It is imperative that today’s PhD candidates are trained to develop the skills and habits of mind that will enable them to thrive not only in the classroom and laboratory but in the wide world beyond their discipline. Johns Hopkins is setting a new standard for a 21st-century PhD whose knowledge bridges the disciplines with three new approaches to graduate training:

• The School of Public Health’s R3 Graduate Science Initiative—the Rs stand for scientific rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility—launched in 2017 to model a completely new approach to graduate science education, with training in epistemology, logic, ethics, statistics, communication, and leadership. Coursework includes critical thinking in science, the anatomy of scientific error, communication training, research design, scientific reasoning and critical analysis of scientific literature, storytelling in science and public health, and persuasive speaking and writing. The idea is to train stronger scientists who are better equipped for jobs outside academia and who can share insights with both peers and the public at large.
• The Cross Disciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences (XDBio) is a new model of PhD education in the School of Medicine, drawing on Hopkins’ expertise across many disciplines, including medicine, public health, biology, physics, engineering, and data science. Each student will receive individualized training and extensive, personalized co-mentoring from outstanding scientists across Johns Hopkins University, facilitating their rapid growth and development as biomedical scientists. The program will expose gifted young individuals to different scientific perspectives and approaches that will inform their development when they are most creative and innovative. The program will admit its first class of five students in fall 2019.
• The Department of Comparative Thought and Literature offers a PhD in humanistic studies that can lead to a variety of career paths based on robust research opportunities and hands-on learning. The broad instructional background provided by this new PhD leads to careers in academia, museums and art galleries, journalism and writing, politics, teaching, media, and nonprofit management.