NEH Graduate Education in the Humanities initiative

As we enter 2025, ACLS has announced that in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), it will spearhead a three-year effort to assess and reform humanities graduate education through “Graduate Education in the Humanities: A National Convening.” 

Led by ACLS, NEH, the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, and the Society for Biblical Literature, this project will bring together many of the people and institutions who have been involved in the graduate education reform efforts of the last 10-15 years. In the coming months, ACLS will be recruiting faculty members, students, and administrators to be involved in the project. We hope that this project will constitute a significant step toward making graduate education a more inclusive and humane experience. 

The ACLS project will target three aspects of graduate education: 

  1. Preparation and inclusion, which includes recruitment, admissions, and access
  2. Graduate programs, which includes mentoring, curriculum, and graduate student labor
  3. Postgraduate degree pathways, both academic and beyond the academy. 

As we prepare to jump into this work, we hope that you’ll take a moment to reflect on where things are in your program(s) and department(s) in these areas, and perhaps think about hosting a departmental convening of your own with faculty and students on a particular topic. Here are some ideas:

  • Holistic admissions
  • Advising and mentoring practices
  • Preparation for teaching 
  • Integrating professional development into the curriculum
  • Curricular progression
  • Core courses
  • Preparing students to be publicly engaged scholars
  • Exam structure and purpose 
  • Transitioning to the dissertation
  • Diversifying the dissertation
  • Academic career preparation
  • Preparation for careers beyond the professoriate
  • Alumni relations

A community conversation with faculty and students about one of these topics is likely to surface ideas about things your department could be doing differently. Your department may decide to pursue one of these ideas (the structure and purpose of doctoral exams is an ever-popular place to begin, since they are often relics of bygone eras). 

If you do so, we highly recommend looking for places where students can be involved and give feedback to the department. A student-only town hall can be very helpful in this regard, as can be reaching out to recent alumni. Both of these are best done by someone who is not a faculty member in the department. Sometimes there is an appropriate administrator who can do it; other times, departments choose to hire an outside facilitator or consultant. Either way, it is important that students and alumni feel they can speak freely and candidly about their experiences.

Get Involved

Over the next several years, ACLS will be collaborating with the National Endowment for the Humanities on a national convening on graduate education in the humanities. As part of this effort, we will be conducting research, leading working groups and focus groups, and gathering members of the graduate education community. If you are interested in signing up to be a Grad Ed Ally and receive regular updates about the project, sign up below.

Sign Up

ACLS Resources for Graduate Education