit all interested in both traditional and non-traditional career paths.
Please share widely!
Dear Colleague,
Many thanks for contributing to the database of individuals on alternative academic career paths! As you know, the database is part of a suite a of activities related to graduate education reform that the the Scholarly Communication Institute is running this year with support from the Mellon Foundation:
http://uvasci.org/current-work/
The two surveys described below are meant to help us move from anecdote to data in conversations about humanities grad training nationwide — with particular emphasis on alternative academic careers, or hybrid and non-professorial roles for liberal arts PhDs in and around the academy. Links are provided at the end of the announcement, below.
If you haven’t already done so, please help us out by taking the employer and/or employee surveys if they apply to you, and by circulating the call through your networks! We would especially appreciate your help in helping to share the survey links beyond Twitter — for instance, on relevant email distribution lists, among your colleagues, or by posting a link to your website. Please feel free to circulate the text below to any potentially interested groups.
Thank you again for helping us to advance this conversation.
Best regards,
Katina Rogers
*Note: This is the only email you’ll receive about the project, and we won’t use your email address for anything else. As a reminder, your email address is not publicly visible in the database. The surveys below are completely anonymous and confidential.
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The Scholarly Communication Institute (http://uvasci.org/) is conducting a study on career preparation in humanities graduate programs. As part of this study, we are administering two confidential surveys: the first is for people on alternative academic career paths (that is, people with graduate training in the humanities and allied fields working beyond the professoriate); the second is for their employers. The study focuses on graduate education practices in North America, but we welcome all participants. The surveys will be open until October 1, 2012.
Humanities scholars come from a wide array of backgrounds and embark on a variety of careers in areas like libraries, museums, archives, higher education and humanities administration, publishing, research and technology, and more. SCI anticipates that data collected during the study will contribute to a deeper understanding of the diversity of career paths that humanities scholars pursue after their graduate studies, while also highlighting opportunities to better prepare students for a range of careers beyond the tenure track.
The study complements the public database that SCI recently created as a way to clarify the breadth of the field, and to foster community among a diverse group (available at http://altacademy.wufoo.com/reports/who-we-are/).
Both the database and the surveys are being administered by Dr. Katina Rogers as part of SCI’s current phase of work — which includes a close concentration on graduate education reform and the preparation of future knowledge workers, educators, and cultural heritage and scholarly communications professionals.
The survey results will help us to make curriculum recommendations so that graduate programs may better serve future students, and anonymized or summarized data will be made available at at a later date via http://uvasci.org. Please contact Katina at katina.rogers@virginia.edu if you’d like to know more.
- Complete the main survey here: http://alt-academy.questionpro.com/
- If you supervise someone with a humanities graduate degree, complete the brief employer survey: http://alt-academy.employers.questionpro.com/
Thank you in advance for your time and support on this project.