Graduate School Awards 8 Professional Development Grants for 2023
The Graduate School has awarded eight Professional Development Grants for the 2023 calendar year.
The grants provide up to $2,000 to help graduate students and their departments create discipline-specific professional development programming and resources for exploring both academic and diverse careers. Such programming complements the offerings from The Graduate School, which focus on topics that are applicable across disciplines.
“These proposals represent a wonderful diversity of approaches to support the unique disciplinary needs of graduate students,” said Melissa Bostrom, Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Professional Development and administrator of the grant. “We have seen faculty and students develop innovative strategies for professional development in disciplines from arts and humanities to STEM.”
The Graduate School has awarded 70 grants since the program’s launch in 2014. Over that time, the grants have supported 43 departments and programs.
The 2023 grant recipients and their proposed programming:
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics: Hosting a three-part series to address the value of internships, the ins and outs of internship applications, and tips for making the most of internship experiences.
Duke Institute for Brain Sciences: Providing formal training in mentorship, conflict management, and leadership for trainee mentors in the Duke University Neuroscience Experience, a student-led program designed to improve recruitment and retention of individuals from historically marginalized groups in STEM.
Duke Institute for Brain Sciences: Supporting Entering Mentoring, a four-week professional development series on the fundamentals of effective mentorship tailored for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Electrical and Computer Engineering: Sponsoring a series of workshops on the importance of emotional intelligence in STEM and methods for developing empathy and emotional intelligence.
Master of Fine Arts in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis: Supporting the development of financial literacy and economic sustainability for artists through a series of virtual workshops.
Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Documentary Arts: Hosting a “Somatic and Sonic Cinema Salon” in order to bring together filmmakers, programmers, and film writers to investigate the historical impulse to link the body to moving image.
Neurobiology: Sponsoring a monthly career seminar series featuring professionals with Ph.D. training in neuroscience/neurobiology who have successfully followed a variety of diverse career paths.
Ph.D. programs in the Nicholas School of the Environment: Organizing a series of workshops exploring best practices for international, field-based research projects covering topics such as language barriers, cultural differences, data management, authorship, and ethics.