Research Data Facilitator Has a Lot of Freedom in His Career
- ashleymo5779
- Apr 14
- 3 min read
Name: Brad Rittenhouse (he/him)
PhD: English, University of Miami, 2017
What was your main area of research?
I mostly looked at 19th century American literature and specifically how literary devices are used to encode and manage information in literary narrative.
What is your current job?
I am a Research Data Facilitator for Stanford University’s Research Computing Group in Stanford, CA.
My primary task is to help other researchers do the kinds of digital analysis I did with literature on their own text data, specifically on our "supercomputer" clusters. But I also have a good amount of leeway to build things like chatbots, learning platforms, etc. to further facilitate this process.
I think that having a PhD gives employers the okay to allow you to freelance in your job. I get a lot of freedom to design my own projects and initiatives, and I don't think I get that freedom without a PhD.
How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?
I think it was posted on LinkedIn.
PhD graduate ➡️ Digital Humanities Lab Manager ➡️ Research Data Facilitator
Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?
I love researching and writing (code or articles), but I don't like traditional teaching (workshops are great!) or publishing. I also just knew the stats on tenure-track (TT) jobs very early in grad school and thought there was a higher likelihood I could angle myself toward a tech-centered alt-ac position than a TT one. I'm still sad I don't really have the space to continue my research, but people don't pay you to just do research.
What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?
I built things myself. At Miami I built a program called UGrow for grad students in the humanities to get professionalization internships around the college (Publicity Office, etc) and community (History Miami). I made sure we set up an opportunity with the HPC Center, won that internship, and that lead directly to me being in HPC at Stanford.
For what it's worth, I set up a very similar program here for students in the humanities and social sciences: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yFSpLM4WWvXzOeURPXg_vOt1DYBEaESK5ik_-5s_DsY/edit?usp=sharing.
In most cases, interviewing outside academia is sooo much easier! No more 14 hour interviews after flying across the country. I think I lost a lot of positions because I'm pretty worn out by the end of an all-day campus visit, but professional interviews are usually only an hour or two so you can just give your best. If your work fits it, I'd prioritize making a portfolio of your projects on Canva or something similar. That's what I did and it's a much better way to showcase technical work than a CV.
I did start looking more on LinkedIn, where I found some interesting positions, but I wouldn't want to be in industry, which is what most of the postings cover. DigLib has more alt-ac jobs (https://www.diglib.org/opportunities/jobs/). The one I really used was DHNow, but I think their jobs board, at least, is defunct.
Are there any components of your identity you would like to share, including how they have impacted your journey?
I come from a working class background in the Rust Belt. Being at R1 universities for most of my career, it seems like the TT is largely made up of people whose parents are professors, or in the professions (doctors, lawyers, architects, etc.). It just feels like a bit of a closed world based on socio-economic background now, even though it's often been seen as a pathway to the middle class.
When I started realizing that everyone I knew who was finding success came from a different background, I became more confident in my decision to pivot.