Public Engagement for Graduate Students
Our University of Minnesota forum on "Civic Engagement and Graduate Education", a warm-up for next week's Wingspread conference had a lot of thoughtful discussion. Among the ideas put forward about how to integrate public engagement into graduate student and faculty life:
- Create a Community Scholars program to recognize and support the substantial work we ask of community partners. Have funds available to give honoraria to community partners who come in and talk to classes.
- Expand the research ethics/‘best practices in research’ training required of all graduate students to address public engagement. Develop and disseminate a code of ethics and case studies in research ethics that are related to public engagement.
- Provide graduate students opportunities for guided reflection with faculty and community members, which could help them remember why they were in graduate school—thus preventing the passion from getting socialized out of them, as often happens now.
- Develop a graduate-level minor or a post-baccalaureate certificate (which would have the advantage of being open to community members) focused on public engagement. There is already the Community Engagement Scholars Program for undergraduates.
- Create partnerships within different communities that rest on trusting relationships and offer researchers, including graduate students, a foundation for engaged work that doesn’t require them to develop new relationships on their own.
- Gather individuals interested in engagement as a teaching and learning strategy into an intellectual community.
Comments
I am delighted to see this discussion underway at Minnesota. There is a lot of energy around change in graduate education. Here are some of the programs the are making a mark in the arts and humanities.
Imagining America's web site (linked to Vic's blog) includes information on our PAGE program (Publicly Active Graduate Education). Sylvia Gale at UT Austin directs that program and can share information about our conference fellows. New certificate or degree programs in community-based cultural studies or American Studies are being started at U of Washington-Bothell and Rutgers-Newark. Woodrow Wilson's Responsive Ph.D. Program and its report on Diversity and the Ph.D. (see www.woodrow.org) are very important. Brothers of the Academy (BOTA) and Sisters of the Academy (SOTA) are key networks for African-American graduate students and faculty. The Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington has run an annual Public Humanities Institute for graduate students for three years running; I believe that this model is being adopted by the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa. The Professional Development and Civic Engagement Program at UT Austin, based at the Graduate School, is a terrific resource for students there.
I know that people around the country are excited about the engagement work that is unfolding at Minnesota. Graduate students are important leaders in this work. Good luck!
Julie Ellison
Director
Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life
Posted by: Julie Ellison | February 25, 2006 09:19 PM
p.s. The Woodrow Wilson site (www.woodrow.org) also contains wonderful narratives by graduate student recipients of their Humanities At Work grants. And the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan, in the past, has provided grants for graduate students pursuing public scholarship projects in the cultural disciplines.
J. Ellison
Posted by: Julie Ellison | February 25, 2006 09:21 PM