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Faculty Facilitators: DPD

Dissertation Proposal Development Program, Faculty Facilitators

  • Application Instructions for Faculty Facilitators, 2024 and 2025.
  • Applications are due by noon on Friday, January 12, 2024.
Program Key Dates
  • May 13-17 2024
  • August 19-22, 2024
  • September 13, 2024

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We invite humanities and social science-oriented tenured and tenure-track faculty to apply to serve as facilitators in the Dissertation Proposal Development (DPD) Program at the University of Minnesota. The workshop is specifically intended for students who are in the process of developing their dissertation proposal. The DPD program offers two intensive one-week workshops at the beginning and end of the summer, which together aims to improve students’ dissertation prospectus development, as well as to enhance their understanding of the grant and fellowship selection process in interdisciplinary grant and fellowship competitions.

The majority of the workshop time is devoted to discussing workbooks written by the students to describe their dissertation projects, using both peer feedback within interdisciplinary student cohorts and conversations with the faculty facilitators. In between the workshops, the students are expected to make substantial progress on preliminary dissertation research. The DPD program is open to humanities and social science-oriented doctoral students at the University of Minnesota.

We are seeking two faculty instructors who will commit to the program for 2024 and 2025. The faculty facilitators serve in overlapping two-year terms so that each year, two new faculty members join the DPD facilitator group, working alongside the two experienced facilitators. Within each cohort, the program pairs one experienced and one new faculty facilitator. In the second year of service, faculty members select the new faculty who will join them as co-facilitators. The four facilitators team up to manage two cohorts of 12 students, each run by one experienced facilitator and one new facilitator. 

After students’ applications are received in the spring, the faculty facilitators will select the 24-26 student participants and assign them to cohorts. For the 2024 program, the Spring portion of the workshop is scheduled for May 13-17 2024. The Fall workshop is scheduled for August 19-22, 2024, followed by a one-day session on Friday, September 13, 2024. The workshop dates in 2025, which will bring in a new cohort of DPD students, will be similar. Workshops will be conducted in-person on the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus.

Tenured and tenure-track faculty at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities are eligible to serve as faculty facilitators. The DPD Faculty Facilitator position is considered equivalent to teaching a course each Fall and thus does not entail overload work. In recognition of the time and effort that the workshops involve, the facilitators will be the instructors of record for two 3-credit graduate seminars (one per year for a total of two) that will be part of the facilitator’s regular course load, and their home College will receive tuition as is the case with any other course. Before applying to be a faculty instructor, you should discuss this with your department chair and obtain an agreement that this work will be considered part of your regular course load.

Past faculty instructors have said this was among their most rewarding teaching experiences. As a faculty facilitator, you will get to work in collaboration with your colleagues to select student participants and run two, week-long workshops (Spring and Fall) each year. As facilitators, faculty work closely with diverse graduate students from across the university on cutting-edge work from a wide range of disciplines. 

As part of the application, you will be asked to discuss your experience and/or interest in working with graduate students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds in a statement of up to 500 words. The following topics are especially relevant: 

  • your personal appreciation of and/or experience with different theoretical and methodological approaches to research, 
  • your experience with graduate proseminars or graduate methods training and grant writing, and 
  • your thoughts on what a program like the DPD adds to graduate education.

By submitting an application, you will be confirming that you have discussed the terms with your department chair and have received agreement that the work will be considered part of your regular course load. You also are committing to participating fully in all parts of the program, including being on campus for both workshops and working to administer the program during the academic year.