Common for undergraduates, internships have never been a routine part of doctoral study. But they should be — both to give our Ph.D.s more career options and to help departments build connections with the world around us.

Beginning in 2019, the university’s Obermann Center for Advanced Studies began offering internships to doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, as part of a program jointly funded by Iowa’s graduate school and a four-year grant from the Mellon Foundation.