Loyola History Department Wins Career Diversity Grant

The Career Diversity Fellows at the June orientation in Washington, D.C. Image credit: Emily Swafford.

The Loyola University Chicago History Department is the proud recipient of a Career Diversity Implementation Grant (CDIG) from the American Historical Association (AHA). With the support provided by the grant, a Career Diversity fellow and faculty team will work together over the next two years to design and implement programmatic and cultural changes intended to better prepare Loyola history PhD students for a wide array of careers within and outside the academy. The department has strong pedagogical and public history training programs in place already, and the CDIG grant will allow the Career Diversity team to expand these efforts to include preparation for an even broader array of career options.

The Career Diversity Implementation Grants are part of an ongoing effort by the AHA to enhance career pathways discussions and professional training in history doctoral programs. What is now known as the AHA’s Career Diversity for Historians initiative began in 2011 as a series of conversations about career diversity for historians with PhDs. These led to the establishment of two-year career diversity pilot programs in history PhD granting-departments at four schools across the United States: the University of New Mexico, UCLA, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. The AHA also awarded grants to faculty in thirty-six university history departments, including the Loyola University Chicago History Department, to support faculty attendance at a series of Career Diversity Faculty Institutes. The implementation grant phase, which runs from 2018 to 2020, is the next step in this nationwide effort to change how history departments prepare their doctoral students for careers after graduation. The AHA awarded implementation grants to twenty schools, including Loyola, and the participating institutions will work with each other and the AHA over the next two years to share and discuss ideas, research, and next steps. The fellows selected are pictured above. Grants awarded by the AHA as part of the Career Diversity for Historians initiative are supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Leading the effort at Loyola are Patricia Mooney-Melvin, Graduate Program Director and Associate Professor of History, and Career Diversity Fellow Hope Shannon, a PhD candidate in the joint United States history and public history doctoral program. Also involved are Dr. Kyle Roberts and Fr. Steve Schloesser, S.J, who worked with Dr. Mooney-Melvin to secure the grant. Over the next two years, they’ll work to fully incorporate career diversity at every level of the history department’s doctoral program. The AHA’s Career Diversity for Historians initiative emphasizes the importance of preparing PhD students for all possible career paths—from academia to working in the public sector and beyond—and the changes made to Loyola’s history PhD program will reflect that goal.

For more about the AHA’s Career Diversity for Historians initiative, click here.

For more about the Career Diversity Implementation Grants, click here.