TRaCE
Track, Report, Connect, Exchange
Paul Yachnin
Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas
McGill University
The TraCE Project
• track PhDs graduating in the humanities
• report on where they are, whether inside or outside the academy,
and on what they have achieved
• connect them with each other and with faculty and students inside
the academy
• sponsor the exchange of knowledge and knowhow among PhD
students, faculty members, and PhDs pursuing careers in nonacademic sectors
Funding from SSHRC (Connection
program) as well as from
participating universities and
partner organizations
Planning led by Paul Yachnin and
Sheetal Lodhia (Executive
Director, IPLAI)
Participating Universities
Carleton University
Concordia University
Dalhousie University
Institut national de la
recherche scientifique (INRS)
McGill University
McMaster University
Memorial University
Queen’s University
Ryerson University
Simon Fraser University
Université de Montréal
Université Laval
University of Alberta
University of British Columbia
University of Calgary
University of Guelph
University of Saskatchewan
University of Toronto
University of Waterloo
University of Western Ontario
University of Windsor
York University
Partner Organizations
Adoc Talent Management
Canadian Association of Graduate
Studies (CAGS)
Federation for the Humanities and
Social Sciences
Higher Education Quality Council
of Ontario (HEQCO)
Jackman Institute for the
Humanities, University of Toronto
Research Core Group—faculty
Sandy Welsh (Toronto)
Susan Porter (UBC)
Anthony Paré (UBC)
Mary-Ellen Kelm (Simon Fraser)
Heather Zwicker (Alberta)
Lisa Hughes (Calgary)
Frédéric Bouchard (Université de
Montréal)
Paul Keen (Carleton)
Barbara Crow (York)
Martin Kreiswirth (McGill)
Noreen Golfman (Memorial)
Julia Wright (Dalhousie)
Research core group—students
Eliza Bateman (McGill)
Joe Buschemi (Waterloo)
Kelsey Blair (SFU)
Susan Cake (Alberta)
Christina Foisy (York)
Casey McCormick (McGill)
Eve Preus (UBC)
Mike Webster (Calgary)
Advisors
Nicholas Dion (Senior Coordinator,
Research and Programs, HEQCO)
Robert Gibbs (Director, Jackman Institute
for the Humanities)
Greg Kelly (Executive Producer, CBC
Ideas)
Anne Krook (Principal, Practical
Workplace Advice; former Director,
Business Continuity, Amazon)
Alexandre Lehmann, (Assistant Prof. of
Medicine, McGill; Representative, Adoc)
Anita Parmar (McGill STEM Network,
Teaching and Learning Services)
Julia Rabinovich (Senior Projects Officer,
Office of the Vice-Provost, Faculty and
Academic Life, University of Toronto)
Lee Travaglini (Principal, Good Lookin’
Kids)
Richard Dominic Wiggers (Executive
Director, Research and Programs,
HEQCO)
Kyle Wyatt (Managing Editor, Walrus
Magazine)
Goals
• provide an accurate picture of a segment of humanities PhDs inside and
outside the academy—where are they and what are they doing? How are
they contributing to Canadian society?
• bring a significant number of non-academic PhDs back as honorary faculty
members for short stints as mentors, consultants, teachers, etc
• begin to create a newly constituted, more outwardly looking academic
community
• open a new view of the multiple career pathways that lead from the PhD
• begin to motivate reform in the culture of the academy and in doctoral
programs
• enhance the public profile of the humanities PhD
Means
• tracking exercises at 22 Canadian universities
• at least 2 departments/programs at each university track the PhD
graduating cohorts for 2004 through 2014
• full reporting on university websites
• sharing ideas, challenges, data across the university system
• development of tracking and reporting policies and principles
• creation of a TRaCE portal, an academic “LinkedIn” type site; expandable
up to 100,000 users, the portal will facilitate networking, mentoring, and
exchange
• use of electronic and print media to get the word out about the project and
portal
Questions (more to come)
1) What do we want to know about the grads?
2) What tracking methods have worked well?
3) How do we organize, present, and employ the data that we collect?
4) Which aspects of TRaCE will require human labour? which can be done via platform/portal?
5) Why in the first place might non-academic PhDs want to enter into community with faculty and
students?
6) How do we wed tracking and community building? What are some metrics by which we can
measure community building and engagement?