Carnegie Initiative On the Doctorate Selects Partner Departments
Menlo Park, Calif.
The Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID), a multi-year research and action project aimed at improving doctoral education at American universities, announced the selection of 32 partner departments in chemistry, education, English and mathematics.
Partner departments will analyze all aspects of their doctoral programs and link specific activities to desired outcomes. Departments will begin this analysis by clarifying their goals for doctoral education in their respective disciplines, and will commit to creating “design experiments” in doctoral education to better meet their identified goals.
“We embarked on this project because we felt that this is a propitious time to study new opportunities and responsibilities resulting from evolution of the disciplines as well as general changes in education and society,” says Dr. George E. Walker, a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and director of the CID study. Walker also is vice president for research and dean of the University Graduate School at Indiana University.
The project’s goals are to support and study experiments in doctoral education with leading graduate programs, to document and analyze the character of those initiatives and, working with these innovative departments, to help the disciplinary community create models and evidence of success to inform others in the field, explains Dr. Chris Golde, a Carnegie senior scholar and research director.
“We’re working with departments which are committed to being stewards of the discipline,” Golde says. “We don’t just mean a preservation of the heart and essence of the field, although that’s important, but we chose those departments who have a critical eye toward the future, who are willing to take risks and move the discipline forward.”
The doctoral degree is critical to the continued improvement of all American education, from the elementary school to the graduate school, says Dr. Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
“If educators hope to change the character of undergraduate education, the Ph.D. is critical; doctoral programs prepare and socialize the next generation of undergraduate teachers. If we wish to influence the course of elementary and secondary schools, the Ph.D. is critical; for those who hold the doctorate also educate those who teach our nation’s schoolchildren,” Shulman says.
The CID also has selected 22 allied departments who will help form a network in each discipline to provide further information collection and dissemination about the study.
Founded in 1905 by Andrew Carnegie, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is the only advanced study center for teachers in the world and the third oldest foundation in the nation.
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