Humanities for the Public Good: An Integrative, Collaborative, Practice-Based Humanities PhD is a new program focused on creating cross-disciplinary opportunities for humanities graduate students interested in diverse careers.
U I PHD ALUMNI:
WHERE THEY ARE NOW
With the season’s first snow hanging in the air on the first of November, over 30 people gathered from 15 different departments across the University of Iowa at MERGE co-working space in downtown Iowa City to learn about career diversity from humanities PhD alumni. Eight PhD alumni (seven from the University of Iowa), some of whom work beyond the academy and others who occupy a wide range of teaching positions in education, traveled to Iowa City from across the country to share their experiences and insights.













The first panel, “Diverse Careers for Humanities Scholars,” featured three alumni working in private, corporate, and government industries. Erica Damman, SEO specialist and channel manager at Ravenel New Media Consulting, kicked off the session by explaining how her new form dissertation in Environmental Humanities through the Interdisciplinary Studies program at the Graduate College––in which she created three analog games to inspire conversations about ecocritical well-being for humans and non-humans—allowed her to gain skills that she leverages in her career beyond the academy. At Ravenel New Media Consulting, Erica explained how she does a lot of project-based work that is collaborative, interesting, and challenging. There is no “waste” of her intellectual energies. In the same vein, Erica emphasized that academia is, at the end of the day, a job (not the or the only job out there). There are certain things you have to do to get any job, academia or otherwise. Erica shared...

Dates to note:











HPG Alumni Panel: A Closer Look
Data from the first chart is based on the event check-in sheet. Data from the second chart is based on an anonymous survey distributed and collected at the event.

Per the check-in sheet, members of 15 University of Iowa departments attended the session.
— SURVEY —
Do you have a working one-to-three minute "elevator pitch" of your research?
Yes
No
Do you have a non-academic mentor with whom you engage regularly?
Yes
No

QUICK READS
 Have an extra 3 minutes? Read this.
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Community Partner Spotlight: Hancher Auditorium


In Summer 2019, two graduate students (Mark Rheaume and Michael Davis) completed eight-week internships at Hancher Auditorium , as part of an opportunity to explore how their academic training might translate into a variety of professions and workplaces. Hancher Auditorium's Education Manager, Micah Ariel James , shares a few details about the organization and its efforts to support the local community.

In the context of the internship, how would you define “public good”?

I think of “public good” as increasing accessibility to the arts and programming so that the general public has the opportunity to be part of conversations that are exciting and relevant. Since Michael Davis was actively working on how to reach out to students, it was a great chance to think about this actively.
 

If you could do ANY collaboration—any project or initiative—with the University of Iowa, what would it be?

I’m more and more interested in engaging with young audiences, specifically with teenagers. Hancher has already done some partnerships with G! World, the Dream Center, and UAY, but doing even deeper and longer collaborations would be great. I want to help teens not only learn about and experience the artists we have at Hancher and to see the arts in action, but also to experience...

Hear directly from Hancher Auditorium summer fellows Mark Rheaume and Michael Davis:
HPG Summer
Fellow Featured:
Vinton Defining
Flood Resilience
Paul Schmitt, a fifth-year English PhD student who completed an eight-week summer fellowship with Iowa Valley Resource Conservation and Development, is featured in a special University of Iowa digital story. Read the story.
Noted this month:
Job Beyond the Academy
RTC is hiring a Sustainability & Social Responsibility Champion to develop Social Responsibility opportunities on a global basis; establish a communications and awareness plan; and work with local governments and advocacy groups to advance Social Responsibility programs.

Humanities
Center
The Humanities Lab at ASU is an experimental space where interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and collaborative teams of faculty and students investigate grand social challenges and construct questions shaped around those challenges. Their goal? To generate approaches to "wicked" issues, for which there are no easy answers.

Funding Opportunity
The Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University offers graduate students at other universities a generous fellowship and the chance to connect with IHS and its network of scholars, who are advancing classical liberal ideas in the academy. Fellows receive access to academic advising, invitations to career development seminars, and more.


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