In order to build upon and extend engagement and to enhance faculty and student skills as we move forward, we organize two-day retreats focused on the best pedagogical practices for instilling capacities essential for success both within academia and in the world beyond — capacities often neglected in humanities graduate seminars, but considered by leading academic associations to be foundational to career diversity (see, for example, the MLA’s “Transferable Skills for PhDs in the Humanities” and the AHA’s “The Career Diversity Five Skills”).
Included are such capacities as project management, collaborative research and writing, public presentation, communication in a variety of media and for multiple audiences, and digital and quantitative literacy. In addition, because many PhDs in the humanities will take up teaching positions at institutions other than research universities, it is essential that best practices for teaching the humanities at all levels, including in high schools and community colleges, be incorporated into graduate training. An informal survey of our humanities departments indicates that some faculty have already begun to build these key capacities into their graduate seminars, especially collaborative research and writing, digital skills, and numeracy, but they remain the exception, not the rule.
We have so far offered four retreats: fall 2018, fall 2019, spring 2021 and spring 2023. Please see the links below to learn more about the experts invited to lead working sessions on topics such as collaborative learning environments, building numeracy into humanities syllabi, and community engagement and the public humanities, drawn from our own faculty and outside our institution.
