Are you a current ASA member?
Forgot your password?

Register

Register here for the annual meeting and to begin or renew an ASA membership

Register here for JHU Press and ASA membership services, including online access to American Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of American Studies Online.

Register here to join an ASA community. Only current ASA members may contribute to the community blogs. Registration is not required to submit display or text ads or news and events or to view many pages. We will refuse posts that are not of professional interest to ASA members.

Click here for membership FAQ's

Group Members

The following people are members of this group:

The following people are administrators of this group:

Member Tools

We're sorry. You are not yet a member of the Graduate Education Committee.

MAIN | Reports | Statement on Standards in Graduate Education | Contact | Contact Members

Graduate Education Committee

Final Report of the ASA Task Force on Graduate Education 2006

Submitted by George J. Sanchez, Chair

With this report, the ASA Task Force on Graduate Education (2002-2006) completes its work to evaluate possible avenues to strengthen the role of the American Studies Association in promoting and nurturing graduate education in American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and other interdisciplinary graduate training. First, I would like to thank the members of the task force, Johnnella Butler (Univ. of Washington), Catherine Ceniza Choy (UC Berkeley), Michael Cowan (UC Santa Cruz), Michelle Habell-Pallan (Univ. of Washington), Lisa Nanney (NC School of Science and Mathematics), T.V. Reed (Washington State Univ.) and Barbara Shaw Perry (Univ. of Maryland), for their work on this task force.

We met at each ASA national conference over the past four years to discuss possible new approaches to issues facing graduate education in American Studies, as well as co-sponsoring several important panels and dialogues at national meetings. This report is respectfully submitted to the 2006 President, National Council, and Executive Director as our Task Force’s final act. We thank the ASA for the opportunity to discuss and send along recommendations concerning graduate education at this important moment.

Context of Graduate Education Issues in ASA

The rationale for our initial charge was that the important work in preparing future scholars in American Studies through graduate education in the field was not the central concern of any of the ASA’s existing standing committees. While the Committee on American Studies Programs (and Centers) is the most encompassing link to the institutional members of the organization, that committee’s work is usually dominated by attention to undergraduate education and the needs of the majority of program directors, most of whom do not have Ph.D. programs. The Student’s Committee is fundamentally an individual-based constituent body, and as many as half of its members are Ph.D. students enrolled in disciplinary Ph.D. programs (such as History or English), not necessarily those enrolled in Masters or Ph.D. work in American Studies or Ethnic Studies. The Committee on Ethnic Studies represents one important link to institutional members, but few of their committee members are from the 13 institutions with Ph.D. programs in Ethnic Studies. It is therefore not surprising that the ASA does not consistently engage in sustained work in graduate education.

In short, we considered our work to be specifically concerned with Ph.D. education in American or Ethnic Studies, which currently represents only 45 institutional members (Ph.D.s), and an additional 31 institutions which offer the Masters as the highest degree in these interdisciplinary fields (see Appendix 1). These institutions and their programs vary tremendously in size, status, and histories; however, they still represent a minority of the American Studies programs in the country, which already numbered 242 in 1991. Most importantly, they represent a minority of the affiliations of current members of the American Studies Association. (We decided not to examine the much more varied eight to ten programs listed outside the U.S. involved in graduate education, and leave that to the work of the expanded International Committee).

This situation reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of the current national movement in American Studies: the ASA national meetings and committees attracts scholars from many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (especially History and English) who see the organization as a healthy, diverse place to engage in interdisciplinary discussions, yet the majority of members do not return home to institutional affiliations inside of American Studies departments or programs. Indeed, we estimate that only approximately half of the Presidents of the organization, or half of the members of the ASA National Council, over the past twenty years were institutionally affiliated (or principally affiliated) with American or Ethnic Studies programs. This situation certainly represents the strength of the breadth and vitality of the organization, but also represents a weakness of interest and desire to commit to investigating graduate education at home institutions in our interdisciplinary fields.

The Future of Graduate Education Issues in ASA

As we considered the proper way for the ASA to consistently address these issues in the future, many of our committee members leaned towards advocating a Standing Committee on Graduate Education that would include faculty members from institutions with Ph.D. or Masters programs, Directors of Graduate Studies from those institutions, and student members from Ph.D. and Masters programs in American or Ethnic Studies. However, through discussions with various leaders in the organization, it seems as if the ASA is unwilling at this time to increase the number of its standing committees. The Committee on American Studies Programs (and Centers) voted negatively toward this direction in 2005, and the 2005 National Council expressed major reservations towards increasing the number of standing committees. So our Task Force has reoriented its direction and will advocate instead for task assignments that are appropriate to various existing standing committees.

It should be noted, however, that it will be very difficult to take on any comprehensive survey or review of graduate education in American Studies and affiliated interdisciplinary instruction without a more robust commitment to institutional members. Many of us have recently witnessed the significant report published by the American Historical Association on graduate education in history, published as The Education of Historians in the Twenty-First Century (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2004), which paves the way as a standard by which professional organizations can contribute to the discussion of the future of graduate education in their field. Since we believe that graduate education in American Studies and Ethnic Studies is one of the critical means by which our fields will grow and develop, ASA individual members should consider the role of the only professional organization representing these interdisciplinary fields in shaping the future direction of this education. As their only professional organization, what responsibility do we have to the hundreds of graduate students who have specifically chosen to obtain a Ph.D. in American Studies or Ethnic Studies and the faculty that mentor them?

Several faculty members who serve as Directors of Graduate Studies have asked us to help initiate discussions and dialogue between them and others asked to fulfill this role on their respective campuses. In large graduate programs, the DGS has often replaced the Program director in organizing and directing Ph.D. and Masters education. And our observation is that other professional organization are increasingly providing workshops at annual meetings and during the summer for their field’s DGS’s. These workshops often help educate DGS’s in new developments in graduate curriculum in the field, develop programs for recruiting a more diverse student body, share strategies for encouraging bettering mentorship of graduate students, and offer spproaches to preparing students for alternative careers in public practice. We encourage the Committee on American Studies and Centers and the Committee on Ethnic Studies to consider offering workshops specifically for Directors of Graduate Studies in American Studies and Ethnic Studies. We think that these sorts of workshops are the best ways to identify best practices in training, mentoring, and retention in graduate study, and to examine and discuss new issues in the overall job market in American Studies and Ethnic Studies.

ASA Statement on Standards in Graduate Education

The Task Force is proud to have worked with the Students Committee in getting the ASA Statement on Standards in Graduate Education revised and approved by the National Council. Our role was to pass along the draft of the Statement that was prepared by the Students Committee to the Directors of Graduate Studies at various American Studies programs for their feedback. We received a wide range of opinions, with generally positive reactions but with specific concerns and potential revisions. We incorporated some of these revisions into the final draft and decided not to incorporate others because they seemed insignificant or against the spirit of the overall statement. We then presented to final statement to the National Council at its 2005 meeting for approval.

This process convinced us that it is critical that the ASA Students Committee should not be held responsible for all actions of the ASA that concern Ph.D. education. To strengthen interdisciplinary Ph.D. education in American Studies and Ethnic Studies requires collaboration between faculty and students, which leads specifically to greater attention and devotion by all. We believe, for example, that the now approved Statement on Standards should be extensively publicized within the organization beyond simply posting it on the organization website. Therefore, we suggest that the Committee on American Studies Programs and Centers and the Committee on Ethnic Studies specifically distribute the ASA Statement on Standards in Graduate Education to institutional members in their respective areas through the Directors of Graduate Studies at those institutions.

Responses and Dialogues to the NRC Rankings of Graduate Programs

In 2005, the National Research Council contacted the Executive Director of the American Studies Association regarding the “subfields” that make up the interdisciplinary field of American Studies in preparation for the ranking of graduate programs in American Studies that has begun in academic year 2006-07. This is the first ranking of graduate programs in our interdisciplinary field, with plans to expand the ranking of graduate programs in “Ethnic and Transnational Studies” in the future. The Executive Director wisely distributed this inquiry to his extensive email list of ASA officers and leaders, and a brief discussion regarding appropriate rankings ensued.

We believe that the ASA Committee on American Studies Programs and Centers (and the Ethnic Studies Committee for that field) should be specifically assigned the role of engagement with the National Research Council over time to initiate discussion, answer questions, and monitor developments in the ranking of graduate programs in the field by the NRC and any other ranking organizations. It seems as if the ranking of the programs in the field, whether desired or not, is likely to continue in the future, and American Studies programs will certainly have questions and responses to these rankings once they are made public. From anecdotal evidence at several campuses, it seems as if campus administrators are still trying to figure out how best to put their best foot forward for national rankings in interdisciplinary fields, which often have subtle differences with the ways disciplinary rankings are measured. For example, it is unclear to many how faculty with joint appointments will have their relative contributions to various programs measured in these new rankings, a key issue in most graduate programs in American Studies and Ethnic Studies.

Other Potential Initiatives in Graduate Education

While we believe that the Committee on American Studies Programs and Centers and the Ethnic Studies Committee should lead the process of promoting and discussing graduate education in these interdisciplinary fields for the ASA, we do believe that several other standing committees can make significant contributions to these efforts working in collaboration with other standing committees. These are issues we found important to the future of graduate education in American Studies, but were unable to do more on as a Task Force than have initial discussions due to lack of time and funding.

We encourage the Task Force on Public Practice to identify new ways to highlight the best work being done in preparing graduate students in this area in Masters and Ph.D. programs, and work with Directors of Graduate Studies interested in sharing information about these efforts.
We encourage the K-16 Collaboration Committee to investigate how widespread are discriminatory practices in accreditation for secondary school teaching that punish American Studies graduates from teaching disciplinary based subjects such as history or literature? This committee may want to work with the Regional Chapters Committee to ascertain whether this is a national problem or limited to certain states that have passed highly restrictive legislation where disciplinary affiliation is valued over competency goals.
We encourage the Minority Scholars Committee to specifically explore strategies for diversifying the graduate pool entering Ph.D. and Masters programs in American Studies and Ethnic Studies. Part of this investigation should include the role of the M.A. program, being phased out on many campuses, to encouraging a more diverse pool of potential Ph.D. applicants.

Finally, we want to encourage the ASA National Council to be more proactive towards graduate education in general, asking its various committees to consider programming and sharing resources for the benefit of improved graduate training and mentorship in American Studies and Ethnic Studies. All of us on this Task Force are committed to continuing our work with the American Studies Association to further this goal, and look forward to opportunities to follow through on these initiatives in various capacities in the future.