5 Ways to Broaden the Doctoral Curriculum

To better prepare Ph.D. students in the humanities for careers outside of the professoriate, several departments and professors have started to add courses or make tweaks to the traditional curriculum. Here are five examples of steps they have taken.

Instill group work skills

A University of Chicago history professor created a course, set to start this spring, that puts students in groups of four to work on projects for nonacademic institutions like museums. The goal is to teach students to work together and think about not only historical content, but the needs of a client.

Create a careers seminar

At the University of California at Los Angeles, a history professor has created a course that shows students, partly through classroom visits by working professionals, how a history Ph.D. could be used outside of academe.

Revamp the intro course

Opening Doors for the Ph.D

Ph.D.Colleges make curricular changes to better prepare humanities doctoral students for careers outside academe.

• Opening Doors for the Ph.D.
• Helping History Ph.D.s Expand Their Job Options
• How Administrators Can Help Prepare Ph.D.s for Nonfaculty Careers

Several colleges are using the introduction-to-graduate-studies course to get students to think about their career paths early in their program. At the University of Kansas, a French professor uses that course to ensure students have an accurate view of the academic job market.

Build modules

Some professors want to help students think about careers, but don’t know how. So some scholars at the City University of New York Graduate Center are making modules containing readings and other programming that would help other professors start conversations in introduction-to-doctoral-studies courses.

Tweak the traditional curriculum

At the University of New Mexico, professors are trying to make modest changes to embed career skills into the existing curriculum. A course on an American nationalism, for example, will allow a final project in a form other than the traditional essay.