From your first day in our graduate program until the time you find a job after graduation, our department is committed to facilitating your development from student into professional. We offer plentiful opportunities for pedagogical training, interdisciplinary study, and scholarly development—through workshops, forums, and student-faculty collaborations. The College of Arts and Sciences also has an excellent graduate career coach at the Walter Center for Career Achievement, and we encourage our students to make an appointment to discuss their career options with them.

In alternating years, the department coordinates a workshop to prepare students for the academic job search and professional life beyond the Ph.D. These workshops emphasize student-faculty engagement and include advice about how to prepare an academic portfolio, how to write successful grant applications, and how to publish academic research.

Our student-faculty forum is designed to demystify the demands of professional research and writing for publication. It meets throughout the semester to give students and faculty an informal context in which to present their research for discussion. Graduate students practice presenting their research, receive feedback, and hear about current work undertaken by professors and colleagues.

We provide funding for student-faculty collaborative research projects, giving graduate students valuable experience with this aspect of the profession. Recent projects have included the development of an online linguistic database of Old Occitan literature (a sister-language to Old French), proofreading of a volume of essays on the concept of “universal history” in early modern European literature, and preparation of the catalogue for a Lilly Library exhibit of banned books and engravings from late 19th-century France.

Writing is a critical aspect of our profession, equally important to all graduate students. For this reason, we sponsor two writing groups: a dissertation writing group for advanced students, and a pre-dissertation writing group for M.A. students and those who have not yet advanced to the dissertation phase. The groups are founded upon two basic principles:

1. Daily writing produces better quality work while also minimizing stress
2. Group accountability helps reinforce motivation

Learn more about departmental programs