Rackham Graduate School
Rackham offers extensive opportunities, funding, and resources to help prepare graduate students across campus succeed in a wide range of careers. Professional development resources include, but are not limited to:
- One-on-one resume coaching and career counseling
- Regular workshops that address core skills such as leadership, collaboration, teaching, and DEI (view list of current workshops)
- Professional headshots and business cards at annual Gear Your Career event
- Annual Designing Your Life 6-week seminar series that teaches students principles for designing a fulfilling career
- Preparing Future Faculty program administered jointly with CRLT
- Professional Development DEI Certificate Program prepares students to foster a climate inclusivity in a diverse workplace
- The Getting Your Mentoring Relationship Off to a Good Start workshop explicitly guides conversations between students and their mentors to ensure effective mentoring relationships
Funding opportunities for professional development offered through the Rackham Graduate School include:
- Rackham Graduate Research Grant to fund individual student’s research
- Trainees are eligible to receive one Rackham Conference Travel Grant and Rackham Graduate Student Professional Travel with Children Grant annually
- Student-Identified Doctoral Intern Fellowships provide support for a professionally relevant internship that they have secured.
- Rackham Professional Development Grants fund students to promote short-term professional skill development experiences
- Rackham supports students in emergency situations financially through Rackham Graduate Student Emergency Funds
Center for Research on Learning and Teaching
CRLT offers a Preparing Future Faculty workshop. This activity is designed to help prepare senior graduate students for faculty positions. Topics covered include preparation for an academic job search, including assistance with the creation of a statement of teaching philosophy and a syllabus; information about higher education (e.g., institutional types, the nature of today’s students, tenure, and faculty worklife), and field trips to local college campuses; and discussion of effective and reflective teaching, including meetings with University of Michigan junior faculty members, conversations about multicultural teaching and learning, and demonstrations of and reflection on the use of instructional technology.
CRLT also offers the opportunity for students to participate as a Graduate Teaching Consultant (GTC). The GTCs are UM graduate students, current and former teaching assistants, representing a broad range of fields, who consult with teaching assistants across campus on teaching and learning. They also often facilitate workshops and contribute to our new teaching assistant training programs.
CRLT offers a seminar series on teaching and learning. These programs provide an opportunity for participants to share ideas across disciplines, improve their teaching skills, expand their repertoire of teaching methods, and gain new perspectives on teaching at Michigan. The seminars are conducted by CRLT professional staff, U-M faculty members and experienced GSIs, and guest presenters from other campuses.
A variety of other resources are available through CRLT
University of Michigan Career Center
The career center offers information and workshops on many topics related to the job search process. These include Graduate Student Career Pathways Programs (co-sponsored by Rackham Graduate School), resources and individualized career counseling (co-sponsored by Rackham Graduate School), career fairs, connection to professionals in variety of careers.
Dual Degree / Certificate Programs
Programs available that facilitate entry by students into cross-cutting fields or provide specific professional training:
Individual Departmental/Graduate Programs
There are numerous resources administered by different Schools, Departments and Graduate Programs across campus. Though these programs are housed within distinct units, the opportunities that they provide are open to graduate students across campus (regardless of where they are enrolled).
- The Medical School Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies offers individual advising, professional development workshops, career awareness resources, cohort-based learning, and more. For example, the Biotech Career Development Program (BCDP) is a structured, cohort-based career development program for trainees students interested in careers outside of the traditional academic tenure-track faculty position. The program guides participants through self-reflection, skill-building, and career exploration strategies in advance of seeking full-time employment or an internship/externship.
- Multiple mentoring/networking opportunities are available in the Department of Chemistry, including departmental Chemistry Instructional Coaching and Mentoring programs.
- College of Pharmacy offers a Career Connections program that provides professional development events.
Student Run Organizations
Student communities exist across campus that offer trainees professional development, networking, mentoring and support. Examples include:
- National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE)
- Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS)
- OUTformation provides social, educational, activist, and support activities for LBGTQIA+ students
- American Chemical Society Outreach Organization at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (ACS O2)
- commUNITY
- The Chemistry Aligned with Life & Career at the University of Michigan and Chemical Sciences at the Interface of Education|University of Michigan are student-run organizations dedicated to aiding students and postdocs at the University of Michigan in the exploration of career options, professional skill development, and resource building. These organizations host events including panel discussions on work life, job-searching in industry, academia, and postdoc environments. Additionally they have held workshops on grant writing, negotiation skills, networking skills, resume writing, as well as mock faculty and industrial job talks.