Session Abstract

The Professional division is pleased to sponsor this panel as a part of the “mini-conference” on alternative careers for history PhDs, to be held as part of the 2013 Annual Meeting.  The panel features history PhDs who have chosen to follow a career in academic administration at a college or university.

    This kind of employment constitutes a logical career choice for history PhDs.  By the time they earn their degree, historians (like other scholars) know the academic world well; most newly minted PhDs have spent at least a decade attending a college or university, and virtually all are familiar with the wide range of services (both in and outside the classroom) offered by an institution of higher learning.  Moreover, the skills acquired in graduate school—the ability to write well, think critically, organize a large research project, and evaluate various kind of evidence—are often the ones demanded of administrators.

     Participants in this session represent a variety of institutions—DePauw University, University of Texas at Austin, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Denver, and Oberlin College—and a variety of jobs related to academic administration, including president, deputy secretary of the faculty, institutional research analyst, faculty/staff support specialist and operations coordinator, and specialist in community-based learning and civic engagement.

     Panelists will spend 12-15 minutes each describing their own decision to pursue a career in academic administration, and then respond to questions and comments from the audience.