Doctoral Students, Academic Societies, and a Finding a Home

What follows are some musings during and after this week’s Canadian Society of Church History (CSCH) meetings in Toronto.

I had never heard of an academic society when I first started as a PhD student way back in 1997. However, it did not take long to learn that such a thing existed. In fact, I quickly discovered that they were commonplace in the world of academia.
 
In my second year of course work my supervisor Phyllis Airhart encouraged me to present a paper at the CSCH. I did, and from that moment on I was a member of the CSCH and eventually joined the executive for a period of time.
 
In the following years I presented papers for a wide variety of societies and organizations in Canada, the US, and in Britain. And while I enjoyed almost all of those engagements, what I found was that some societies had become a home. 
 
The values of joining academic societies are many. They provide a place for:
 

• Gaining leadership opportunities
• Meeting students and faculty from other schools
• Developing a rhythm for research projects
• Presenting research
• Adding lines to one’s CV
• Breaking stereotypes through face-to-face meetings
• Forging friendships
• Developing collaboration on projects
• Learning scholarly standards for research
• Seeing what is trending 
• Being exposed to new ideas
• Having your own ideas challenged or affirmed
• Celebrating retirements

 
However, while all of those aspects of participating in academic societies are vital to the life of a scholar, twenty six years after my first paper at the CSCH I am convinced that one of the most important values of joining and being active in an academic society is that you can find a home; in other words, a community, a collegial gang, and a group of friends. 
 
The academic life can be very lonely, especially in smaller departments. Yet being a part of something larger with like-minded people can make the life of being a scholar deeply rewarding and something bearable (for not all is warm and fuzzy in the academy). 
 
Of course, you can have more than one home. I am a member of a variety of very good societies, but I have three “homes” – the CSCH, the Canadian Baptist Historical Society, and the International Conference of Baptist Studies. And as I am now the grey-haired guy musing about his career in the back seat of such meetings, I see how such organizations have been essential to whatever successes I may have achieved over the past quarter of a century.