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The PhD Project As
was true for many participating departments, the relationship between
the comprehensive examination and "professionalization" remains a
central question for us at Pitt. Many in our department believe
students should orient their exams toward field specializations current
among the profession. Many others believe our doctorate should instead
seek to find innovative objects and ways of knowing so as to lead the
profession rather than mirror it. And there are many who have nuanced
positions anywhere in between these two. A central goal of our CID
participation has been to understand these differences better so that
our reforms to the PhD Project are flexible, rigorous, and responsible
to our students.
Current PhD Project Regulations
These are the current PhD Project regulations from our Graduate Handbook.
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Are PhD Projects adequately preparing our students? As
part of our initial deliberations for the CID, we compiled a list of
PhD Project titles along with Dissertation Prospectus titles for each
of our doctoral students for as many years back as we could. Because
records of these titles had been kept unevenly, we could only go back
to 1998. However, comparing Project and Prospectus titles for each
student from 1998 to 2003 was revealing. Over 70% of
them were either identical or nearly identical (see the document
below). This confirmed for many the sense that Project work had
narrowed significantly beyond what the department had intended when it
moved to the PhD Project format in 1986. For
many in the department this information raised a further concern: Were
we adequately preparing our students, at the level of the comprehensive
examination, for jobs structured largely by traditional literary
historical fields? Placement information for our graduates from 1991 to
2001 suggested otherwise: 76% of our doctorates received tenure-track employment (far above the national average), and 95% of
our doctorates received either tenure-track or non-tenure track
employment. Despite these very promising placement figures, many in our
department continue to be troubled by what seem to be overly narrow and
specialized PhD Projects. Differences remain, both on the Leadership
Team and in the department generally, on whether the Project should be
oriented more towards professional field categories or towards some
other version of "comprehensiveness." In making responsible
changes to our PhD Project, we sought to recognize the potential
vitality of these differences, particularly among the different
intellectual practices of our colleagues.
Project and Prospectus Titles 1998-2003
This document compares students' PhD Project titles and dissertation prospectus titles over a 5-year period.
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Conferring with Texas A and M 2003
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Evolution of Proposals At
the 2003 CID convening, Richard Purcell and Eric Clarke came up with a
set of proposed reforms to the PhD Project guidelines. These proposals
emerged largely out of both deliberations within the Leadership Team
during the year before the convening, and during the "friendly critic"
sessions we had with representatives from Texas A&M, which were
especially helpful. We presented the following recommendations to our
Leadership Team in the fall of 2003: A. Faculty-graduate student workshops on the Project. B. Tie the PhD Project more closely to a student's Teaching & Research Field. C. Mandate more than one Project Paper. D. Remove the written examination portion of the Project. E. Informal workshops between the Project and the Prospectus. During the 2003-04 academic year, our Leadership Team debated these proposals, but reached no consensus on them. We
decided to present alternate proposals to the department in 2004-5. A
subcommittee of the Leadership Team proposed two possible changes to
the current Project regulations and guidelines. These proposals were
discussed by the entire department in December, 2004. While a majority
of the department favored the first proposal, which made fewer changes
to the Project and did not institute field-oriented exams, the
department directed the subcommittee to incorporate the most appealing
features of the second option and present a final proposal to the
department in March 2005. We decided that the innovative spirit of the
PhD Project should remain intact, but that the guidelines could be
reoriented to mitigate against overly narrow Projects. We synthesized
the discussions we had during the convenings, within the Leadership
Team, and within the department as a whole into regulations that make
the PhD Project into a braoder preparation for not only the more
focused work of the dissertation, but also the variety of research and
teaching experiences our students can expect to have in their careers. Both the November 2004 proposal and the final March 2005 proposal are available below.
PhD Project Proposals
This document outlines the two alternative proposals to change the PhD Project.
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What is the Intended Effect? The
comprehensive examination stands as a bridge between coursework and the
focused research and writing of the dissertation. Ideally it also
should help prepare PhD students for the variety of teaching and
research experiences they can expect to have throughout their careers.
We sought to innovate our version of this exam so that it achieves both
of these goals. We also sought to create a structure that encourages
connections between our students' research and their teaching. One way
to do this was to encourage students to link their exam preparation to
their "teaching and research field." The teaching and research field is
declared at the end of coursework, and is comprised of five courses
plus a rationale for the field prepared by the student. On the one
hand, this helps students to engage with the expectation of
specialization. On the other, because our curriculum is not organized
by traditional literary historical periods--it is highly unlikely, for
example, that in three years a student would have taken five courses in
19th-century British novel--we believe this can also be a moment of
innovation for the students. We
also sought to sought to balance innovation with the field-orientation
of the profession by mandating two Project papers. The first deals with
the main issues and questions of the Project as a whole, while the
second presents options that allow students to engage a particular
"tradition of inquiry" relevant to the way they have defined their
Project.
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How to Measures Success? Over
the past three years, the graduate studies office has instituted a
number of regular data-gathering tasks in order for us to keep track of
trends within our PhD program. After the department approved changes to
the PhD Project, the Leadership Team will meet in the fall of 2006 to
discuss ways that we can start tracking the effects of these changes.
We understand that these effects are long-term in nature, and will
likely rely on placement data we compile over the next five to ten
years. More immediately, however, we will discuss different types of
surveys to administer to our students--likely both after the exam and
after placement--that will help us to understand what relationship our
revised examination has to the experiences our PhDs have while at Pitt
and after they begin their careers.
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