INTERNATIONAL NETWORK
The Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) at the University of Washington, Seattle, founded the Forces and Forms of Change in Doctoral Education Worldwide Network (F&F Network) by hosting a series of international workshops. Participants invited to these workshops have formed a dynamic network of researchers and experts dedicated to meeting today’s critical knowledge and policy needs in doctoral education worldwide. The only such international research network on doctoral education, the F&F Network is making a unique contribution to the study of doctoral education globally.
DOCTORAL EXPERTS FROM SIX CONTINENTS
Network members represent key countries and regions, including both developed and developing nations, underrepresented populations, as well as one international institution, the European University Institute, and include disciplinary backgrounds ranging from astronomy to engineering to zoology. Members are key players in doctoral education and play leading roles in reform and innovation in their respective nations. They are in a position to provide information and data on global changes in doctoral education, as well as being the messengers who take recommendations from research synthesis workshops and other collaborations back to their respective countries and universities; helping disseminate policies that aim to educate socially responsible researchers around the globe.
PLATFORM FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY, INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS
The network is a vehicle for exchange and centralization of information and research findings, and a means of stimulating the production and synthesis of knowledge about innovations in doctoral education. The network provides members with a platform for working together across disciplines and national boundaries. It allows the expertise of members from around the world to be tapped by other members and policy makers and provides a centralized source of information on doctoral education worldwide.
COMMITMENT TO THE FUTURE
Members are committed to furthering the development of PhD programs and the preparation of PhD recipients across nations and continents, to better equip doctoral students to become the next generation of leaders in a global and knowledge-based world.
GOALS OF THE F&F NETWORK
1. Move a broad coalition of scholars, policy makers, funders and administrators toward a better grasp of the issues of graduate education across nations and further international collaboration.
2. Encourage information sharing among participants about innovations and best practices currently shaping doctoral programs – establishing an international knowledge exchange.
3. Work toward establishing greater inclusiveness within the realm of doctoral education of underrepresented groups.
4. Examine ways in which issues can be addressed in policy to foster the education and training of leadership for a knowledge-based society in a global economy.
Many of our network members have been involved since the first workshop in 2005. Some have not been able to attend all of the workshops, but have kept in contact and collaborated with the other members. In addition, new members have been invited for each workshop. For a list of all members, click here. F&F Network Members
The nautilus was chosen to symbolize the theme of our network. The nautilus’s skeletal structure is external and grows in size to accommodate the maturing mollusk. As the mollusk grows, it moves into the larger chamber, which has grown ahead of it, and can no longer return to the smaller one. Each of the smaller chambers remain a functioning part of the whole, vital to its completeness, even though its specific usefulness as a chamber in which to dwell has been superseded.
So the nautilus is a symbol of ongoing growth and development – one of the things education tries to foster in students and faculty. The whole is a result of previous and lesser sized parts, one built upon the other. No part loses its significance, even as its specific usefulness has been transcended. Globalization is one of the main forces affecting doctoral education today. Globalization cannot be ignored or avoided; however, we can be proactive in determining the forms of change doctoral education will make in response to this force. All countries need to prepare their doctoral students adequately for societies that are increasingly based on a knowledge economy.
Also used on our materials (and in the banner of the F&F web pages, are sketches of six universities. These are some of the oldest universities in the world with doctoral programs and represent each of the six continents our network members are from.