the future of graduate education, phd skills and career planning heather zwicker interim dean, fgsr...
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![Page 1: The Future of Graduate Education, PhD Skills and Career Planning Heather Zwicker Interim Dean, FGSR CAGS 30 Oct 2015](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062309/5697bf981a28abf838c913c1/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The Future of Graduate Education, PhD Skills and Career Planning
Heather Zwicker
Interim Dean, FGSR
CAGS 30 Oct 2015
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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
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Four PD commitments
1. Entrepreneurship and Mentorship2. Internships3. Professional Skills4. Curricular Change
- realized through partnerships / collaboration -
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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…
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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 …
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…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?
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…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
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…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?)
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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?
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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.
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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.