Overview

Graduate professional development at U of T is definitely a shared responsibility! Across campuses, faculties, affiliated hospitals, centres, and strategic initiatives, many people are charged with assisting graduate students to make the most of their time here. CGPD is here to support your work in this area.  

To learn more about how we’re helping professional development staff to support grad students, please explore these resources:

GPD@UofT Forum

The GPD@UofT Forum is a group for people at U of T who are responsible for supporting graduate students with professional development. Membership is open to anyone who works in this area and who feels that they would benefit from joining a community of practice. We have members from all three campuses, from departments, from faculties, from libraries, from hospitals, from strategic initiatives, and from other centres.

We meet three times per year and maintain a Teams channel and email listserv for internal communication. If you are interested in joining the Forum, please write to cgpd@utoronto.ca.

Professional Development Strands

In order to facilitate individual development planning, SGS has organized professional development into four strands: Research, Communication, Leadership & Collaboration, and Career Planning. These four strands are designed to help graduate students understand and plan the activities that will support their professional development.

Professionalization Resources

If you are supporting someone with the creation of a departmental professionalization program, you may wish to refer to our resources page. On that page, you will find a short guide to professionalization courses, a link to a repository of professionalization syllabi, and a link to possible guest speakers. If you have any suggestions or alterations to those resources, please write to cgpd@utoronto.ca.  

Individual Development Planning

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers need to develop a range of academic and professional skills during their training, as well as to make progress on their research. However, it can be hard for trainees to determine what to prioritize, and mismatched expectations between trainees and their supervisors with respect to research and training plans is one major source of supervisory conflict and dissatisfaction.

The Centre for Graduate Professional Development (CGPD) recommends engaging in a structured planning process with the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, based on evidence that engaging in a structured research and career planning process is associated with less conflict in the supervisory relationship, higher research productivity, and improved career readiness for trainees. Individual Development Planning (IDP) is one tool to support a structured plan with your trainees, and CGPD offers a workshop for students and postdocs, as well as a session specifically for faculty supervisors who want to learn more about how to incorporate IDP into their supervisory practice to support their trainees. Visit our pages for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to see our recommendations and information for trainees:

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