Humanities Working Group

In the Fall of 2022, the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) struck the Humanities Working Group—composed of graduate students, chairs/deans or associate deans, faculty, and administrators—to review humanities student experience data, discuss current issues, share best practices, identify areas where there are opportunities to improve, and suggest practical measures graduate leaders, faculty, and students can take to help foster positive change within and across humanities graduate units.

Two documents were produced by the SGS Humanities Working Group in Summer 2024:

Reports

1

Context for Working Group Recommendations

2

SGS Humanities Working Group Recommendations

Context for Working Group Recommendations

Over the past several years, the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) at the University of Toronto has made a concerted effort to understand graduate student experiences through the administration of student surveys and the collection of qualitative data. Currently, SGS runs two major surveys: the Graduate Student Experience in the Research University (gradSERU) survey, and the Canadian Graduate and Professional Student Survey (CGPSS), both of which are conducted every three years. Together, these surveys provide valuable data related to graduate student perspectives on topics such as reasons for selecting U of T, general and program-specific satisfaction, supervision and mentorship, research and teaching experiences, professional development, campus climate, social activities, health and wellness, financial support, and obstacles to completion of their degrees. Data from these surveys can reveal areas where there are opportunities to improve the experiences of students in our graduate programs. The data gleaned from these surveys also helps U of T assess student experience in relation to leading research universities across the globe (i.e., gradSERU) and with peer institutions within Canada (i.e., CGPSS).

In the Fall of 2022, SGS struck the Humanities Working Group—composed of graduate students, chairs/deans or associate deans, faculty, and administrators1—to review humanities student experience data, discuss current issues, share best practices, identify areas where there are opportunities to improve, and suggest practical measures graduate leaders, faculty, and students can take to help foster positive change within and across humanities graduate units. The scale of U of T graduate studies, combined with its high level of decentralization, mean that we have a highly diverse ecosystem of program structures, practices, and cultures. While the regular quality assurance processes serve graduate units well by providing in-depth reviews of programs relative to their past performance and their comparators at other institutions, there are fewer opportunities for programs at U of T to learn from one another about novel and interesting interventions a cognate might have developed to address a particular student need. As such, the working group convened for six meetings over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year to engage in dialogue of this nature.

It must be noted that altering the graduate funding structure was not in the purview of this working group. Nonetheless, the serious financial challenges faced by graduate students were discussed repeatedly and at length throughout working group meetings. It is recognized that graduate funding remains a significant issue for all academic divisions at the university and requires urgent attention by all stakeholders (i.e., government, academic leaders, graduate units).

The working group identified three main areas of focus for its recommendations: building a sense of community, furthering professionalization, and fostering timely student progress. While the working group recognizes the tremendous diversity that exists across humanities programs – in program size, nature and extent of interdisciplinary collaboration, research methodologies, and discipline-specific norms, etc. – it was felt that these three areas are particularly in need of focused attention at this juncture.

Building a sense of community

From a broad perspective, the humanities have a predominant culture of independent scholarship, which fosters the development of valuable research and professional competencies, including a nuanced understanding of the existing literature, techniques for data collection and archival work, critical thinking and analysis, single author publishing, and organizational skills. This culture of independence impacts on the structure and expectations of the research and learning environment within each department and is often reflected in supervisory practices and social norms of the program. In general, SGS data suggests that levels of engagement and research collaboration between supervisors and students, frequency of social activities organized within supervisor or research groups, and support for writing (e.g., publications, presentations) are key areas that students feel could be improved across the humanities.2 The current approaches to each of these aspects may influence humanities students’ perceptions of quality of academic advising, and may contribute to the reported feelings of isolation, loneliness, and anxiety, as well as frustration with graduate supervision practices. Evidently, more opportunities for students to interact and collaborate with their supervisors and research groups across the graduate life cycle may be beneficial for their academic and social well-being.

To address these concerns, the working group felt that U of T has an opportunity to play a leadership role in developing creative strategies to transform prevailing social norms common across humanities disciplines. To disrupt these norms, strategies should focus on empowering more responsive student-supervisor relationships that are tailored to the needs and program stage of each student, generating opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across the university and beyond, reframing the value of team-based or multi-author publishing, and offering additional events or activities to strengthen the sense of community within research cohorts. It is anticipated that improvements in these areas will enhance mental well-being, build upon the breadth and depth of knowledge and skills acquired in each program, and foster a more fulfilling graduate student experience.

Professionalization

In terms of professional development, humanities students report a higher level of interest in employment in higher education institutions compared to students in other SGS divisions and have traditionally sought tenure track roles in this sector; therefore, a strong emphasis has been placed on professional skills development that aligns with this career trajectory. Efforts to prepare graduate students for roles in academia have proven to be effective, with graduates from humanities programs recording the highest success rates of landing employment in tenure-stream positions across all U of T graduates. However, the number of opportunities for tenure track roles across the higher education sector are currently in decline, which has created a highly competitive employment market wherein these roles are increasingly difficult to obtain. In fact, recent U of T career outcomes data demonstrates only 53.2% of the humanities graduates working in the higher education sector attained tenure track jobs3, and in many cases, these roles were not attained until several years after graduation. Although the number of available tenure track roles and competitiveness in the market differ across humanities disciplines, the general trend suggests it is more important than ever to increase awareness of the diverse career trajectories possible for humanities graduate students, help students identify and communicate their extensive skillset and knowledge expertise, provide strategic mentorship, and create opportunities to further develop and refine professional competencies relevant to roles within and outside of academia.

To strengthen the professional development portfolio for humanities graduate students, it is critical for central administrative offices (e.g., SGS, Career Centre) and graduate units to enhance collaboration and coordination related to professional development to ensure students are exposed to a comprehensive and cohesive curriculum. In addition to the benefits for students, ensuring a collaborative and coordinated approach may also alleviate some of the burden placed upon individual supervisors for navigating professional development opportunities, facilitating networking, and providing career advice for roles that may be beyond their scope of experience, and instead, allow them to focus on encouraging academic progress, building a sense of community amongst their research mentees, and cultivating an enriching learning experience.

Fostering student progress

It is often observed the humanities have extended time to degree completion rates. While the average amount of time to degree completion is program-specific, the general trend suggests humanities doctoral students often take seven or more years to complete their studies.4 The tendency to have extended time to completion rates is influenced by the significant teaching, research, and writing responsibilities embraced by humanities graduate students, which provide valuable training, skill development, and experience relevant to future roles, such as course instruction and administration, seminar facilitation, project management, research techniques, and communication skills. The workload expected of humanities graduate students may be further increased depending on their program requirements (e.g., off-campus or international research, curricular requirements), size of the program (e.g., if there are more undergraduate students, the teaching load may increase), and the student’s position within the graduate life cycle (e.g., latter stages might require more time dedicated to teaching/research assistantships). Outside of program expectations, the level and duration of financial support offered may lead students to take on additional paid opportunities across the university (e.g., work study positions, research assistantships) that may impede academic progress. Further, the current employment market for positions in higher education can serve as a deterrent to completion, with students requesting doctoral program extensions to maintain health coverage, prepare job applications, gain more professional experience, and consider next career steps while earning income via teaching or research.

Despite the professional value of these learning and development opportunities, the workload expectations can be arduous at times, and may contribute to mental health challenges and serve as obstacles to degree completion. Therefore, to ensure timely, high-quality academic progress, it is important for each aspect of graduate programming to be paired with explicit learning objectives to assist with the prioritization of program requirements, professional development activities, and extracurricular responsibilities, while ensuring a continued focus on the successful completion of program milestones across the graduate life cycle (e.g., comprehensive exams, research, dissertation writing). Further, it is important for humanities programs to consider developing creative incentives to lower time to completion and develop strategies to support students through to the next phase of their careers. For instance, it is imperative to explore potential tangible supports for PhD students that may be instituted in the latter stages of the degree that assist students in building and maintaining momentum to effectively reach the final milestones of their degrees (e.g., interdisciplinary writing groups, writing workshops, refining program extension criteria, financial awards). Similarly, academic leaders and central administrative offices must consider developing strategies or incentives to help PhD students in the latter phase of their degrees prepare for and successfully transition into career roles following graduation, including financial supports (e.g., postdoctoral opportunities), assistance with networking, career coaching or mentorship, resume writing and interview practice, among others.

Finally, if it is deemed imperative for scholarly development and completion of curricular requirements that students commit seven or more years for their studies, serious consideration must be given to funding them to completion of their degrees to alleviate some of the financial pressures placed upon them, particularly in the latter years of study.

In sum, there are several areas where graduate leaders across the humanities may focus their attention for future initiatives and activities designed to address some of the challenges reported by students and create more positive, fulfilling graduate student experiences.

Given the large, decentralized nature of the university, one of the most significant outcomes of the Humanities Working Group was the reinforcement of positive and productive connections between academic leaders across multiple humanities disciplines. While the specific challenges confronting each administrator may be unique to their department, the collaborative nature of the working group was helpful in reviewing current issues, sharing innovative practices and resources, seeking alignment where possible, and discussing approaches to enhance graduate student experiences. Looking forward to implementation of the recommendations, it is suggested that the interdisciplinary network of support established through the working group remains active, expands to include other humanities disciplines, and continues to serve as a platform for sharing progress, collaborating on initiatives, and fostering further momentum for positive change.

Informed by the SGS student experience data and robust discussions, the working group developed recommendations and identified companion mechanisms for implementation in all three of the aforementioned areas. The companion mechanisms outline helpful and targeted strategies to address the recommendations and evolve practices in each of these areas. As the recommendations were drafted, the working group recognized the importance of being attentive to the different phases of the graduate life cycle, as the nature of each phase can magnify or relieve some of the challenges experienced by graduate students.

In addition, it is important to situate the recommendations and companion mechanisms in a post-pandemic context. The pandemic presented unprecedented challenges for graduate research and education, including significant obstacles to students’ academic progress (e.g., research interruptions, inability to travel or conduct field work, abandoned research projects), lack of in-person contact for teaching, learning, and research, changing career prospects or pathways, and a substantially increased need to support the health and well-being of students, faculty, and staff. The implications of these challenges will continue to be felt well into the future.

To respond to the issues generated by the pandemic, the university community learned new ways to leverage technology to support graduate learning, maintain connections, foster interdisciplinary work, innovate research practices, and ensure students could continue to successfully reach graduate program milestones (e.g., pivoting research projects, conducting online Final Oral Exams). These learnings will influence the direction of graduate research and education moving forward and thus, should inform the implementation of these recommendations.

The working group also acknowledges that many graduate units have attempted to facilitate some activities or initiatives post-pandemic to address each of these areas (i.e., building community, professionalization, fostering student progress) in their respective departments with varying degrees of success; the working group recognizes these efforts and encourages graduate leaders, faculty, and students to continue to work together to generate new ideas and refine activities or initiatives to better address the challenges confronted in their graduate units. A certain amount of trial and error should be expected.

Although the number of recommendations may seem daunting, they should be viewed as a compilation of possible strategies that graduate units or departments may select from to address various aspects of student experience; in this regard, some recommendations will work better for certain units or departments than others. The working group encourages graduate leaders, faculty members, and students to collectively identify the needs of their program/unit, select the recommendations from the list that would best serve these needs, and develop a plan for implementation.

As part of the process of assessing program needs, graduate units should identify their peer institution comparators, review the academic program and student experience offerings at these institutions, and select recommendations that might enhance competitiveness with those programs. In addition, it is imperative to examine the unique needs and challenges of equity-deserving groups and ensure recommendations are selected and implemented in a way that enhances equity, diversity, and inclusion. Further, the selection of recommendations and implementation plans should be considered a shared responsibility and opportunity for collaboration across and between graduate leaders, individual faculty members, and students in a given graduate unit. It is only through meaningful collaboration that these recommendations and subsequent outcomes will be effective and sustainable.

Finally, in consultation with the wider humanities community, faculty and graduate students alike underscored the need to create measures to encourage accountability, to monitor and share progress, and to evaluate the effectiveness of recommendations implemented within and across graduate units. By engaging in ongoing evaluation, it is possible to ascertain the potential impacts of each activity and initiative on graduate student experiences in the humanities and ensure successful initiatives are recognized, supported, appropriately resourced, and built upon over time.

  • Prof. Joshua Barker, Dean, SGS (Chair)
  • Prof. Vina Goghari, Vice-Dean, Research and Program Innovation, SGS
  • Prof. Kelly Lyons, Acting Vice-Dean, Research and Program Innovation, SGS (January–June 2023)
  • Prof. Kate Holland, Associate Chair, Graduate, Dept. of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures
  • Prof. Edward Jones-Imhotep, Director, Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
  • Prof. Alison Keith, Director, Jackman Humanities Institute
  • Mary Maschio, Graduate Student, Centre for Medieval Studies
  • Evan Moritz, Graduate Student, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies
  • Prof. Naomi Morgenstern, Chair, Dept. of English
  • Prof. Jennifer Nagel, Professor, Dept. of Philosophy
  • Prof. Juvenal Ndayiragije, Chair, Dept. of Language Studies
  • Prof. Jeff Packman, Associate Dean, Graduate Education, Faculty of Music
  • Prof. J. Barton Scott, Director, Graduate Studies, Dept. of Religion
  • Prof. Alison Smith, Chair, Dept. of History
Download the Context for Working Group Recommendations report (PDF)

_________________________

  1. See Appendix A for a list of working group members. ↩︎
  2. SGS Dashboards: Student Experience Data ↩︎
  3. SGS Dashboards: Career Outcomes Data ↩︎
  4. SGS Dashboards: Student Progress Data ↩︎

SGS Humanities Working Group Recommendations

In the Fall of 2022, the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) struck the Humanities Working Group – composed of graduate students, chairs/deans or associate deans, faculty, and administrators – to review humanities student experience data, discuss current issues, share best practices, identify areas where there are opportunities to improve, and suggest practical measures graduate leaders, faculty, and students can take to help foster positive change within and across humanities graduate units.

Two documents were produced by the working group:

Building community through the graduate student life cycle:

Rec 1: Graduate units should ensure that their admissions process reflects the intention of creating a cohort of students who will help build the graduate unit community and who will in turn be supported by multiple faculty members in the graduate unit.

Rec 2: Graduate units should utilize the time between acceptance of an offer and arrival on campus to build community for the incoming cohort, establish expectations, and integrate them into the graduate unit community.

Rec 3: SGS should create a working group consisting of graduate coordinators, students, and graduate administrators to review the information packages given to graduate students at the time of the campus visit and during orientation with the goal of coordinating efforts between SGS and graduate units.

Rec 4: SGS should conduct regular reviews of its communications to graduate units and students about supports available (e.g., mental health, supervisory relationship challenges, etc.). 

Rec 5: Graduate units and individual supervisors should formalize, where possible, regular in-person gatherings so students and faculty can stay connected.

Rec 6: Graduate units and SGS should utilize the new possibilities offered by online participation to complement in-person learning and community-building.

Rec 7: Graduate units and individual supervisors should facilitate interdisciplinary connections for students, including during the coursework phase.

Rec 8: SGS should promote the delineation of learning outcomes focused on the development of collaborative research skills and the provision of collaborative research opportunities in program and major modification reviews.

Rec 9: Graduate units, supervisors, Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI), and SGS should connect students with other researchers with shared interests.

Rec 10: Graduate units and faculty members should provide opportunities for students who are mid-research to gather and discuss their work.

Rec 11: Graduate units and SGS should refine and target communications to upper-year students in the research and writing phases.

Rec 12: Graduate units should provide group supports for students in the writing phase.

Rec 13: Graduate units should use teaching opportunities to engage students during the writing phase and build a community around teaching.

Rec 14: Graduate units should celebrate the thesis defense and use it as a key community-building moment.

Professionalization:

Rec 15: SGS, graduate units, and departments should consider increasing emphasis on graduate studies as the first step in students’ careers to enhance student autonomy and encourage ownership over their professional development. Framing graduate school as an early-career role may incentivize graduate students to attend professional development courses, cultivate networking skills, and engage in relationship-building activities within and outside of academia.

Rec 16: SGS, graduate units, and departments should provide relevant professional development opportunities and information about potential career pathways for humanities students in preparation for future career roles and responsibilities.

Rec 17: SGS, Student Life, graduate units, and departments should coordinate communications related to the activities, resources, and services for career guidance and professional skill development.

Rec 18: SGS should promote overarching and interdisciplinary skills development workshops and/or curriculum that provides a general foundation for more specialized discipline-specific training in graduate units and departments.

Rec 19: SGS should enhance its role in building relationships with people in diverse career roles for the purpose of advising, mentoring, and facilitating programming related to graduate student professional development and post-graduate planning and activities (e.g., job searching, resume/CV development).

Rec 20: Graduate units or departments should conduct an environmental scan of their master’s programs to determine the landscape of professional outcomes associated with the degree and use that information to assess professional development needs.

Rec 21: SGS, in partnership with JHI, should facilitate an annual/biannual forum on Humanities Students’ Experiences to continue the conversation and further encourage the sharing of knowledge and resources to improve student experiences and professional outcomes.

Fostering student progress:

Rec 22: SGS should establish an ad-hoc working group to explore the possibilities and potential impacts (e.g., financial, curricular, health and wellness, equity) of changing the 10-year Program Time Limit rule to seven years, with the purpose of encouraging timely, high-quality academic progress and reducing extended time-to-completion rates, while supporting the health and well-being of graduate students and faculty. 

Rec 23: SGS and graduate units should explore strategies for enhancing academic progress and reducing time-to-completion through more responsive feedback loops between supervisors and students during critical phases of the graduate life cycle (e.g., research, dissertation writing) and by ensuring graduate student activities serve appropriate pedagogical and professional development purposes (e.g., TAships, RAships).

Rec 24: Graduate units – particularly those where the median time to completion is significantly longer than the length of the funded cohort period – should make a concerted effort to strengthen alignment between these two variables so as to fund to the completion of the program.

Rec 25: SGS should explore the potential to create a guiding framework for offering Research Assistantships on a stipendiary basis that have explicit connections to degree expectations, program learning objectives and outcomes, and professional skill development.

Rec 26: SGS, in collaboration with graduate units, should enhance resources to support continual peer-learning and professional development in the area of graduate supervision.

Building community through the graduate student life cycle:

Rec 1: Graduate units should ensure that their admissions process reflects the intention of creating a cohort of students who will help build the graduate unit community and who will in turn be supported by multiple faculty members in the graduate unit.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Build pathways that will bring in the best students for the program. For example, cultivate relationships with faculty members (whether from U of T or other institutions) who have recommended good students in the past. Organize Information/Meet-and-Greet sessions before the admissions.
  • Structure the admissions process so that many potential supervisors/committee members are able to review the applications of students they might work with. (Anthropology has a good system for this.)
  • Create opportunities for students and faculty members to meet through curricular and extracurricular activities, with the purpose of actively involving students in the process of selecting a supervisor.
  • Include a prompt in the application package that asks about applicants’ community engagements or areas that they would look to contribute to the department.
  • Ensure that every person admitted has the support of at least one or more faculty member(s) who take an interest in their work and will support them throughout their program.
  • Develop guidelines specific to supervision matching processes (prior to and after admission) with expectations, roles/responsibilities, and best practices for students, faculty, and administrators.

Rec 2: Graduate units should utilize the time between acceptance of an offer and arrival on campus to build community for the incoming cohort, establish expectations, and integrate them into the graduate unit community.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Units should optimize the structure and content of any spring/summer campus visits from prospective students so that students are able to meet faculty members, upper-year students, and also other prospective or incoming students from the same cohort.
  • Consider assigning new students a buddy – a more senior graduate student from the program who is available during the campus visit but also until September so they can stay in touch through email/Zoom, etc.
  • Between the campus visit (in spring/summer) and the start of term in September, invite your graduate students to stay connected with the department through a social media channel or else an exclusive e-newsletter tailored to the incoming cohort. The goal is for students to connect with their peers as well as other students in the same department.
  • Ensure that international students have an opportunity to engage with the Centre for International Experience during and after the campus visit, and other appropriate supports as needed during this time. (E.g., financial aid and advising, housing services, etc.)

Rec 3: SGS should create a working group consisting of graduate coordinators, students, and graduate administrators to review the information packages given to graduate students at the time of the campus visit and during orientation with the goal of coordinating efforts between SGS and graduate units.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • The group would review what is currently being done in sample units and at SGS – services offered by each, timing of SGS communications, and so on – and see how the two can better coordinate efforts.
  • The group could also suggest a list of non-departmental activities – like SGS campus tours – that could be engaged in spring and/or September. (Other things to consider: what a campus tour looks like; what speakers should they bring in; what can students expect of the program and how are these expectations/limitations being communicated.)

Rec 4: SGS should conduct regular reviews of its communications to graduate units and students about supports available (e.g., mental health, supervisory relationship challenges, etc.).

Suggested mechanisms:

  • SGS can review its mailing list and send a memo to grad admins and coordinators inviting them to sign up for the e-news.
  • SGS can develop new information sheets outlining available supports.

Rec 5: Graduate units and individual supervisors should formalize, where possible, regular in-person gatherings so students and faculty can stay connected.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Implement a mandatory cohort-building course with a focus on research methods and/or professionalization. Centre for Medieval Studies has a mandatory course for first-year PhD students focused on navigating the academic job market; English has implemented a series of workshops throughout the year that are open to all interested students.
  • Create or further develop departmental gatherings or events as a means of building community. Units should consider making attendance mandatory – for both students and faculty – for a set number of gatherings to ensure wider attendance and help distribute the faculty workload more equitably.
  • Create a series of skills-based workshops (e.g., offered monthly, bi-monthly) for students and faculty members centred on building trust, conflict resolution, managing difficult conversations and other related topics to enhance relationships between students, students-faculty, and between faculty members.  
  • Units can offer informal groupings – like writing groups or study groups – for coursework milestones like term papers, rather than just in the thesis-writing phase.
  • Individual supervisors should take an active role in community building by creating more opportunities for social connection with the graduate students in their research groups (e.g., social activities, group research meetings, team-based projects, conferences).

Rec 6: Graduate units and SGS should utilize the new possibilities offered by online participation to complement in-person learning and community-building.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Prioritize in-person attendance but offer online participation by request. (The English department has a good model for this, where tri-campus events are advertised as hybrid, and St. George events are in-person with online participation available upon request.) Units should remember that hybrid participation is important to ensure that some segments of the population – students travelling for research, students with childcare/family responsibilities, students on different campuses – are not left out of cohort-building activities.
  • Institute regular Zoom check-ins with upper-year graduate students.

Rec 7: Graduate units and individual supervisors should facilitate interdisciplinary connections for students, including during the coursework phase.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Invite speakers from other graduate units to your departmental colloquia/gatherings. Some units, such as Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology, have tried this with good results.
  • Faculty members who are working across disciplines should be intentional about facilitating interdepartmental connections for interested students.
  • Create interdisciplinary opportunities that emphasize community-building and cross-disciplinary sharing about ongoing works or activities (e.g., interdisciplinary study groups, dissertation writing groups, research-sharing forums on cross-disciplinary topics, teaching forums).

Rec 8: SGS should promote the delineation of learning outcomes focused on the development of collaborative research skills and the provision of collaborative research opportunities in program and major modification reviews.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Graduate units or departments strengthen incentives for supervisors to facilitate collaborative or team-based research projects, such as establishing formal awards to recognize good supervision and efforts to build community for graduate students.
  • SGS, in collaboration with the Vice-Provost, Academic Programs, develop standardized rubric for the program review process that includes criteria related to the integration of collaborative research skill development and opportunities.
  • SGS to explore collaboration with the Centre for Community Partnerships to develop training modules focused on engaging in collaborative research that can be incorporated into research assistantship contract hours/activities. 
  • SGS, in collaboration with other units, discuss strategies for encouraging culture change related to collaborative research in the humanities and explore the possibility of organizing workshop sessions facilitated by individuals in other divisions who successfully implement collaborative research projects, to share best practices and demonstrate possibilities of this research within humanities units.
  • Supervisors in the humanities to encourage students to engage in collaborative opportunities, where available and possible, in the interest of professional development.
  • Graduate units to review internal principles around collaborative research and develop strategies to recognize the value of this work in existing practices (e.g., Progress through the Ranks).
  • SGS, in partnership with JHI and Centre for Graduate Professional Development (CGPD), explore the possibility of providing a collaborative research grant to humanities PIs that requires the integration of specific teaching, learning, and training outcomes for all involved.

Rec 9: Graduate units, supervisors, JHI, and SGS should connect students with other researchers with shared interests.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Try a scaled-down version of the JHI Fellowships model that asks students to indicate their key interests so they can be matched with faculty/helpful contacts to create an interest group. This could be done with modest funding at the level of the graduate unit, a lab, by JHI, or by SGS.

Rec 10: Graduate units and faculty members should provide opportunities for students who are mid-research to gather and discuss their work.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Where there is a critical mass of students, develop a faculty-led group where a supervisor brings all of their students together for a seminar once a week/biweekly to allow PhD students at different stages of their work to meet each other, form community, discuss methods and so on. (Consider investigating the German model.)
  • Utilize a lab/team model as a way of building community – a form of community that is in between the level of the individual and the graduate unit. This could also offer opportunities for co-authorship, collaborative research, or creative scholarship (like the sound lab, where students work together on developing podcasting skills).
  • If possible, offer dedicated office/lounge space or time to upper-year graduate students where they can meet other upper-year students.
  •  If there are sufficient numbers, create periodic online opportunities to engage those students who are abroad/travelling for research.

Rec 11: Graduate units and SGS should refine and target communications to upper-year students in the research and writing phases.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Think about upper-year students – a missing demographic – as a separate category with distinct needs. Graduate units should review their communications with upper-year grad students, identify gaps, and work with student to fill those gaps.
  • SGS should consider developing a new rubric (in the existing e-news) for communicating with grad students in their upper-years or else develop a new communications vehicle for this subset of students.

Rec 12: Graduate units should provide group supports for students in the writing phase.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Organize thesis-writing groups for all students in the writing phase (e.g., a series of cohort-based workshops over a term or a year, weekly writing sessions in a departmental space, summer bootcamps, etc.).
  • Organize opportunities for graduate students who have successfully defended their theses to come in and present their research to those who are still writing.
  • Invite a student to present a dissertation chapter at a small roundtable with their peers. (Refer to Faculty of Music practice – they have roundtables.)

Rec 13: Graduate units should use teaching opportunities to engage students during the writing phase and build a community around teaching.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Design a competition where graduate students can submit a syllabus for a Special Topics course that is closely aligned with their research interests. The department lists the course, and the graduate student who wins gets to teach it to a class of undergraduates.

Rec 14: Graduate units should celebrate the thesis defense and use it as a key community-building moment.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Organize a pot de thèse (celebratory event) following a student’s successful defense. This will bring the supervisor’s or unit’s students together, fostering community, helping other students feel invested in their peers’ success, and showing them that completion is possible.
  • Create an annual alumni lecture – invite a recent graduate back to speak to a cohort that’s nearing completion.
  • Encourage faculty members to share news of recent thesis defences during Faculty Council meetings and other department-wide gatherings. This helps keep the focus on the students, raise departmental morale, and remind people why they’re there.
Professionalization:

Rec 15: SGS, graduate units, and departments should consider increasing emphasis on graduate studies as the first step in students’ careers to enhance student autonomy and encourage ownership over their professional development. Framing graduate school as an early-career role may incentivize graduate students to attend professional development courses, cultivate networking skills, and engage in relationship-building activities within and outside of academia.

Rec 16: SGS, graduate units, and departments should provide relevant professional development opportunities and information about potential career pathways for humanities students in preparation for future career roles and responsibilities.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Graduate units and departments could collaborate with students and alumni in the planning and delivery of professionalization workshops and/or events to understand specific needs of current students, create continuity across cohorts, and ensure information on which offerings are most valuable/effective is not lost after cohorts graduate from the program. Strengthened connections with alumni may help create more comprehensive and sustainable professional development opportunities.
  • Reframe course assignments or activities as an opportunity to build students’ professional skillset and create sample materials for potential career portfolio (e.g., design sample course syllabi and course content, create sample industry knowledge mobilization activities, craft a teaching philosophy).
  • Graduate units and departments may consider designing and delivering credit/no credit professional development course offerings that students can register for throughout their degrees. 
  • Graduate units and departments consider integrating “bite-sized” innovative professionalization activities throughout existing curriculum to encourage “just-in-time” skill development, manage students’ workload, and prepare students for future career roles and responsibilities (e.g., more general skills early in the program, more tailored skill-development in latter stages).
  • Develop resources that provide supervisors and students with practical strategies for prioritizing academic progress while also engaging in diverse experiences to build skillset and CV (e.g., conferences, RAships).
  • Create sample career trajectories and articulate the graduate experiences and professional development opportunities that are most helpful in acquiring the required skillset for each trajectory, in addition to an outline of the concrete steps that may be taken to seek employment in that type of career (e.g., resume building, networking).
  • Graduate units and departments consider developing a framework or guidelines to support graduate students in obtaining structured work experience in relevant fields during specific timeframes of the degree (e.g., graduate units could seek partnerships with non-governmental organizations for students to complete a research-to-practice internship over the summer).
  • Graduate units and departments consider actively promoting public scholarship opportunities for graduate students, such as the SGS Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship and SGS Three Minute Thesis (3MT). To best support students engaging in these opportunities, graduate units or departments may also consider providing mentorship opportunities with peers, supervisors, and program leaders.

Rec 17: SGS, Student Life, graduate units, and departments should coordinate communications related to the activities, resources, and services for career guidance and professional skill development.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Enhance articulation/communications of the connections between aspects of graduate programming (i.e., research assistantships, teaching assistantships) and transversal skill development and training for future roles.
  • Enhance communication pathways amongst humanities departments to share best practices related to professionalization programs, services, and activities.
  • Increase clarity in existing communications to increase participation (e.g., indicate the time commitment required of graduate students to engage with the activity, resource, or service).

Rec 18: SGS should promote overarching and interdisciplinary skills development workshops and/or curriculum that provides a general foundation for more specialized discipline-specific training in graduate units and departments.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Create workshop series that assists humanities students in marketing themselves, including skills that relate to talking and engaging across disciplinary boundaries.
  • Encourage departments to provide formal peer review opportunities (e.g., workshops, office hours) throughout the award application process; this would allow graduate students to receive constructive feedback on their applications from peers, supervisors, and program leaders and make improvements prior to submission.

Rec 19: SGS should enhance its role in building relationships with people in diverse career roles for the purpose of advising, mentoring, and facilitating programming related to graduate student professional development and post-graduate planning and activities (e.g., job searching, resume/CV development).

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Connect with alumni to establish and expand network of professionals in a variety of careers to advise and guide students on career trajectories outside of academia.  
  • A coupon-based system, where students who participate in a pre-determined number of professional development workshops or activities are eligible for tailored one-on-one sessions with a career coach of their choice from the SGS directory.

Rec 20: Graduate units or departments should conduct an environmental scan of their master’s programs to determine the landscape of professional outcomes associated with the degree and use that information to assess professional development needs.

Rec 21: SGS, in partnership with JHI, should facilitate an annual/biannual forum on Humanities Students’ Experiences to continue the conversation and further encourage the sharing of knowledge and resources to improve student experiences and professional outcomes.

Fostering student progress:

Rec 22: SGS should establish an ad-hoc working group to explore the possibilities and potential impacts (e.g., financial, curricular, health and wellness, equity) of changing the 10-year Program Time Limit rule to seven years, with the purpose of encouraging timely, high-quality academic progress and reducing extended time-to-completion rates, while supporting the health and well-being of graduate students and faculty. 

Rec 23: SGS and graduate units should explore strategies for enhancing academic progress and reducing time-to-completion through more responsive feedback loops between supervisors and students during critical phases of the graduate life cycle (e.g., research, dissertation writing) and by ensuring graduate student activities serve appropriate pedagogical and professional development purposes (e.g., TAships, RAships).

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Graduate units to review workload policies to ensure reasonable expectations, fair distribution of responsibilities, and appropriate recognition for supervision and engagement on supervisory committees.
  • Graduate units to consider encouraging co-supervision (where appropriate and feasible) and requiring consistent engagement with supervisory committees across the graduate life cycle.
  • Graduate units to consider the development of standardized expectations and/or suggested best practices related to engagement with graduate students (e.g., meeting frequency, responsive feedback loops) to encourage academic progress and reduce time-to-completion, where possible. 
  • SGS/Centre for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision (CGMS) to support units through resources and educational workshops on the importance of robust committee involvement across the graduate life cycle and ensuring awareness and implementation of best practices outlined in the Supervisory Guidelines.
  • Graduate units to create or refine program timelines to ensure expected milestones are clearly indicated and there is a concrete tool to guide and monitor progress on a consistent basis (e.g., bi-annual check-ins). Graduate units could explore incentivizing specific milestones to encourage completion of the program within the time limit.

Rec 24: Graduate units – particularly those where the median time to completion is significantly longer than the length of the funded cohort period – should make a concerted effort to strengthen alignment between these two variables so as to fund to the completion of the program.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Graduate units to examine the purpose of the master’s program and assess whether the funding allotted to master’s students should be re-allocated to provide an additional year of PhD funding.

Rec 25: SGS should explore the potential to create a guiding framework for offering Research Assistantships on a stipendiary basis that have explicit connections to degree expectations, program learning objectives and outcomes, and professional skill development.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • SGS, in collaboration with Labour Relations, engage in discussions to determine if stipendiary research assistantships are possible and may increase flexibility for PIs to offer additional financial support to students while encouraging academic progress and professional skill development.
  • SGS to identify and promote external supports (e.g., CGPD) and best practices in other divisions (e.g., life sciences) related to the integration of training and professional development opportunities into the structure of research assistantships.

Rec 26: SGS, in collaboration with graduate units, should enhance resources to support continual peer-learning and professional development in the area of graduate supervision.

Suggested mechanisms:

  • Graduate units should consider creating a mentorship program for early-career supervisors, in which they are paired with supervisors that have a track record of successful supervision, for the purpose of learning and development.
  • Graduate units should consider revising existing graduate student handbooks to ensure departmental specific information regarding supervision is clearly communicated. Information may include general best practices, departmental structures regarding supervision, expectations for both students and faculty supervisors, and suggested pathways to remediate challenges.
  • Graduate chairs can collaborate with CGMS to discuss departmental culture, and methods of addressing the needs within their units, to further establish a constructive and supportive environment that allows for more transparent, encouraging, and transformative conversations regarding supervisory practices.
  • Graduate units are encouraged to reach out to CGMS for workshops/programming on supervision, specifically in reference to communication and relationship repairing (“Understanding Conflict” and “Having Difficult Conversations”).

  • English Program Essentials: Mandatory workshop series for graduate students (English Department)
    • Sample topics covered: writing, applying for grants, presentation skills
  • Alumni Speaker Series (English Department)
    • Panels about variety of career trajectories for graduates of the program (e.g., topics include careers in government, corporate sphere, and other areas of relevance based on alumni pool)
  • MITACS partnerships for industry experience and professional skills development
Download the SGS Humanities Working Group Recommendations report (PDF)