Imagining the Future of Graduate Education
A letter from Imagined Futures director, Danielle Fosler-Lussier
Our graduate alumni are going in many different directions as they move into worlds of work. They are applying the skills, knowledge and perspectives they cultivated at Ohio State in the service of communities, employers and the public good.
At its best, graduate education allows people to see and to seize opportunities. Sometimes, the opportunities are already visible, but often they need to be searched for or even created. Some of the career prospects that might follow a given course of study may be explicitly stated, but many more are possible if we think imaginatively about all the ways to apply and extend what we have learned.
Many graduate programs were designed with a primary aim of educating future faculty, and that aim remains an important one. If we also want to serve students who will move into many other careers, faculty and programs can take a variety of steps to smooth a path for them. We can prepare students for both the professoriate and other kinds of work without compromising program quality. For instance, programs can highlight how the skills they are teaching translate into a variety of professions; mentors can encourage experiential learning and other ways of trying out possible careers; and faculty advisors can support students by connecting them with alumni in many lines of work.
Imagined Futures supports faculty, staff, and graduate programs to align graduate offerings and mentorship with the aim of career diversity and to help them make the most of Ohio State’s career development resources.
This project builds on Global Arts and Humanities’ prior investments in research that addresses critical societal challenges. When researchers commit to understanding challenges of this kind, they build capacities for empathetic and data-driven problem-solving that can be applied in many sectors of society. Training our graduate students to engage with community partners and ensuring that they develop practical skills helps to close the gaps between study and practice, between campus and community, while also helping students find work that matters to them.