Abstract
We report on a multi-year research and action project carried out under the aegis of the Association of American Geographers to address the cultures and practices of doctoral programs in the discipline. We explore the diversity of career paths that graduate students seek, the extent to which doctoral programs are responsive to the range of career possibilities, and whether these programs are aware of preferential and contextual differences within the student body, for example, by gender and citizenship. We briefly review the educational resources and activities the project has developed to support change that addresses the research findings.
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Notes
Oxford University’s Centre for Excellence in Preparing for Academic Practice; the Professional and Organizational Development in Higher Education; and the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Eight focus groups were conducted involving 29 students enrolled in MA/MS and PhD programs. The selection process is described in Solem et al. (2009).
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Acknowledgments
Funding for EDGE comes from the NSF Research on Learning and Evaluation program (REC-0439914) program and the Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering program (DRL-0910041). Further information about EDGE including a project bibliography is available at www.aag.org/edge.
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Monk, J., Solem, M. Changing doctoral education: the case of US geography. GeoJournal 80, 187–191 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-014-9586-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-014-9586-2