#meredith davis

[womenofgraphicdesign]

Meredith Davis: Safety Posters

[unwokendreams]

There is no guarantee that life will turn out the way you want it to… even though you are hot and have a great rack.

Meredith Davis

[franceskray]

[wanderlustlibrarian]

writing a review on Bad Teacher for my school paper. any opinions?

[designcareers]

To PhD or Not to PhD, That is My Question

While continuing this work into my second semester I started to think about getting my Ph.D. I spoke with my graduate advisor, Professor Gibson, about the possibilities of exploring a Ph.D. for design research. He mentioned some schools such as Carnegie Mellon School of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan. I started to read about the different programs in the United States, however I was wondering, why should I get my Ph.D? I needed to do more research.

When I was asked to interview some people in our industry as a class assignment, Meredith Davis was one of the first people I added to my list. She is the Director of Graduate Programs in Graphic Design at North Carolina State University, a research number one university. I was curious to hear her perspective on getting a Ph.D. and how she get to the point where she is in her career? She said, “I've gotten to where I am today, wherever that is, by doing the work and by following through in articulating outcomes in publications and presentations. There is an arc to any research project, teaching, and professional engagement. If you don't complete that arc, the work won't have lasting impact. Parts of that arc aren't fun or showy, but if you skip those parts you'll never really understand the problem. I'm willing to plow through the rough stuff in the face of other shiny objects in the room. That is a long-term strategy and if you want to sustain work in this field you have to be willing to do that.”

I was curious, what her advice would be for someone like me entering her field? She states, “I think people entering academic careers today are smart to consider doctoral degrees. […] My biggest concern for beginning researchers is to take on things worth doing. Too many things I see in graduate work (master's and doctoral) are self-indulgent projects about personal perspectives on inconsequential issues or about counting and measuring things for the sake of counting and measuring. Design research is young, and unlike some established fields, there is no shortfall of important issues about which to build knowledge. So when graduate students waste their time on things that don't matter in the larger picture or don't do their homework to find that a problem has already been addressed by someone else, it is a tragic loss of opportunity.”

I know I want to work on my Ph.D. and hearing this feedback from Mrs. Davis and from other interviews within our class has helped me decide that route, however it cannot be a waste of time.

[bricesander]

[bricesander]

[bricesander]