Graduate Professional Development:
Personal and Career Development

Take advantage of Stanford's myriad resources to learn more about yourself, thrive in graduate school and beyond, and plan a career that suits your strengths and values.

Developing Life Skills
Many life skills essential to your success emerge as especially significant during your time as a graduate student. Graduate school can be the first time you are responsible for managing your time and juggling competing demands. Leading a healthy life requires learning to balance work and personal commitments. There are many strategies for managing the many pressures and opportunities that will come your way.

Increasing Self-Awareness
Understanding your orientation to the world is essential to making choices that are consistent with your strengths, values, and vision. Having a clear and strong sense of “self,” as well as understanding how others perceive you, is crucial to succeeding in graduate school and professional roles.

Planning Career Paths
The transition from student to professional requires identifying a career direction that is anchored in your values, expands on your strengths, and aligns with your priorities. This may require exploring a number of alternatives and seeking out more information. There are many resources you can draw on for this process, in addition to learning proven strategies for identifying jobs and creating successful applications.

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Workshops and Events

Quick Bytes
Learn new strategies and skills to help you thrive as a graduate student in these hour-long interactive lunch workshops. Career-related topics have included "Planning Your Life" and "Time Management."

Academic Chats
Aimed at students considering faculty careers, discuss facets of academic life with 2-3 guest experts over lunch.

Leadership Dinners
Be inspired by recognized leaders from a broad spectrum of career paths in government, industry and the non-profit arena in these small group dinners.

Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Research Students
Learn about the key habits that will help you complete your research degree quickly and easily, while also greatly reducing the stress and increasing the satisfaction involved in completing a PhD.

Using Emotional Intelligence to Enhance Productivity
Explore the intersection between emotional intelligence and success, including guided practice in stress management, personal and professional assessments and the creation of an individual development plan, in this four-part class.

BiblioTech Humanist Leaders Project - 2012-2013
Discuss professional concepts and practices that will serve you well inside and outside the academy in this Friday workshop series designed specifically for humanities doctoral students.

WISE and WISSH Groups for Women
Discuss a variety of topics with colleagues in Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) and Women in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (WISSH); professionally facilitated 90-minute sessions.

Stanford Courses

CTL 231: Future Faculty Seminar
Covers a full range of topics for students interested in pursuing an academic career, including optimal fit at different types of colleges and universities. Autumn quarter.

ENGR 311b: Designing the Professional
Apply principles of design-thinking to designing your professional life following Stanford. For doctoral students in science and engineering, limited enrollment. Spring quarter.

GSBGEN 374: Interpersonal Dynamics
Open to graduate students outside of the Graduate School of Business, this course combines two popular GSB courses, teaching students to build productive, effective and rewarding relationships at work. Students develop self-awareness, learn to identify and work through difficult issues, give and receive feedback, and work effectively in groups. See the registration page for non-GSB students.

Stanford Graduate Summer Institute
Highly interactive, interdisciplinary courses taught by teams of Stanford faculty and outside experts. These non-credit bearing courses generally run for 4-5 days, lasting all or half of each day, just prior to Fall Quarter (exact schedules vary). Topics typically include one or more focused on career planning, such as “Designing Your Life.”

Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship (SIE)
Learn from the experts about building the analytical and practical skills critical to launching a successful business in this intensive month-long summer program.

Explore Courses
Find other Stanford courses related to personal and career development.

Stanford Offices and Services

Physical Education, Recreation & Wellness
Classes and recreational facilities for every sport and interest are offered for students to help maintain a sound body and mind.

Office for Religious Life</a>
Encompassing a wide range of religious traditions, this office coordinates worship services on campus, and helps nurture spiritual, religious and ethical life within the Stanford University community.

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), Vaden Health Center
Offers a broad range of counseling services to help with stress management and crisis support.

Career Development Center
Serving all Stanford graduate students with a broad range of programs, including Self-Assessment Tools to help you find a fit between who you are and possible career paths and individual counseling sessions.

Career centers in these schools offer their students more specialized assistance:

• School of Medicine Career Center
• Graduate School of Business Career Management Center
• Law School Office of Career Services

The Versatile PhD
Web resources exploring non-academic career options for graduate students in humanities and sciences.

The BiblioTech Program
Promotes the relevance of doctoral work in the humanities in the 21st century.

Office of Postdoctoral Affairs
Serving all Stanford postdoctoral fellows, the OPA has a wide array of resources, including some relevant to career planning.

Additional Resources

   DEVELOPING LIFE SKILLS

What I Wish I Knew When I Was Twenty, by Tina Seelig, 2009

Program on Negotiation, Harvard University

Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven R. Covey, 2004

   PLANNING CAREER PATHS

Ten Simple Rules for Selecting a Postdoctoral Position, by Philip E. Bourne and Iddo Friedberg, 2006
A brief guide for figuring out how to find a productive postdoc position that suits your career goals.

Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty
A freely available book published by Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

• Chapter 1 - Obtaining and Negotiating a Faculty Position
• Chapter 2 - Tenure
• Chapter 6 - Time Management

Moving On: Managing Career Transitions, Burroughs Wellcome Fund
This small booklet helps students think about career transitions, especially into and out of postdoc positions.

Guide to Obtaining Tenure, Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Practical advice on getting tenure. For those aiming for an academic career, this guide can be informative even for graduate students.

Tomorrow's Professor by Rick Reis, Stanford emeritus professor
Weekly email postings for graduate students who are planning on a career as a faculty member. Postingsaddress all issues related to academic life, from the practical (how to teach, how to write a grant) to the philosophical. Subscribe to the listserve or search the archives for articles of particular relevance.