Application Guidelines Degree Programs Master of Arts Master of Philosophy > Orals Reading Lists Doctor of Philosophy Program Particulars Registration Courses Teaching & Fellowships Leaves of Absence Prizes & Travel Grants Placement & Employment Dept Organization Department Officers Staying Informed Graduate Student Directory Graduate Student Council Carnegie Initiative University Resources Libraries & Computing Centers & Organizations Student Services CARNEGIE INITIATIVE The Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID): what it is and what it hopes to achieve Faculty and students representatives Report on the CID's summer 2003 "convening" by David Kurnick The Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) is a multi-year project aimed at improving the education of doctoral students. The Columbia English Department joined the project at its start in 2002, along with 31 other departments both in English and other fields. This initiative proceeds first with self-scrutiny as individual graduate departments assess their current practices; then with conversations among representatives from participating programs who share the results of their departments' inquiries and compare their modi operandi; and next with experimental actions where departments supplement or revise their programs in light of cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary insights gained through these various discussions. The Carnegie Initiative guidelines suggest some issues the department should address: content of the program; skills or outcomes that students are expected to achieve; preferred pedagogical strategies to achieve those ends; student recruitment and retention; how students are assessed; quality and nature of individual and collective mentoring, career preparation; and expectations of the dissertation. Carnegie also points to the kinds of innovations a department might entertain as a result of its analyses and its exchanges of information with other programs: new courses; different strategies associated with graduate student advising, mentoring and matching with a thesis advisor; additional non classroom educational opportunities (journal clubs, writing groups, grant proposal seminars, career exploration opportunities); new assessment strategies (revised qualifying/ candidacy exams, mentoring committee reviews); changes in the nature and shape of the dissertation. Columbia English Department's Coordinator for the Carnegie Initiative: Jonathan Arac Faculty Representatives: Rachel Adams, Joseph Bizup, David Damrosch (who is also on the Carnegie all-discipline advisory committee for the CID), Jean Howard, Sharon Marcus, Bruce Robbins, Clifford Siskin, Gayatri Spivak, Paul Strohm, Gauri Viswanathan Student Representatives: Rishi Goyal and David Kurnick English Departments from other institutions participating in the Initiative: Duke University; Indiana University, Bloomington; The Ohio State University; Texas A&M University; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Pittsburgh Other disciplines participating in the initiative: chemistry, education, history, mathematics, neuroscienceDuring 2002-03, the faculty and student representative for Columbia English Department met some half-dozen times. For the first open meeting, held in the spring 2003, the following materials formed a basis of discussion: David Damrosch, "The Culture of Graduate Education," from We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University Andrew Delbanco, "What Should PhD Mean?" from PMLA vol. 115.5, "Conference on the Future of Doctoral Education" Bruce Robbins, "Pretend What You Like: Literature Under Construction," from The Question of Literature: The Place of the Literary in Contemporary Theory, ed. Liz Beaumont Bissell Edward W. Said, "Globalizing Literary Study," PMLA 116.1 Clifford Siskin, "What We Remember" and "How We Forget," from The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700-1830 For 2003-04, the committee expects to function at high intensity, meeting every two weeks through the year. The graduate student representatives listed above were selected last year by the Graduate Student Council; other graduate students who may now be interested should contact the GSC. Report on the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate's Summer 2003 Convening David Kurnick The Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) held a "convening" of participating departments this summer in Palo Alto, where we discussed changes to the doctoral program that may come out of our participation. I was the student representative from Columbia at the convening (Professors Arac and Adams were the other attendees from Columbia), and I'm sending this report to the graduate student body to let you know what happened there and to solicit your comments and ideas. Four main issues came up for Columbia's committee, and they're discussed below. Some of these (the easy ones) the department has already acted on. Others will obviously require more time, thought, and effort. Rishi Goyal (the other student member of the CID committee) and I will attend the next grad student meeting this fall to hear your suggestions, concerns, comments and questions. You can also of course contact Rishi (rkg6) or me (dsk29) at any time. Additionally, the CID committee personnel is far from fixed, and if you're interested in participating as a CID committee member, please let one of us know. Here's are the main issues we discussed at the convening. Many require a lot of further discussion, both within the department and with the administration. Only #1 has actually happened as of today. (The other English departments partcipating in the CID are Ohio State University, Indiana University, Duke University, University of Pittsburgh, Texas A&M University and University of Michigan.) 1. Advising Much of the Columbia group's discussion focused on the responses we received to the graduate student survey conducted last spring. The surveys indicated that one pressing, and easily resolvable, issue is the need for more structured advising in the first year of the program. Specifically, survey respondents indicated that they wanted individual, and where possible field-appropriate, advisors assigned in the first year. We decided that all incoming students would be assigned a faculty advisor, and that an effort would be made to correlate the advisor's specialty to the student's declared area of interest. When possible, these faculty advisors will come from the Committee on Graduate Education (CGE) that admitted the student, so that the faculty advisor will already have some degree of familiarity with the student's work and interests. Professor Adams has already completed assignments for this year's incoming class. 2. MA-Year Requirements Each incoming class is made up of two populations, MA-only students and Ph.D. candidates, but the department makes no distinction between these groups in terms of requirements or curricular introduction to graduate study. This means, among other things, that the only introduction to doctoral study that English Ph.D. candidates at Columbia receive comes through general MA seminars and the MA essay; there is nothing specifically oriented to introducing students to doctoral (as opposed to "advanced") study, nor is there anything specifically addressed to students who are only at Columbia for the MA. The CID committee is thinking about possible curricular changes in the first year that would address each of these needs without lessening the social coherence and collegiality of the entering class. 3. Opportunities to Teach Literature Most of us will look for jobs teaching literature after we complete our Ph.D.s, but the doctoral program currently makes no requirement that we learn to do this kind of teaching during our time at Columbia. Recent changes in the University Writing Program have opened up the possibility for devoting at least one of the three teaching years required by the department fellowships to leading sections in large introductory undergraduate classes. The structural obstacles to this are numerous, but the CID committee has broached the possibility of graduate-led discussion sections with the administration, which so far has been supportive. 4. Post-Doctoral Exchange Program with Other CID Schools The possibility was raised of Columbia participating in a program to exchange post-doctoral fellows with the other schools participating in the Carnegie Initiative. The idea is to enhance the professional development of graduate students by affording them experience of other institutions, increased teaching opportunities, etc. As with the restructuring of the teaching requirement, this would obviously require extensive discussion with the administration.