Without diminishing the centrality of the PhD research endeavor, how can we cultivate more engaged graduate students? This presentation situates the graduate research endeavor in its wider institutional and public context and suggests two concrete ways to give PhDs enhanced skills that will enable them to enrich their institutions and the wider world they inhabit.

1. The Engaged PhD
Christopher P. Long
Associate Dean for Graduate and Undergraduate Education
College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State
@cplong | @deancplong | cplong.org

2. The value of a PhD is rooted in the research endeavor it requires. The habits of disciplined PhD
scholarship deepen our understanding of the world we inhabit.

3. Such substantive, extended research projects require specific habits of scholarship — close reading,
creative questioning, resourceful imagination, sophisticated writing — that enrich the life of the academy.

4. The habits of scholarship associated with the PhD research endeavor enrich the academic institution by
infusing it with new, potentially transformative ideas to consider and communicate.
These ideas have the capacity to offer new solutions to existing problems or to open new possibilities for
intractable, dysfunctional relationships.

5. In the same way the scholar enriches the life of the institution, the institution enriches the wider world in
which it is situated. By conducting research and educating undergraduates, colleges and universities
train creative workforces, solve pressing societal problems, and cultivate in citizens a more meaningful
understanding of the world and their place in it.

6. These relationships—between scholar and institution, institution and world—are at the root of traditional
PhD education.

7. But, of course, these relationships are reciprocal. The wider world contributes back to the university young
people to be educated and funding for research and discovery. And the academy creates supportive
environments that promote scholarly activities.

8. Now, the more cynical among us might consider these relationships more coercive and manipulative than
supportive and enriching; and that’s fine. I don’t want to idealize the complexities that condition academic
life. But I do want to find opportunities to enhance graduate education by empowering graduate students
to understand these interrelationships so that they can enrich them and be enriched by them.

9. GRIP
Graduate Internship Program
The graduate internship program (GRIP) is designed to expose graduate students to the broader life of
the institutions that make their scholarship possible.
PhD students gain expanded work experience and develop marketable skills without being diverted from
their primary research agenda or slowed in their degree progress.

10. Career Enrichment Network
University Fellowships Office
Alumni Relations
Admissions
GRIP
Graduate Internship Program
A PhD internship in the Career Enrichment Network or University Fellowship Office offers insight into the
institutional structures that support undergraduate and graduate education.
To gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between the academy and the wider world, PhD
candidates might work in Alumni Relations and Development or in Undergraduate Admissions.

11. GRIP
Graduate Internship Program
The idea behind GRIP is both to cultivate in graduate students an understanding of the complex
institutions that sustain their scholarship and also to empower them to participate in the life of the
institution and the wider world of which it is a part.

12. The third side of this triangle points to the direct relationship between the student and the world.
Whatever else digital modes of communication entail, they afford scholars opportunities to engage a wide
public in ways that can be enriching for both. Cultivating the habits of excellent public scholarly
communication takes intentional, reflective practice.

13. ADOO
A Domain of One’s Own
Last fall, following the lead of Jim Groom at the University of Mary Washington, we launched “A Domain of
One’s Own” to give graduate students personal, non-institutional domains and hosting space that they
can carry with them after graduation.

14. ADOO Listening
Sharing
A Domain of One’s Own
The Domain of One’s Own initiative opens a space for young scholars to cultivate public communities of
shared interest. Under their own moniker, students can share their research findings and methods with a
public that will benefit from their work. Here too, however, students can learn the important habits of
listening and responding to the public in ways that allow a dialogue to emerge that can have
transformative effects on scholars and publics both.

15. These are the reciprocal relationships that enrich us as scholars and afford us opportunities to contribute
to the well-being of the institutions that sustain us and the wider world about which we care so deeply.

16. By taking these connections seriously and integrating a concern for them into the graduate student
experience, we will be able to cultivate more engaged and engaging scholars without diminishing their
ability to pursue and complete extended PhD research.

17. The value here from an #AltAc perspective should be clear.
By cultivating PhDs with a deeper appreciation for the dynamics of these interconnected relationships and
the skills needed to navigate them effectively, we open new opportunities for graduates and enrich our
institutions, whether they be universities ...

18. ... businesses …

19. ... government organizations …

20. ... healthcare providers …

21. ... NGOs ...

22. ... or whatever institution might be benefited by scholars with excellent research skills capable of
effectively engaging the wider world they inhabit.

23. The PhD has always and will remain rooted in the research endeavor ...

24. ... but that research is supported and enriched by the academy ...

25. ... so that it might in turn transform our understanding of the world we share and deepen our relationships
with one another.

26. Christopher P. Long
Associate Dean for Graduate and Undergraduate Education
College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State
@cplong | @deancplong | cplong.org
Credits
Question designed by Juan Garces from the Noun Project
Geneva Convention designed by Dan Hetteix from the Noun Project
Government designed by Nick Abrams from the Noun Project
Hospital designed by MaJo Ox from the Noun Project
Building designed by Pieter J. Smits from the Noun Project
Earth designed by Martin Vanco from the Noun Project
Students designed by Wilson Joseph from the Noun Project
Institution designed by Mike Wirth from the Noun Project