The Graduate School Awards Eight Professional Development Grants for 2025
The Graduate School awarded eight Professional Development Grants for the 2025 calendar year, contributing to a total of 87 grants awarded since the program's 2014 launch.
The school's Professional Development team regularly offers professional development programs, resources, and events to help graduate students explore and and prepare for career paths that best suit their skills, talents, and academic training. Many of these programs are cross-disciplinary and appropriate for a wide range of students and disciplines. The Professional Development Grants provide up to $2,000 for departments and programs to create discipline-specific programming.
A summary of the 2025 grant recipients:
Bioethics & Science Policy: Hosting a student-led conference at the Duke in D.C. office that provides opportunities to network with professionals in bioscience and technology policy.
Biology: Hosting monthly informal conversations and lunches to network and explore career tracks with professionals from Triangle-area plant biology endeavors.
Chemistry: Expanding the “Coffee with a Chemist” event series to include perspectives on diverse careers and relocating and working outside the Triangle.
Neurobiology: Extending a monthly career seminar series featuring professionals with Ph.D. training in neuroscience and neurobiology who have successfully followed a variety of diverse career paths.
Nicholas School Ph.D. programs: Hosting a writing retreat for Ph.D. students that allows focused writing time and professional development workshops facilitated by experts.
Nursing: Hosting a hybrid event series with alumni across both academia and industry, fostering a comprehensive understanding of career pathways.
Physics: Supporting the weekly Physics Graduate Seminar Series, fostering skill sets in presenting, organization, time management, communication, and peer feedback.
University Program in Genetics & Genomics: Hosting lunches with industry professionals for students to learn about the latest industry trends and to explore potential career avenues and practical applications of their studies.