Release date: Jan. 24, 2003
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or dhammac@emory.edu

Emory Ph.D. Graduates Excel in a Tough Job Market

The academic job market tends to be tough even in the best of economic times, and in recent years the competition has been especially brutal as colleges and universities tighten their own budgets, making the prospects for landing the elusive tenure-track job bleak. But at Emory University, recent Ph.D. graduates are beating the odds and landing plum positions across the country.

The success of Emory’s newest crop of doctorates reflects years of intense cultivation by departments in the university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The departments attribute their success to recruiting top students and providing intensive, broad-based and interdisciplinary programs that make their graduates attractive to liberal arts colleges and universities looking for versatile and prepared faculty.

In French, after nearly a decade of working to build a top-tier graduate program, the department is seeing the fruits of its labors by producing one of the best classes of French Ph.D.s in the country for the last two years, according to Elissa Marder, director of graduate studies for the French and Italian department.

"The past two years, the placement record has been off the map for us. Our last two years rival that of Yale, Princeton or Harvard," Marder says. "The why of it is that we have a small, hands-on program, with small classes, fabulous mentors and intensive advising that prepares our students every step of the way."

Two years ago, one graduate cornered the market for French medievalist positions, receiving six offers and taking her top pick at Boston University. The program’s other graduate that year received a tenure-track position at Princeton. And last year, the department succeeded in getting all six of its graduates academic jobs, most of them tenure-track positions at schools such as Baylor University, University of Notre Dame, Oberlin College, the University of Pittsburgh and Clark Atlanta University.

In addition to rigorous academic coursework, Ph.D. candidates about to hit the job market also undergo intensive preparation for the hiring process that includes numerous rounds of mock interviews, experience that allows students to successfully face the competitive and often nerve-racking hiring process, Marder says.

Emory’s anthropology department also has seen unprecedented success in recent years. Although the department graduated its first doctoral student less than a decade ago, the program has quickly developed a reputation for excellence, according to graduate studies director Pat Whitten. Last year, graduates landed jobs at Stanford University, the University of California-San Diego, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania and Oklahoma State University, and students are already starting to receive early offers for this year.

"We seem to be gathering steam, and last year we really hit the jackpot. There are not that many good tenure-track positions out there, so it’s a bit unusual to get such a wealth of great offers," says Whitten. "I think much of our success is due to our former students who are now out in the field and building good reputations as top scholars in teaching and research with broad areas of expertise. We’ll continue to build upon that. "

Whitten says the department’s interdisciplinary, bio-cultural approach to anthropology also helps its graduates stand out from the pack.

"Particularly at a time when many anthropology programs are becoming focused on specialized areas, we’ve built a program that has made a commitment to expose students to both biological and cultural anthropology, as well as multiple methods of research," she says. "We’re also an interdisciplinary program, ranging from the humanities to public health, which reflects the breadth of our faculty and the training and expertise we can bring to our students."

In philosophy, last year was an especially tough market, according to graduate studies director Mark Risjord, but despite the crunch, the program’s graduates landed tenure-track positions at the State University of New York at Binghamton, the College of William and Mary, the University of Nebraska and Villanova University.

"I think we do well in the job market because of our recruiting. It’s kind of like building a basketball team—you work to recruit the very best students you can get, knowing you’ll produce an excellent class of graduates at the end," Risjord says. Like anthropology, the philosophy department also emphasizes a broad, in-depth immersion in the field, which helps its graduates to stand out in the market, he says.

"The program we’ve put together gives them a broad base in the history of philosophy, and is less specialized than many programs at our peer institutions," Risjord says. "Our graduates have their specialties, but they also have the education to teach any course, so there’s a constant job market for people like that."

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