From PhD to Life
dissertation coming?,” “What’s your next research project?,” and “So, you got a job yet?” all the many necessary steps along the way are obscured. But those are the steps that get us where we’re going. Those are the steps we need to acknowledge, celebrate, and feel motivated by in orde...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/recognizing-good-work-hard/
The Associate
The typical PhD funding package is for four or five years but the typical PhD takes six or seven.
dissertation of 300 or so pages, our program can’t simply start calling for 150-page ones. Our doctoral program can either be one that conforms to the standards of the discipline or a four-year one, but it is not obvious that it can be both.
Doctoral students don’t much worry when entering th...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/the-associate/todays-phd-students-face-pressure/
From PhD to Life
Jennifer Polk chats with Kelly J. Baker about juggling her writing career with family life.
dissertation and my teaching experience would help me get a tenure-track job. What I didn’t anticipate was the impact of the Great Recession on universities and colleges. I was unlucky enough to graduate in 2008 right before the job market bottomed out. There was only one job posting that I could ...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/transition-q-kelly-j-baker/
News
Concordia PhD graduate, a former homeless person, wins CAGS annual dissertation award.
dissertation on homelessness can only be an understatement. He lived in it, slept in it and somehow survived it.
Dr. Weissman’s unflinching documentation of tent cities, shanty towns and homelessness recently r...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/speaking-homeless/
In my opinion
A shift in the way academics are hired has created a long, lost generation.
dissertation within two. Check, check! Pursue a postdoctoral fellowship, present at international conferences, add to list of publications. You get the idea. At the same time I taught at three different institutions and developed a broad cross-disciplinary teaching portfolio with consistently positi...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/academy-of-broken-dreams/
From PhD to Life
dissertation, after all)? People with these skills are in demand; there is no manager who wouldn’t want more people like this on their team. You have the skills to succeed outside academia.
Given the ratio of PhDs produced annually to the available tenure-track jobs, it’s not enough ...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/transition-q-a-andrew-miller/
The Associate
“Career: The ground on which a race is run, a racecourse.”
dissertation. Whether this is indicative of Australian/Canadian academic cultures more broadly I have no idea. The point is that the atmosphere was so much more positive, encouraging, joyful than I see back home. I came away wondering whether, in teaching graduate students to consider their...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/the-associate/graduate-students-and-their-futures/
Career Advice
“The thesis can address small gaps within saturated research areas.”
dissertation itself – nailing it in the second sentence of the abstract allows the examiner to focus on the justification and verification of this statement. Having a well-bounded and clear idea of one’s contribution contextualizes the work and can protect the student from undue criticism.
Ul...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/career-advice-article/how-to-make-an-original-contribution-to-knowledge/
From PhD to Life
dissertation is very difficult, but not for the reasons we tend to think. The biggest challenge is often the deceptively simple matter of establishing good basic habits. Getting a dissertation done isn't intellectually insurmountable, but it takes commitment to ongoing work, at least some of which i...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/coaching-graduate-students/
From PhD to Life
dissertation compares Queen Henrietta Maria during the English Civil Wars to Queen Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution so I had done a lot of research concerning 17th and 18th century court culture. I also had a strong interest in the monarchy and royal history more generally and read a lo...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/transition-q-a-carolyn-harris/
News
dissertation, cutting PhD programs down to a five-year maximum, and recruiting well-rounded candidates who may have stated ambitions outside higher education. (The U.S.-based Modern Language Association publis...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/careers-phds-big-topic-years-congress/
From PhD to Life
dissertation and all the many other varied tasks I carried out in conjunction with my time in academia makes me an experienced researcher, writer, educator, whatever. I can draw on that "job experience" -- that's what it is, after all -- when crafting a resume. But I can't stop at that. To convince ...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/resume-writing-tips-for-academics/
From PhD to Life
dissertation).
What was your first post-PhD job?
I was still in my relationship with academia, but I took on some tutoring, part-time, at a private psychology clinic in Toronto. There was a phone call during which I had to convince my future boss that I was very interested in ...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/transition-q-a-emily-simmons/
News
How Congress can become more interdisciplinary and welcoming to young scholars was one of the topics.
dissertation options, promoted career paths, and admissions criteria.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Chad Gaffield, president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, said in his address to the group. “The 21st century will be distinguished as when we took seriously the chall...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/transformation-of-the-humanities-and-social-sciences-the-focus-of-cfhss-annual-meeting/
Career Advice
Advice to help make sure you keep a good work-life balance.
dissertation, in its entirety, many times to ensure consistency and coherence.
5. Put yourself first, then your family, then your job, then your studies. Doctoral work, especially at the dissertation stage, is solitary, time-consuming, and can take a toll on health and/or relationships. ...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/career-advice-article/5-tips-to-help-you-on-your-doctoral-journey/
Speculative Diction
dissertation project); I also have a degree in communication studies and I’ve done some communications work myself, so I always find it interesting to see what approaches are being used.
That being said, I’ve noticed recently that there’s an interesting trend in Ontario postsecondary educat...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/speculative-diction/gamified-pr/
From PhD to Life
dissertation. A large percentage of the staff at CGS hold (post)graduate degrees, so many times we find ourselves "speaking PhD," even though we come from a range of fields.
What's next for you, career-wise?
I believe I still have plenty to learn from and contribute to CGS, so...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/transition-q-a-maureen-mccarthy/
Features
Switching disciplines in academia is not an easy choice, but those who’ve done it say the move can broaden your outlook and enrich your life.
dissertation was on the emergence of critical thought in adolescence. But as she interviewed teens, she found herself overwhelmed by how deeply some of them confided in her. She wondered how to deal with such personal information and realized that she was facing an ethical problem.
Halfway throug...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/meet-5-academics-who-have-switched-disciplines-mid-career/
From PhD to Life
dissertation research in earnest, the program changed and it no longer worked for me. There was nothing available that promised to do what I had been able to do with Scribe. I could have used Continue reading to customize a solution, but th...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/from-phd-to-life/note-taking-and-project-management/
Career Advice
Express complex ideas clearly and elegantly.
My new colleague and I are in the office, enthusiastically talking about how much we love to read. John, an undergraduate student we are supervising, overhears our conversation and asks, “Journals?” His expression reveals that he’s not kidding. So, instead of rolling my eyes or making a snarky...
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/career-advice-article/academic-writing-stylish-not-sloppy/