Held on Notre Dame’s campus from June 25–27, Athena in Action: A Networking and Mentoring Workshop for Graduate Student Women in Philosophy brought together a group of 35 graduate students with 13 women faculty mentors for three days of substantive philosophical discussion and professional advice sessions. Participants, who were selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, benefitted from the mentors’ advice on topics of interest to women in the profession, including getting the most out of graduate school, writing a dissertation, publishing, presenting and participating at conferences, preparing for and going on the job market, teaching, starting a tenure-track job, and balancing work with the rest of life.
Meghan Sullivan, the Wilsey Family Collegiate Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative, and Director of the Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good (formerly known as the Institute for Advanced Study), hosted the 2024 Athena in Action Workshop at Notre Dame on behalf of the Department of Philosophy and the College of Arts & Letters. Sara Chan, Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and 2023-24 Graduate Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, assisted Sullivan in coordinating the event.
“Athena in Action was a transformative mentoring experience for these early-career philosophers,” said Sullivan. "The workshop was an opportunity to look into the future of this field, and it's incredible how much talent and vision we have in this community. It was also such a great joy to introduce them to Notre Dame and to share our university’s commitment to expanding philosophy and supporting the careers of excellent philosophers from underrepresented groups.”
In addition to its advice and mentoring components, the workshop featured seven paper sessions, each of which included two student commentators.
“An event like this is so important because of the opportunity it offers in developing graduate students as future scholars,” said Sarah Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts & Letters, who delivered remarks at the event's opening reception. “Quality mentorship is essential to helping promising young scholars transform into stars who can shape their fields.”
"The advice—from mentors and other participants—was invaluable,” confirmed Katelyn O’Dell, a fourth-year doctoral student at Notre Dame who participated in the event. “I entered the workshop full of questions about how to navigate the next stage of the PhD program, and I left full of answers—even to questions I didn’t know to ask!"
Co-directed by Elisabeth Camp (Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers–New Brunswick), Elizabeth Harman (Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and Human Values, Princeton University, and Director of Early-Career Research at the Center for Human Values), and Jill North (Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers–New Brunswick), Athena in Action began at Princeton in the summer of 2014. Continued as a biennial event, subsequent workshops have been held at Princeton, Cornell, and Rutgers.
Originally published by at ndias.nd.edu on July 03, 2024.
