A New York Times article published on November 1st, 2013 cites the Digital Fellows program‘s alternative approach to graduate education as an advantageous step for PhD students looking outside of the academy for potential careers.
From “The Repurposed Ph.D.: Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It“:
“The Praxis Network consists of “digital humanities” initiatives at eight universities, focusing primarily on graduate education. They aim to prepare students for roles outside the professoriate, stressing skills like collaboration, technology and project management. Students in the Digital Fellows Program at the City University of New York Graduate Center, in its second year, commit 15 hours a week to a selected project and related activities. One historian completed a project called “Data Mining Diplomacy: A Computational Analysis of the State Department’s Foreign Policy Files.” Fellows also design Web sites and organize a workshop series for other students, all of which is far removed from the traditional humanities experience of sitting alone in a room with a stack of books.
“We are really thinking about it as a kind of laboratory for reshaping doctoral education and rethinking the kind of skills that we give our students,” said Matthew K. Gold, an English professor who runs the program.”
Read the full article here.