NDSU Graduate School is offering students a humorous look at earning a doctorate. A free movie screening of “The PHD Movie!” is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. in the Memorial Union Century Theater. A free pizza social will be held at 5 p.m. in Butte Lounge.
“Piled High and Deeper — Life (or the Lack Thereof),” or "Ph.D. Comics," a popular comic strip dubbed the “Dilbert of higher education,” mocks graduate students and the graduate school experience, including lack of sleep, money and social life. Jorge Cham created the strip as his own procrastination “therapy” while working on a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering at Stanford University.
Turning “Ph.D. Comics” into a movie involved employing a theater group from California Institute of Technology, where Cham did postdoctoral work. The producer, director and actors are all current graduate students in geological sciences, aeronautics, physics and astrophysics.
The screening was arranged after Cham presented at NDSU last spring, where he poked fun at the graduate student experience. He also discussed the current economic environment and encouraged graduate students to search outside of academia for careers.
“Ph.D. Comics” has appeared in the Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Carnegie-Mellon newspapers and is published online where it receives more than 7 million page views a month from more than 1,000 universities and colleges worldwide.
Cham was born and raised in the Republic of Panama. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. He was subsequently an instructor and research associate at Caltech from 2003-05, where his work focused on developing “smart” neural implants. He has published and presented nationally and abroad on his robotics and neural prosthetics research. He also travels and presents all over the world to thousands of graduate students, faculty and administrators on the graduate student experience. Three “Piled Higher and Deeper” book collections have been published. In all, Cham’s books have sold more than 48,000 copies.
The event is sponsored by NDSU Graduate School and the Graduate Student Association.
For more information, contact Sonya Goergen at 701-231-7771.