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Professionalization Resources

Overview

Graduate students can receive professional development support from many places across campus. A unique form of support, which we will refer to as a professionalization course, happens at the departmental level, facilitated by faculty. As a result, these courses offer professional support that is embedded in the student’s disciplinary context. Common topics include navigating the academic job market; investigating the non-academic job market; applying for grants; improving academic writing; managing scholarly publishing. These courses are usually required for doctoral students and commonly offered as a non-credit (pass/fail) course. These courses often involve visiting speakers, both from the U of T professional development space and from departmental alumni with connections to these topics. 

If you are charged with organizing such a course, we offer support in the form of best practices in professionalization courses and potential guest speakers, outlined below.

We also curate a collection of syllabi and course outlines that you can use to inform the creation of your own program (coming soon). If you have a syllabus or course outline that you would be willing share with others, we would be glad to add it to our growing repository of such resources. We know that faculty are eager to learn what is being done across the institution, particularly in cognate departments. We are grateful to everyone who contributes to this institutional resource. If you have a syllabus to contributor, or wish to access the repository, please get in touch at cgpd@utoronto.ca.  

Developing a Professionalization Offering

At U of T, many departments have offerings that serves to introduce graduate students to the professional practices associated with their disciplinary studies. These departmental professionalization offerings take many forms: some have more integrated disciplinary content while others focus exclusively on professional development. All seek to support graduate students as they learn about the ancillary knowledge and skills requisite for their professional success. Here are some of the common topics covered:  

  • Program milestones 
  • Disciplinary practices
    • Research methods
    • Research integrity
    • Research ethics
    • Research funding
    • Data management
    • Intellectual property
  • Communication skills
    • Grant applications
    • Conference attendance and effective oral presentations
    • Publishing (peer review, authorship, journal selection)
    • Knowledge translation and public scholarship
    • Giving and receiving feedback 
  • Teaching skills 
  • Interpersonal skills 
    • Conflict resolution  
    • Leadership 
    • Managing unconscious bias 
    • Networking 
  • Productivity and work-life balance 
    • Project management 
  • Individual development plans 
  • Career planning 
    • Academic careers (CVs, dossiers, campus visits, interviews) 
    • Non-academic careers (resumes, cover letters, informational interviews) 
    • Alumni panels 
    • Applying for postdocs 
    • Internships or work-integrated learning 
    • Entrepreneurship 

Here are common questions that should be answered as you develop your departmental professionalization offering:  

  • Credit: Will this be a credit course? If so, will it be graded or pass-fail? What, if any, work will be assigned to registrants?  
  • Duration: Will the offering be offered in a single term? A full year? Over multiple years?  
  • Timing: When during their degree should graduate students participate? Will the offering be open to both master’s and doctoral students? 
  • Mode: Will the offering be in person? If not, will it be synchronous or asynchronous? How will you ensure the offering is accessible to graduate students across the tri-campus? 
  • Instruction: Who will teach the offering? Will you involve graduate students to allow for peer learning? What will be the role of guest speakers? Which institutional subject matter experts might be able to teach particular topics?  

Guest Speakers

If you are looking to invite a guest speaker to share their disciplinary expertise, or if you wish to consult about a particular professional development topic, here are some of U of T experts that are prepared to support you:

School of Graduate Studies

Central Offices

Career Centres

The career centres have targeted expertise in graduate career pathways, both academic and non-academic: 

Other Institutional Resources

Support can also be found from within particular faculties or campuses: 

We also encourage you to refer to our discussion of Professional Development Strands to help your students identify and access the professional development support that they need at U of T.  

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