Professional Development
Why is it beneficial to have professional development activities for postdocs?
- Recruiting tool for new faculty and postdocs
- Enhancing success – support training grants and individual postdoc fellowships
- Enhance postdoc professional competencies to support their career goals
Workshops
These workshops feature strategic topics for the professional development of postdoctoral scholars. Most of the workshops will be organized as hybrid events, face-to-face with zoom participation, pending on Covid-19 updates.
Career Development Series
Focus on topics relevant to building a career in an academic or non-academic environment.
Teaching Workshop Series
Focus on topics relevant to building a career in teaching.
Mentoring Workshop Series
Evidence-based workshops to help postdoctoral scholars learn the skills necessary to be productive mentees and also mentors to undergraduate and graduate students in their labs.
Postdoc Affairs Series
Focused on the needs of postdoctoral fellows (wellness, visas, etc).
Individual Development Plan
An Individual Development Plan provides a planning process that identifies both professional development needs and career objectives.
Goals
- Identify long-term career options and set goals
- Identify the necessary tools to reach the career goals
- Identify short-term needs for improving current performance to reach the career goals
Benefits for the postdoctoral scholar as a mentee
- Assists in developing long-term goals
- Defines expectations and sets milestones along the way to achieve specific goals
- Provides a communication tool between the postdoc and research advisor
Benefits for the research advisor as a mentor
- Focuses postdoc interests on personal development by enhancing individual professional growth and productivity in the lab through milestones setting.
- Enlists an active IDP program for the postdocs in the annual grant report as applicable
- Improves the professional growth at the department and college level.