8 Programs Receive Professional Development Grants
The Graduate School has awarded eight Professional Development Grants to support discipline-specific programming for graduate students.
The grants, established in 2014, award up to $2,000 to help graduate students and their departments create discipline-specific professional development programming and resources for exploring both academic and nonacademic career options. Such programming complements the offerings from The Graduate School, which focus on topics that are applicable across disciplines.
The recipients and their proposed programming:
Chemistry: Expanding the Duke Graduate Chemistry Council’s Non-traditional Careers for Stem PhDs program piloted last academic year. The program will expose STEM graduate students to nonacademic career paths and provide multiple networking opportunities.
Evolutionary Anthropology: Holding a series of four professional development workshops run by faculty from multiple institutions, a retreat with an outside speaker and workshops, and a robust alumni network. The events will be open to participants from the Physical Biology of Organisms consortium, including Duke, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, and Virginia Tech.
Literature: Bringing four area activists to campus in the 2015–2016 academic year for a series of interactive workshops designed to educate Duke community members about local social justice issues and to give them the tools, skills, and contacts to contribute to these projects in their academic and professional lives.
Marine Science and Conservation: Holding a series of workshops to help graduate students and faculty create and maintain personal and laboratory websites, giving them the tools needed to be accessible to employers and collaborators and make positive digital impressions.
Nursing: Piloting a series of activities to support peer mentorship of developing nursing scientists, including doctoral students, postdocs, and faculty... This will be a partnership between the nursing Ph.D. programs at Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Statistical Science: Hosting an alumni dinner event bringing alumni from both research and industry positions around the country to talk about their organizations and their professional lives, helping students learn about the depth and variety of industry and research applications within statistics, as well as providing a networking opportunity.
University Program in Genetics and Genomics: Holding a series of workshops, each focused on a specific aspect of career development pertinent to students earning a Ph.D. in genetics and genomics. Students will have the opportunity to engage in networking, science communication, and mentoring while leading or participating in these workshops.
Women’s Studies: Hosting a series of three workshops to help prepare graduate students and postdocs to apply for jobs in interdisciplinary fields. The first two workshops will focus on academic jobs and careers in administration, while the third workshop will give students the opportunity to get feedback on their application materials.