Find your perfect college degree
In this article, we will be covering...
Graduate students must navigate the overwhelming and often daunting life as they pursue an advanced degree.
Fortunately, there are numerous opportunities for them to easily transition to graduate school and support them throughout their progress in their chosen program. It is often in the form of resources, mentoring, events, courses, and workshops designed to guide them through professional development.
Taking part in professional development workshops will allow them to explore academic excellence and gain valuable industry experience, whether it is learning how to network with academics, writing and communication, and technical competencies like Python Deep Learning, Python Machine Learning Fundamentals, and Research and Data Analysis.
Some universities offer workshops in a series. Others are available as stand-alone workshops. The workshops are often offered online, in-person, or on demand.
Additional Resources:
- Tips for Networking While You’re in Graduate School
- 12+ Super Helpful Tips For Starting a New Job After Grad School
- Graduate Schools with Innovative Technology
Generally, interested graduate students may register on a certain date to be able to join the workshops. There are some, however, that can still be accessed long after the workshop or event is over.
If you want to broaden your career perspectives, develop core competencies, and enhance your potential as a professional in your chosen field, then the following workshops will work well for your prospects.
Career & Self-Development Workshops
North Carolina State University’s Graduate School aims to prepare students for career readiness by offering an array of professional development workshops and series categorized by competencies. One of the workshop series on offer tackles career and self-development.
In this workshop, students will be able to gain competency that allows them to acquire self-awareness, equipping them with insights about themselves by helping them understand how their talents and skills can be utilized in a variety of career paths. Students will also be able to learn how to apply their skills in different positions.
The workshops in the series include Career Readiness Programs: Career Exploration, Emotional Intelligence: A Tool for Teaching, How to Write a Cover Letter, Career Readiness Programs: Job Search Strategies, and more.
Finding and Using Public Data in Research
Aiming to help graduate students develop professional skills in their careers, the University of North Texas offers plenty of workshop opportunities designed for career development. Based on the PREP model, the workshops embody four areas that are essential for students’ success, including Planning, Resilience, Engagement, and Professionalism.
One of the workshops on offer is called Finding and Using Public Data in Research. It is going to be hosted by Willis Library. The workshop teaches students how to incorporate data in their thesis or dissertation as a way to provide persuasive evidence for a hypothesis. Students will tackle the different methods used to identify appropriate public data resources and understand the limitations of such public data.
The workshop is going to be presented by Deborah Yun Caldwell, data services librarian at the Research Support Services Department.
Conflict Management and De-Escalation Workshop
The Graduate School at Colorado State University offers professional development workshops and events designed for graduate students. One of them is the Conflict Management and De-Escalation Workshop.
This workshop will teach participants about their communication and conflict styles. They will also explore various approaches to conflict as well as communication techniques to de-escalate tense situations.
To be led by Dr. Gardiner Tucker, a faculty member in Higher Education & Student Affairs Leadership, the workshop will be a good starting point for those who want to acquire knowledge and skills in conflict management.
Bootcamp: How Master’s Students Can Land Jobs and Gain Work Experience
Duke University offers the Graduate School Workshop Series for master’s students to help them support their Career and professional development. The Bootcamp: How Master’s Students Can Land Jobs and Gain Work Experience is part of that workshop series. This is designed for students who feel overwhelmed by the process of applying for internships or jobs, allowing them to gain a competitive edge and stand out from a saturated job market.
The workshop is available online. It is primarily concerned with equipping students with knowledge in navigating the often complex internship or job search process with confidence. In this webinar, they will learn essential job search tools, strategies, and techniques to help them identify career opportunities.
The webinar is made up of a series of lectures, including going beyond LinkedIn and Indeed, navigating career fairs, networking, and writing resumes that will be read by hiring managers.
Project Management Workshop
The University of Wisconsin-Madison offers the Project Management Workshop. This is designed to help graduate students manage projects while developing people’s potential. In this workshop, they will gain a better understanding of systematic approach methods, evaluation, and how to use resources effectively.
In collaboration with the Office of Quality Improvement, the Graduate School hosts this one-day workshop for students who need to learn the essential skills for successful project management. Graduate students will be able to enhance their capability to lead a project to completion, whether it comes to a dissertation, capstone project, or fieldwork.
Students are expected to learn how to apply proven and practical project management techniques used by professional project managers while enhancing their management, teamwork, collaboration, and leadership skills.
Mentoring Workshops
Northwestern University offers the Mentoring Workshops. It is a joint effort of the Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Training and Development in the Graduate School. This quarterly workshop is designed for Ph.D. students across all disciplines who wish to learn the best practices that will help them establish effective and productive mentoring relationships with their mentees and with their mentors, where applicable.
The workshop is divided into three training sessions based on the Entering Mentoring curriculum of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Students who complete this workshop series can receive a certificate from the Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Training and Development.
The series includes Maintaining Communication and Aligning Expectations, Enacting Equity and Inclusion, Building Self-Efficacy, and Developing Professionally.
Mississippi State University ORED Seminars & Programs
The Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) of Mississippi State University holds a range of seminars on various topics throughout the year. A lot of these are also held as digital seminars.
The current season is winding down, but ORED has two more in-person activities lined up: a Symposium on Autonomous Systems: Inspiring Innovation Across Land, Air, and Sea, and a Seminar entitled Defending a Nation: An Overview of Modern National Security Challenges and Research Opportunities. Both events serve as pointers for the state of the art in their specific area and for possible avenues to explore with graduate research.
The MSU ORED also maintains an archive of previously held seminars, again on a wide range of topics, accessible through their online archive, which goes back to 2017. Various presentations and materials from the seminar are also open and accessible for download.
Stony Brook University DoIT Events
Stony Brook University regularly holds a series of on-campus events for all its students that are part of its larger DoIT series of training workshops. DoIT Events are held online or on campus and revolve around the central themes of information security awareness, experiential learning, and digital literacy.
There are a number of DoIT events scheduled for the latter end of this year, with some slated for this month alone. These seminars cover various topics, from the basics, such as resume building and Microsoft Excel, to introductions to specialized software and processes, such as MATLAB and JavaScript.
Interested Students can check Stony Brook University’s calendar of DoIT events through this link hosted by CampusLabs.
Michigan Ross Digital Course Offerings
The Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan offers its top-ranked Executive Education series of courses designed for those in leadership positions in the field of business. Typically spanning a few weeks each in length, these professional development courses are longer than the typical 1-day workshop but provide in-depth and comprehensive coverage of key leadership areas.
Michigan Ross Executive Education courses cover a wide range of topics. One of these courses, People Driven Thinking, equips leaders to manage team dynamics better to achieve success. Analytical Thinking, meanwhile, centers on Finance and Accounting and develops skills in interpreting and working with financial data for better financial decisions.
These courses are offered online and feature live sessions with professors, learning assessments, and interaction with peers. The weeks-long courses typically require a daily commitment of around 45 minutes throughout their duration.
Frequently Asked Questions About Professional Workshops
I’m not a student of a particular university, and I can’t access a particular workshop that they have announced online. What are my alternatives?
Unfortunately, some workshops and seminars are exclusive to students and staff of particular universities. Some of these workshops are ultimately interesting, and it wouldn’t hurt to inquire with universities directly about your options, whether they have similar offerings that are open to non-students, or whether they may be willing to make exceptions or special arrangements.
In the extreme, there are other professional development opportunities also offered outside university settings, such as in popular online course providers. Alternatively, if you’re working in a particular industry or field, industry-specific events are also worth checking out.
How do these professional development workshops, seminars, or other events benefit me?
Within university settings, these events serve to polish and update students’ basic scholarly skill sets (writing, communication, analytical thinking, time management, etc.), as well as introduce them to potentially new knowledge.
Taking a bigger picture view, it is a matter of course that professionals and students continuously strive toward self-improvement, and these events serve as an engaging and readily accessible source of knowledge.
Are these workshops, seminars, and other professional development opportunities free?
It depends. Many of these opportunities offered by universities exclusively for their students are part of university life, and they may have paid for these indirectly through their tuition. Still, others are accessible to non-students either as direct participants or they can revisit them at a later date through accessible recordings and other relevant materials. There are a few, meanwhile, that are offered as more serious short courses (such as Executive Education programs) that fall short of being full-blown degrees.
Conclusion
Professional development is an integrated part of US universities and is part of their overall goal of producing well-rounded professionals and scholars. These professional development initiatives take the form of workshops, seminars, courses, and other events.
As a student, these professional development initiatives are important venues not only for skills building in specific areas but also to brush up on their fundamental life skills in areas such as writing and communication, leadership, and overall marketability as professionals. These initiatives also open students up to new skills and areas of interest, and also serve as venues to link up with other professionals and potential partners.
While many professional development initiatives, such as workshops, are limited to students of particular universities, some are accessible to all in a variety of formats. Even better, some of these professional development opportunities are found in venues outside academia.
The immediate availability of these opportunities means students and professionals have little excuse to miss out, given the benefits these can potentially contribute to their development.
