Professional Skills Development for Graduate Students
Submitted by Jeff Sharom on Tue, 26/05/2009 - 15:00
Thanks for bringing this up, Trevor. This is an important issue, and it appears to be getting some recognition. The Canadian Association of Graduate Studies (CAGS) recently released a document entitled "Professional Skills Development for Graduate Students", that among other things, states:
“The university is responsible for providing graduate students with the best possible preparation for their future roles whether within academia or in other sectors. This responsibility extends to developing professional skills.”
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Comments
Professional Skills Development for Graduate Students
Elsewhere in this discussion forum, Daniel Banks makes an excelent point in suggesting that graduate students need to be exposed to a wider set of skills than are often offered in a traditional graduate programme.
For many years I have taught a half course at the University of Toronto entitled Communication for Physicists. The course includes written and oral communication, scientific writing, preparation of resumes and c.v.s, grant and scholarship applications, etc. The course is optional and has been very well received by students.
However, the pace of discovery in science means that most students don't have the time to master and contribute to their subject in addition to developing these additional, undoubtedly valuable, skills; and one short half course in a five-year degree programme cannot make more than a small contribution. Those supervisors who pursue basic scientific research cannot be expected to place great emphasis on this aspect of their students' education no matter how sympathetic they may be.
The debate about the place of job training in the academic mission goes on!
Tony Key, Department of Physics, University of Toronto.key@physics.utoronto.ca
Professional Skills Development for Graduate Students
Consider the fact that my graduate department, arguably one of the most prestigous and recognized for research in life sciences, completely failed to adverstise this event to their students is indicative of how oblivious some graduate institutes can be to the development of alternative carreer paths for graduate students in research. To their defense, there is also the Gairdner symposium going on concurrently with this conference and it may be more relevant to students in a research setting.
My impression is that graduate training, at least in research/thesis based programs, is still percieved to train future researchers and principal investigators. That being said I think during the course of one's graduate studies one aquires skills (or should acquire through any respectable program) that are transferable to many walks of life. Indeed many of my collegues in basice life sciences research have pursued careers as remote from pure sciences as venture capital and finance. What I believe is not implemented effectively is the programming and initiatives to i) help students recognize these skills, ii) develop these skills and iii) learn to market these skills or use them to create a career niche that caters to their own specific goals as opposed to being another run of the mill graduate.