My experience of doing a Ph.D. by Dr. Heidi
Blackburn
Heidi Blackburn is the STEM
Librarian at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she is liaison to the
Departments of Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Math, and Engineering, as well as
the College of Information Science & Technology and College of Business
Administration.
New
methods of delivery
My PhD experience was very different from
other students’ experiences, even those in the United States. I attended Emporia State University’s
School of Library and Information Management
during a curriculum change in the program. Fourteen other students and I
started in July 2009 as part of a “weekend-intensive” cohort program created
for working adults to attend class virtually from all parts of the country. We
worked during the week in cities all over the United States, then gathered in a
virtual classroom (Adobe Connect) with microphones and webcams from our homes
or offices.
I graduated from Emporia State University
with my Masters of Library Science in 2008, so I was already familiar with
attending class in person on the weekends. I was eager to try this new method
of delivery because I had taken a job as the Research and Instruction Librarian
at the College of Technology and Aviation at Kansas State University at Salina,
which was 200 miles from the Emporia State University campus.
We met on Friday nights for 3 hours,
Saturdays for approximately 7-8 hours with a short lunch break, and 2-3 hours
on Sunday mornings. We became experts at helping each other troubleshoot
technology, how to give presentations using slide share software and patience
for technical glitches in the middle of lectures. We met for class in this
virtual environment four weekends a semester, and then had online discussions
asynchronously through the course management software in between. This method
was designed to let more students attend school without having to move across
the country, which would have uprooted many families and careers in the
process.
Research
Interests
While I was attending courses for my Master’s
degree, I noticed that there were far fewer men than women in the program. I
started asking these men why they were studying in a field where they were in
the minority and weren’t likely to make much money, not to mention they were negatively
stereotyped. I asked this question of every man I came across in my classes and
a majority of them said they were interested in some aspect of technology in
libraries. I thought on this phenomenon for two years and it became my
dissertation topic when I joined the PhD program later on. I lived and breathed
gender roles, technology, workplaces, the Millennial generation,
anti-intellectualism and stereotypes for three years.
The
PhD process – coursework, exams, and defending the dissertation.
At Emporia State University, all of the
students in the cohort take their classes together for several years. Then they
do independent readings for a semester to prepare to take their qualifying
exams in the areas that interest them. You must pass two essay exams from a
list of topics and all students take a third essay exam covering qualitative
and quantitative research methods. I spent a year preparing and taking the
exams, which I thankfully passed in a timely manner. Then my faculty committee
was formed and I publically defended my research proposal, sharing why I was
now qualified to conduct research in the field. In 2013, I conducted 21
interviews and collected 231 survey responses from males attending library
school programs across the United States. I wrote a
dissertation that was 39,492 words long,
went through 52 drafts with three committee members, and shared my theoretical
lens, methodology, findings, and conclusions in an hour-long public oral defense.
I had heard horror stories about how long it took the committee to decide your
fate, with other students having to pace the hall for nearly an hour. I was
terrified when they opened the door after less than ten minutes and welcomed me
back into the room as “Dr. Blackburn.” After years of giving up nights,
weekends, holidays, and much of my social life, I accepted my diploma on stage
in front of supportive family and friends in May 2015.
Working full-time and going to
school on the weekends requires unbelievable time management skills for balancing
your professional, academic, and personal lives. It is a marathon, not a
sprint. Here are some takeaways for those considering it.
·
You
must do a PhD for your own sake. Not for promotion or because your mentor
thinks you would be good at it. You will live and breathe it, so you better be
motivated.
·
Find
a topic you want to read, discuss, and write about for the next 4-5 years. Here
is a test: If you can’t wait to tell strangers about it at a conference, if you
simplify it for your grandmother when she visits, and/or if you talk about it
over dinner with your significant other, that’s a good sign you’re in it for
the long term.
·
Prepare
to part from family, friends, and recreational reading. You will need a space
to immerse yourself in endless scholastic reading and they will tire of hearing
you cite your latest readings over breakfast. They will get reacquainted with
you at the end of the semester when you crawl out from the library.
·
Find
a committee that serves your purposes. You need to get along with your chair
and the committee members need to get along with each other. Pick people who
have strengths you need (such as an eye for proofreading, good with statistical
analysis, etc.) and put them on your team. Do not pick people just because they
are available.
