Field-Specific Knowledge

Many departments are composed of and connected to multiple sub-disciplines that each have their own institutional knowledge. Graduate students and professors interested in supporting entering students and attracting future applicants might find it useful to provide a centralized resource for succeeding within a sub-discipline.

• Overview of key journals

• Guidelines for IRB approval
• Conference info and characteristics
  • Ex. which conferences have a reputation for being particularly welcoming to graduate students?
• Specific research fellowships
  • Do any major journals offer research support or paper prizes within a particular subfield? When are the deadlines for these applications?

Prelims Logistics

• Timelines: When should examinees contact potential committee members?
• An overview of the range of note-taking templates and study strategies that past graduate students have found productive

Conferences

Department Funding

• Links to travel support funding rules and required forms

Guidance

• Examples of successful conference abstracts in the field
• Information about presentation preparation:
  • If your field has a convention of reading papers aloud at conferences, you might provide common wisdom about how many pages of writing to prepare for a 15-minute presentation or provide links to this words-to-minutes speech calculator.
  • Are there conventions about using images in presentations in your field? How should images be described or credited during a presentation?

Publications

• Useful writing guides relevant to your field– (for example, Wendy Laura Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks)
• Links to UW-Madison resources– (for example, the Writing Center’s list of publication workshops for graduate students or the English department’s Proofreaders and Editors list)
• Advice or archived department presentations detailing strategies for addressing “Revise and Resubmit” feedback

Dissertation Resource Guide

Proposal Conference

• How to set up a dissertation proposal defense conference:
  • For example, who should students contact to schedule a conference room?

Grant Applications

• Which institutions are most likely to provide funding for research travel or writing support?

Writing Resources

• A list of recommended guides to writing dissertation projects in your field. For example:
  • Eric Hayot’s Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities (2014)
  • Irene L. Clark’s Writing the Successful Thesis and Dissertation: Entering the Conversation (2006)
  • Joan Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis (1998)

Dissertation Defense Conference

• What should candidates bring to the meeting? How early should committee members receive copies of the finished product?

Depositing

• Are there any special considerations for depositing that are particularly relevant in your field?

Job Market Support

• Sample job materials, dissertation and project proposals, and grant applications (password-protected, if desired)
• Application timelines
• Field-specific advice from experienced applicants
• A direct link to department BOX folder containing department letterhead file