Limited seating. To attend this talk and discussion, please register here by Thursday November 30 at noon.
Selection into highly ranked PhD programs conditions access to the 21st century professoriate. Who does the present system of doctoral admissions system work for, and who falls through its cracks? Drawing from her book, Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (Harvard, 2016) as well as recent case studies of high-diversity, selective PhD programs, Dr. Julie Posselt will pull back the curtain on a process usually conducted in secret. Posselt presents admissions and recruitment from decision makers’ point of view, including thought-provoking episodes of committees debating the process, interviewing applicants, and grappling with borderline cases. Who ultimately makes the admit list reveals as much about how professors see themselves—and each other—as it does about how they view students. To help promote transparency and accountability, Posselt will share concrete strategies to improve admissions review.
About the speaker:Julie Posselt is Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Southern California and a 2015 National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow. Her research examines institutionalized inequalities in selective sectors of higher education, especially graduate education, elite colleges and universities, STEM fields, and the professoriate. Posselt is the author of Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (Harvard University Press, 2016), an award-winning ethnographic comparative study of faculty decision making in doctoral admissions. Her research is also published in the American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Higher Education, Annual Review of Sociology, and Research in Higher Education, among others. A member of the editorial review boards for the Journal of Higher Education and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, her research has been funded by the US Department of Education, Spencer Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and National Science Foundation. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan, and recently received the the 2017 Early Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
Open to all interested Stanford faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and students. Lunch will be provided for those arriving at 11:45 a.m. Note that this seminar will also be offered at 4:15 p.m. in a different location. Those interested may sign up for whichever one best fits their schedule.
