Contact: Katherine Hazelrigg  (202) 461-3888 / khazelrigg@cgs.nche.edu

Washington, DC – The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has awarded the 2021 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities to Dr. Tae-Yeoun Keum, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The awards ceremony was held during the CGS 61st Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

Bestowed annually, the Arlt Award recognizes a young scholar-teacher who has written a book deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to scholarship in the humanities. Dr. Keum becomes the award’s 51st recipient for her book, Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought (Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2020). She received her PhD in political theory from Harvard University in 2017.

In Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought, Dr. Keum considers the work of Plato, particularly his philosophical myths and their role in shaping modern political thought. She traces Plato’s impact on texts from the early modern era through the twentieth century, demonstrating how his classical mythmaking has influenced political theory across many centuries. While some philosophers viewed Plato’s myths as trivial work from the “inventor of rational philosophy,” Keum contends that mythic tradition “helps us rethink some of the default assumptions we tend to make about what philosophy is, and what it ought to look like.”

“We are honored to present Dr. Keum with this year’s prestigious Arlt Award. Her brilliant work reminds us that rethinking the traditional boundaries of knowledge enhances voices on the margin and reiterates the importance of diversity of thought. Through an analysis of Plato’s classical myths and their treatment by philosophers across many literary periods, Keum elevates the role and importance of myths in modern political discourse and argues they are integral to human understanding,” said Dr. Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools.

“Dr. Keum's receipt of the 2021 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities recognizes not only her impressive achievement, but also the centrality of humanistic approaches to understanding politics. Reaching across disciplinary boundaries, Dr. Keum's work suggests that even the most rationalistic of systems draws upon the power of symbols and mythic representations. It is truly a tour de force,” said Leila Rupp, interim Anne and Michael Towbes Graduate Dean, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Created in 1971, the Arlt Award honors the first president of CGS, Gustave O. Arlt. The winner must have earned a doctorate within the past seven years, and currently be teaching at a North American university. Nominations are made by CGS member institutions and are reviewed by a panel of scholars in the field of competition, which rotates annually among seven disciplines within the humanities. This year’s field was Linguistics and Philosophy. The winner receives a $1,000 honorarium and travel to the awards ceremony.

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Contacts:

Katherine Hazelrigg, Council of Graduate Schools  (202) 461-3888 | khazelrigg@cgs.nche.edu

Gilia Smith, ProQuest   (734) 277-7320 | gilia.smith@proquest.com

Washington, DC – The Council of Graduate Schools / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards, the nation’s most prestigious honors for doctoral dissertations, were presented to Caitlin Cornell and Denisa Jashari during an award ceremony held at the CGS 61^st Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Dr. Cornell received her PhD in physical chemistry and biophysics from the University of Washington in 2019; Dr. Jashari completed her PhD in Latin American History at Indiana University Bloomington in 2020.

Bestowed annually since 1982, the awards recognize recent doctoral recipients who have already made unusually significant and original contributions to their fields. ProQuest, Part of Clarivate – whose ProQuest^® Dissertations & Theses Global^™ database (PQDT) features the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses – sponsors the awards, and an independent committee from the Council of Graduate Schools selects the winners. Two awards are given each year, rotating among four general areas of scholarship. The winners receive a certificate of recognition, a $2,000 honorarium, and a travel stipend to attend the awards ceremony.

“The CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award recognizes the innovative research of young scholars and their momentous impact on their disciplines and the broader graduate education community,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega. “The significant contributions Dr. Cornell and Dr. Jashari have made in their respective fields continue the tradition of excellence. Their work represents the best of graduate education and research and merits recognition.”

“We’re proud to honor the incredible breakthroughs these researchers have made,” said Angela D’Agostino, vice president of product management, dissertations at ProQuest. “The past few years have been immeasurably difficult for PhD students, which makes Dr. Cornell and Dr. Jashari’s outstanding works even more impressive and well-deserving of the 2021 Distinguished Dissertation Award. ProQuest is pleased to include their research in the PQDT corpus where it can be discovered and expanded upon by other researchers around the world."

Dr. Cornell received the 2021 Award in Biological and Life Sciences for her dissertation, Lipid Membranes: From Organizational Strategies in Cells to the Origins of Life. Cornell’s dissertation research “bridges the gap between synthetic model membranes, cell-derived membranes, and living yeast organellar membranes.” Her work examines cell membranes, from the simplest forms to the most complex, to better understand how lipids found in cell membranes may contribute to improved protein function. In addition, she investigates the formation of the earliest protocell membranes billions of years ago. Dr. Cornell is currently a James S. McDonnell postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Fletcher Lab.

The 2021 Award in Humanities and Fine Arts was presented to Dr. Jashari for her dissertation, Cartographies of Conflict: Political Culture and Urban Protest in Santiago, Chile, 1872-1994. Jashari’s work tracks disputes over urban spaces in Santiago, Chile, beginning with the social reform period of 1872-1970, through the Marxist government of Allende and dictatorship of Pinochet, to democratic rule from 1990-1994. She “historicizes the political importance of space and moves [...] between national and street-level dimensions of social and political struggles in urban space,” while expanding the period of study beyond the more narrow scope of current scholarship. Dr. Jashari is currently an assistant professor of Latin American history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Two outstanding scholars received honorable mentions: Kathleen Houlahan (nominated by the University of Toronto) for the Award in Biological and Life Sciences, and Ariana Brazier (nominated by the University of Pittsburgh) for the Award in Humanities and Fine Arts.

More information about the CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award is available at https://cgsnet.org/2021-cgs-award-winners-announced. For a list of past ProQuest Award Winners visit https://about.proquest.com/en/dissertations/spotlight/.

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But enrollments in associate and master’s degree programs each sank by 21 percent. Enyu Zhou, a senior analyst at the Council of Graduate Schools, said her organization’s research found that first-time master’s students were more likely than doctoral students to defer admission last fall rather than begin their studies online.

An NSF-funded CGS RAPID project and the CGS project on graduate student mental health have both underscored the need to better understand the challenges and impacts of caregiving on graduate students' progress toward degree completion. In this webinar, three graduate deans will discuss how their institutions have codified accommodations and support for graduate students with various caregiving responsibilities. Panelists will also discuss how their respective institutions are making financial and other resources available to help students find a healthy balance between continuing their graduate studies and supporting their loved ones.

Shabana Sayed, a master’s degree student in educational leadership at Hood College, has been an educator for Frederick County Public Schools (FCPS) for eight years. She’s served in a variety of leadership roles, including as the Science Department Chair at Walkersville Middle School. Sayed is currently working with Frank Vetter, an adjunct professor in Hood’s educational leadership program, to open Frederick’s Middle School Blended Virtual Program. The new blended program will follow the same academic calendar and student will attend synchronous daily classes, while assignments and some class activities will be asynchronous.

The new program is being developed after educators realized that the shift to virtual learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic was more beneficial for some students than in-person learning. When Sayed learned about the new virtual program, she was intrigued. “I saw this as a unique and exciting opportunity to broaden my teaching experience while also allowing me to serve a role in opening a new program that will benefit students across the county,” said Sayed. “Once I learned that Mr. Vetter was appointed principal of the program, I knew that this was something I wanted to be a part of. He is an incredible leader and working with him continues to be very valuable and fulfilling. I am excited to be part of a program that is using informed practices and instructional strategies to serve our students!”

Sayed aspires to be a school administrator and believes the experience she’s gaining as part of the blended virtual program is invaluable. She chose to pursue her master’s degree at Hood, in part, because of its unique partnership with FCPS. “Attending Hood College has helped me to connect and collaborate with other FCPS educators across the county. I believe that my time at Hood will help me in my career because of the connections I have been able to make with FCPS leaders and administrators.” To learn more about Shabana’s research, please visit the Hood College website.

Visit the GradImpact Feature Gallery to learn more about the amazing, innovative research being done by graduate students and alumni across the world.

Photo Credit: Hood College Marketing Team

CGS Employer Roundtable member, Dr. Lisa Amini, is at the cutting edge of advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). She currently serves as director of IBM Research Cambridge, home to the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and IBM’s AI Horizons Network.

In her more than 25 years at IBM Research, Dr. Amini has held a number of positions, including her current role as director of AI scaling and automation, and former roles as the director of knowledge & reasoning research in the Cognitive Computing group at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center, founding director of IBM Research Ireland, and the first woman lab director for an IBM Research Global Lab. Dr. Amini earned her PhD in computer science from Columbia University.

We sat down with Lisa to talk about the role of graduate education in preparing researchers to solve the problems of the future.

As an employer, what do you see as the value of hiring people with advanced degrees?

We value advanced degrees, because they help to build deep expertise in relevant areas such as Artificial Intelligence or mathematics, and to tackle problems leveraging scientific methodologies. An IBM researcher strives to advance science or to envision the future of technology, and then work towards creating that future. Accomplishing this requires two things. One is deep expertise in their chosen field, along with sufficient breadth in related areas, for a broader context.  That depth and breadth of expertise requires advanced courses and research project experiences available in graduate school.

The second is that working at IBM Research requires leveraging scientific principles and methods, to bring rigor and theoretical underpinnings to our research. Working at the forefront of science and technology, requires tackling problems that are not initially well-posed. Much of a researcher’s job is in formulating challenges as more well-defined problems, which can then be tackled with principled approaches. These skills are usually developed and refined through graduate work. When we’re hiring people with PhDs, we look at their coursework and also their research results. We want to hire people who can demonstrate their ability to formulate impactful problems, generate new ideas, and communicate their research to peers in the scientific community, for example through papers and presentations in top-tier conferences and journals.

Your company does a lot of work to address complex societal challenges. Could you tell us about one or two of those initiatives and your role in them?

I'll start with one of the biggest projects I took on personally to tackle complex societal challenges: the Smarter Cities Initiative. In 2003, I had started researching capabilities to analyze streams of data and extract patterns and insights as the data streams were being generated. We were inventing scalable stream mining systems and machine learning algorithms to handle what we saw as a growing tide of data that would be continuously generated from large numbers of sensors and devices.

In 2009-2010, I was asked to start a new research lab in Ireland to extend and leverage these ideas and technologies for building smarter cities and utilities, such as energy, water and transportation. This was an exciting initiative because at that time, much of the machine learning research on very large data leveraged synthetic data. Large, real-world data sets were not widely available in academic settings. It was also exciting because there were huge efficiencies and societal benefits to be gained by improving these systems. This enabled us to engage with organizations seeking to deploy smarter transportation systems, transportation grids, water networks, and large energy grids.

We were able to take our expertise in stream processing, machine learning, optimization and control theory, and apply it to real-world challenges. Our goal was to help people run a more efficient city by providing better technology to those managing city operations or utilities. It was also exciting because we were building a new research lab from the ground up. It was a compelling mission, and we were one of the few labs getting that magnitude of data and access to address real problems.

One of the more recent projects you've probably seen us talking about is our work in AI that drives data-driven discovery using generative AI approaches. This is one of the areas we are tackling as part of our AI Horizons Network (AIHN) of university partners. You often see this research in terms of the future of materials, molecular discovery, or medicine. This is such a large and challenging space with huge potential for societal impact, it is important for us to create communities of discovery to enable better science, better collaboration and sharing, and better ability to reproduce and build upon research results across those communities of discovery.

This also ties back to the initiative I lead within IBM Research, the automation of AI. By automating the processes of AI model creation and operations, such as, feature engineering, machine learning (ML) model building, and ongoing ML lifecycle management, we hope to bring AI systems with better repeatability, transparency, fairness, and scalability to these problems. This is because the AI automation algorithms seek to bring best of breed algorithms and techniques to ML tasks and pipelines. And I hope that these capabilities will be one of the foundations for these communities of discovery we see emerging.

What advice do you have for students, particularly women in STEM thinking about graduate school?

If you want to get an advanced degree, do it in on a topic you're deeply passionate about. The work is not easy, and there will be times when you're struggling to meet the demands. So, you really need that passion to keep going. If you finish your undergraduate degree and aren’t sure which fields or problems you should bring your passions to, consider taking time to work in the industry and then decide when you are ready to pursue an advanced degree. I actually worked industry for a while before returning to grad school for my doctoral degree.

I would also say not to worry if your path isn’t linear. You may start off in a particular area and find something else you enjoy more. It's not like you lose that knowledge or experience. I’ve heard people say things like, “I’m already a year into my program, I can’t change tracks, because I will lose the time I’ve already invested.” In my opinion, graduate school is the time to experiment and learn, and every new thing you learn helps you to build your own personal body of knowledge. You will be faced with other pivots throughout your career, so all these little shards of evidence help you to reason better and to find your space.

The last point is that regardless of your field of study, you should learn data-driven approaches, techniques, and tools. We see more people pursuing fields such as finance, economics, social science and others, while also learning machine learning and data science methods and tools. Using grad school to learn these techniques early will enable you to bring data-driven grounding to your research in any domain, throughout your career.

Graduate school leaders know that recruiting and retaining graduate students requires different strategies than those used in undergraduate admissions. What happens when your technology partners understand this too? Representatives from two universities will share how they have combined the best tools and services from a variety of industry leaders to ensure the success of their graduate enrollment teams. They will also describe how they are using data throughout the graduate student lifecycle to support graduate students and achieve institutional goals. Webinar sponsored by Liaison. 

“It’s clear to me that the increase in the number of students pursuing part-time degrees is an indicator of folks looking for flexibility in when and how they access graduate education,” said CGS president Dr. Suzanne Ortega. “We don’t have the data specifically on enrollment in online programs, but we know that the areas where there’s growth in master’s and part-time are often delivered virtually.” 

"One of the positive aspects of the pandemic and our age of uncertainty is that graduate programs have gotten much better at flexibility and capacity to accommodate working adults on a part-time basis and online," said Suzanne Ortega, CGS’s president. "That had been starting to happen over time, but I think it has really accelerated over the past year."