Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Lisa King

Committee Members

Lisa King, Tanita Saenkhum, Jeffrey Ringer, Sara Ritchey

Abstract

In this dissertation titled, “Building Upon Alternative-Academic Professionalization Opportunities for PhD Humanities Students,” I have interviewed 10 UTK English PhD alumni who graduated from the program between 2013 and 2023 to understand: (1) what they’ve experienced in their transition from academia into alt-ac careers, (2) what skills from their time in UTK’s English PhD program have transferred into their alt-ac careers, and (3) what forms of alt-ac professionalization support participants recommend adding to the UTK English PhD program. Participants were initially given a short survey to determine if their careers coincided with this study’s definition of alt-ac; that they were either in non-teaching roles within academia, or any careers outside of it. The survey also determined that, of the 23 respondents, 15 thought the English PhD program needed to include more support for students’ alt-ac professionalization, and 10 responded that they were interested in participating in the study further, through three separate rounds of one-hour interviews. Irving Seidman’s (2006) phenomenological framework has been knitted together with several indigenous, community-based research methods , including story as methodology (Riley-Mukavetz, 2014; Donelson, 2018), the importance of space/place (Powell et al., 2014; Riley-Mukavetz and Powell, 2015), and reciprocity and collaboration (Wilson, 2008; Smith, 2021) to support ethical community-based research. Andrea Riley-Mukavetz’s model of “co-theorization” has been particularly helpful in thinking through collaborative meaning-making with participants (Andrea Riley-Mukavetz, 2014) and has led to the discovery of several important suggestions for increased alt-ac professionalization support for PhD graduates, including task and job analysis, translating CVs to resumes, coursework collaborations, alt-ac alumni networks, and alt-ac internships. The suggestions given provide a range of possible professionalization opportunities for graduates hoping to go alt-ac, from participants who have successfully made the transition themselves and are therefore valuable guides for both graduate students and faculty mentors and advisors alike. The importance of recontextualizing (Baird and Dilger, 2017) graduates’ skills as an invaluable form of adaptive transfer in the face of new alt-ac contexts was also identified and provides exciting opportunities for further research.

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