The AMST Ph.D. program partners with many organizations in and around the city of Indianapolis. These partnerships provide funding for students to cover tuition and/or stipends for internships, as well as direct experience with organizations that contend with aspects of large social, political, and cultural issues. From the persistence of poverty to the city planning for sustainable growth, organizations provide valuable knowledge and research opportunities for the diverse interests of our students.
The partnership with New America Indianapolis reflects the different dimensions of reimagining doctoral education in the liberal arts. Central to this partnership is the idea of public problem-solving.
This Public Problem-Solving Partnership is a collaborative effort in which AMST doctoral students–from across disciplines and backgrounds–embed in community organizations and conduct their research and work collaboratively, engaging the community as partners. We want to put the “public” back into “public scholarship.”
By partnering with New America Indy, we hope to expand the footprint of the students’ work, frame intractable local problems in new ways, enrich regional and national conversations with local feedback and models, and elevate new voices in public-problem-solving. Through this partnership, we connect new problem-solvers to networks, resources, and “seats at the tables” where civic, state, and regional decisions are made – new solvers who graduate from the program and those in the organizations, neighborhoods, and communities who partner with the students.
