The graduate certificate program in Publicly Engaged Scholarship (PES) aims to provide graduate students with a distinctive educational experience that cultivates the skills necessary to connect their graduate studies with the public outside of academia. The program accomplishes this goal through the study of a wide range of methods, practices, and theories of publicly engaged scholarship as well by supporting participating graduate students as they develop sustained collaborations with public institutions, community organizations, and/or faculty on publicly engaged projects. 

Applicants to the PES program must be accepted to an MA, MFA, or Ph.D. graduate program in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University (students in 4+1 programs are not eligible). The certificate is earned concurrently with a MA, MFA, or Ph.D. and is not a stand-alone degree. Those planning to apply to the PES program must take SOCI 7210 Community-Engaged Research Methods (3 c.h.), which provides an in-depth exploration of diverse community-engaged research methods. This course is offered in the fall and those who take the class are invited to apply to the PES program, which begins in the spring.

Graduate students are admitted to the PES program along with three community leaders and three faculty members. Together they form a cohort. The cohort gathers for the first time at a half-day retreat before the spring semester begins and meets for monthly dinners on Tuesday evenings for three semesters. They get to know one another well and have ongoing discussions about every stage of the graduate students’ publicly engaged projects, from establishing relationships will possible collaborators to integrating evaluation and next steps into their projects. 

Participating graduate students will also take SOCI 7220 Public-facing Scholarship (3 c.h.), which complements SOCI 7210 Community-Engaged Research Methods (3 c.h.), by investigating the rich history of public scholarship, the debates surrounding the subject, the evolving roles of scholars in public life, and various ways of doing public facing scholarship. Graduate students apply the theory and methods they learn in SOCI 7210 and 7220 as they develop and implement publicly engaged projects over three semesters.  

Graduate students are supported by their cohorts at monthly Tuesday evening meetings and by taking three one-hour courses, which also meet on Tuesday evenings, over the course of three semesters. These one credit hour courses are taught by the PES program director and include, INTD 7010 Publicly Engaged Scholarship I (1 c.h.), INTD 7020 Publicly Engaged Scholarship 2 (1 c.h.), and INTD 7030 Publicly Engaged Scholarship 3 (1 c.h.) Capstone. These courses help graduate students as they begin to reach out to community organizations, public institutions, and civic groups that are doing work that resonates with their scholarly interests. In the courses, graduate students learn to form healthy and ethically informed relationships with possible collaborators, develop well-grounded publicly engaged project proposals, implement and document projects, find ways to make projects more effective and sustainable, and integrate evaluation and reflection into their projects. 

Along the way, graduate students in the PES certificate program take one course from their home departments that helps them develop as publicly engaged scholars. Examples of possible courses from three different disciplines include: ANTH 6520 Ethnographic Methods (3 c.h.),  ANTH 7535 Native American Language and Linguistics (3 c.h.), HISU 6630 U S Labor and Migration (3 or 4 c.h.), CLAS 6080 Sem Anc Society & Econ (3 c.h.), CLAS 6200 Sem Roman Art & Archaeo I (3 c.h.). Such courses have substantial treatments of public engagement theory and methods or significant interactions with a community aiming at the production of a public benefit. During their final semester in the certificate program, graduate students will inform the director of the PES program which course from their home department will fulfill this role and offer a written explanation of how it will do so. These last three credit hours from graduate students’ home departments brings the total to twelve credit hours, which is the number of credits required to earn a graduate certificate. 

^{Program String and Field of Study: LACER_GR, PESC}

For more information, contact the School of Liberal Arts