| It has been an absolutely exhausting but invigorating few days as I have participated in the annual NCFR conference. I have mentioned here before how much I looooove conferences. (But for some different perspectives on academic conferences, see this Blogher round-up.) Besides my poster presentation of my dissertation pilot data (which went very well) and some truly wonderful sessions (that I hope to blog at greater length about soon), I was happy to see several points of conversation center on this issue that I brought up in this blog post from last year. The post concerns disciplinary identity, and how one prepares to be a disciplinary "steward" as a graduate student.
I am finished with my PhD program. But my need to define the discipline that others have deemed me ready to "steward" has only increased. I am postdoc-ing right now, and in a much larger department with a much longer history and more clearly defined core identity and outer boundaries. Letting those folks know "who I am" has been a challenge at times--but an exercise that I have welcomed. So the topic of this post is still quite relevant for me, and seems to be relevant for other graduate students and new professionals I have talked with over the last several days. I do not address in this post what the role of disciplinary organizations and journal editors are in assisting emerging scholars to become excellent stewards. Perhaps that is a conversation that I can spark with this re-posting. (Originally posted April 12, 2005) |
I may have mentioned this here before, but it's funny how one develops keen insights into doctoral education--insights necessary to thrive as a PhD student--just as one is finishing the degree. I have been reflecting on one such insight recently, the very basic question:
"What exactly is a PhD student?"
A simple answer is: "Someone who is enrolled as a student in a PhD-granting unit or department."
But what if you are a part time student instead of a full-time one? If you used to be enrolled, but dropped (or were kicked) out? If you are taking dissertation credits for two or three years?
And are you "married" to your unit or department? Or can you be placed in a different one while still maintaining your status as a "PhD student"? Are you ("instead of" or "in addition to") "married" to your discipline? To your specific content area within that discipline?
Are you a student only if you have been taken on by an advisor?
The answer I have come up with reflects the extent to which I have bought into the Carnegie Foundation's Initiative on the Doctorate's definition of the purpose of doctoral education. In their "conceptual analysis of doctoral education" the CID defines the purpose of PhD programs as being to prepare people to be "stewards of the discipline."
This steward is someone "to whom we can entrust the vigor, quality, and integrity of the field." Further, this person
"has developed the habits of mind and ability to do three things well:
creatively generate new knowledge,
critically conserve valuable and useful ideas, and
responsibly transform those understandings through writing, teaching, and application."
So my answer to that very basic question, "What is a PhD student" is "A PhD student is someone who is actively preparing to be a steward of a discipline."
The whole CID statement on "stewardship" is worth a full, careful read. And like I said, I have purchased this assessment at full price. I do acknowledge, however, that it poses a particular challenge for PhD students like me who are preparing to be stewards of disciplines that have more fluid boundaries. For example, one of the tasks of stewards-in-training is to conserve the discipline, to develop:
...an understanding of the history and foundational ideas of the discipline. Disciplines evolve continuously, and stewards have responsibility for maintaining the continuity, stability, and vitality of the field. A Ph.D. recipient should understand the foundations of the field; which ideas to keep and which to reject. Moreover, a steward should understand how their discipline fits into the intellectual landscape, have a respectful understanding of the questions and paradigms of other fields, and understand how their discipline can speak to important questions.
Some disciplines are not clearly markated in terms of their origins, or their "foundations" are collaged from many different disciplinary materials. Landscape-fitting is made more challenging for students in such departments due to the "blind-men-touching-the-elephant" nature of the intellectual tree/bush/vine (or rock/mountain/sand...) these students are being entrusted with. For these students, the very vitality of their discipline is thought to lie in its intellectual diversity, a diversity that makes "stability and continuation of what?" a crucial, persistent--and not often agreed upon--question.
So. If PhD students are folks preparing to be stewards of their discipline, what are "multidisciplinary" ("transdisciplinary"..."interdisciplinary"...) PhD students going to be the stewards of?
One of my committee members, Carl Elliott, has a satirical piece called "How To Be An Academic Failure: A Guide for Beginners" (The Ruminator Review, Winter 2000, pp. 15-16. Available at http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/giddings/Commentary/failure.htm)
He writes that "if failure is what you?re looking for, then you can hardly do better than the academic life." One route to failure is to choose to be a PhD student in an interdisciplinary field:
What about interdisciplinary degrees, you ask? Aren't they supposed to be a sure-fire waste of time and money? Well, there are two schools of thought about interdisciplinary degrees, both of which have merit, depending on the kind of failed career to which you aspire. If what you are looking for is difficulty finding a job, then yes, an interdisplinary degree can be very useful. A degree in "social thought" or "medical humanities" or "bioethics" will limit your job opportunities drastically. When you apply for jobs in mainstream departments, the chair of the search committee will roll his eyes, laugh, and toss your CV straight into the rubbish bin. It sounds appealing, I know. Yet on the other hand, these sorts of programs are often much happier places than traditional departments, and you probably will not be expected to write narrow, technical articles uninterpretable by all but 7 other people in the world. So it is a trade-off. How much happiness are you willing to undergo for the pay-off of being unemployed later? It is a difficult choice.
Why is being an inter/multi/transdisciplinary PhD student looked at this way? My opinion: Because a legitimate steward must be in charge of something. If a steward finishes her training, but the trained-for discipline does not exist out there in the world--in "traditional departments" or elsewhere--then that calls into question the whole training process. This is the case no matter how good or rigorous or intellectually compelling or well respected or highly rated or anything else this training might be.
Who is in the ideal position to define what the stewards are to be stewards of?
Perhaps the captains. The folks training the stewards. They certainly have a big role. And on the CID site there are wonderful essays by captains of various disciplinary programs, attempting to do just that.
But also, this is a job for us stewards-in-training ourselves.
As we are in training, as we are doing our PhD student thing, we are creating and defining our discipline. We are deciding--by the advisors and minors we choose, by the classes we take, by the topics of the papers we write, by the rules we abide by and those we buck, by the leadership activities we involve ourselves in--what ship we're on. By these and many other tasks we are defining what it means to be a PhD in X.
If you are enrolled in a doctoral degree program--any degree program, but particularly one in a multidisciplinary field--and you are not actively participating in your own stewardship- and discipline-defining, then you are not a PhD student.
You're just a tourist, passing through.
Terrific. Needed it.m
Posted by: Chris gonzalez at November 12, 2006 10:34 AM