Mind the Gap (Between Graduate Training and Professional Requirements)
ProfHacker 2014-02-20
This post will come out on February 20, one day after digital humanities scholars across the U.S. will have submitted grant proposals to the NEH’s Implementation Grant program. Unlike much humanities work, the digital humanities often require, like the sciences and social sciences, grant funding. This is perhaps a necessary evil. Large-scale digital projects require a range of people with particular technical expertise, and so require funding at a different scale than the individual archival project. So it goes.
For many now working in the digital humanities, however, the grant proposal is a new genre—something we were never exposed to during graduate school, much less trained to write. Some in the field have proven themselves quite adept at the genre, or have acquired that adeptness over much time and through many failed proposals. But for many it’s a surprising reality of entering the field. For the aspiring digital humanist, the question “how do I get started in the field?” might best be answered not by recommending a reading list or learning a particular tool, but instead by recommending training in grant writing.
As I’ve been preparing my own grant applications, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the gap between what I learned in graduate school and the skills I need as a junior faculty member. While some programs—in my field the most notable is the Praxis Network—are attempting to bridge these gaps, they remain for the vast majority of graduate students in the vast majority of programs. And I strongly suspect this isn’t just a problem in digital humanities. Most graduate programs focus primarily on research, leaving aside the many other aspects of becoming a professional in a given field. When I was an even newer faculty member, I remember being surprised at the large time commitment and (for me) underdeveloped academic socialization skills required for the service aspects of the job—working on curricular committees and so forth. These thoughts aren’t only on my mind because I’m working on grant applications. As someone now working with graduate students, I’m keen to think through how we can better prepare them for the realities of the profession—and by that I don’t mean only the tenure-track faculty profession, but also for alt-ac and other possibilities that we could more consciously include as part of our professionalization training.
So my question for today is simple: in what skills or areas do you wish your graduate program had worked harder (or worked at all) to train you? What are the things you know now that you wish you’d known when you were younger? Let us know in the comments.