The newest Q & A is with a history PhD turned writing and social media manager for a scholarly association. Maura knew when she entered her program that she wanted to work as a historian, but not as a professor. So she did things during her degree to set herself up for the career she wanted:
What did you hope for in terms of employment as you completed your PhD?
I was a little bit unusual, in that I knew even before I applied to PhD programs that I didn’t plan to end up on the tenure track. I wanted to be a historian and writer; I didn’t, however, want to spend my career in the classroom. I chose the program at UC Irvine because the professors I talked with there — especially my advisor, Jeff Wasserstrom — understood this from the beginning and did everything they could to help me build up my alt-ac resume while also hitting the regular benchmarks expected of any PhD student.
Read the full post on my University Affairs blog.