Helping Your Mentee Prepare for a Career

It is unlikely that your student will end up in a career exactly like yours. There are far more Ph.D.s than tenure-track jobs at research institutions, and it is likely that most of your students will not want to or will not be able to follow your career path. Faculty often worry about how to advise students about other career choices because they don’t have direct experience with these other career paths, and may do their mentees a disservice by avoiding the conversation altogether. Luckily, you don't have to become an expert yourself—UMass has excellent resources. Your role is to encourage your student to take advantage of them.

Open the door to a conversation about careers. Many graduate students hide their evolving career aspirations from their advisors because they think that their advisor will respond negatively—and indeed, some advisors, and some program cultures, do explicitly or implicitly favor students that intend to stay in academia. For example, some advisors might award first authorship on a paper not to the person who most merits it, but to the person who "needs" it most for their career. Thus, it may seem to your graduate student that dismissing a research career is tantamount to insulting you and your choices, or that you will think that you have thrown away your investment in them. They may suspect that you will think less of them or even withhold access to resources such as funds for conference travel or the time you devote to them. One way to forestall these worries is to look for opportunities to make positive comments about others who have gone into such careers and to explicitly ask your student about their career plans without passing judgment.

Balancing career preparation with conducting research. Some advisors are concerned that attending career-related events detract from time spent on research. However, participants report that their research progress is not slowed. Indeed, a student excited and optimistic about career opportunities becomes more motivated and directed.

Encourage your students to attend on-campus events created for career planning. The following opportunities are advertised directly to your students. However, your students are much more likely to attend if you encourage them.

Careers outside of academia

Across the nation, PhDs are increasingly choosing non-academic careers, and UMass students are eager for this information. In response, the Graduate School has an incredibly effective Office of Professional Development with nearly 300 offerings each year. Building upon the technical and academic expertise of the students they serve, OPD provides professional skills training in the areas of Career Preparation, Communication, Teaching, Grants & Fellowships, and Personal Development. Their programs can help your students develop self-awareness, learn new strategies (time management, negotiation), engage others (mentors, networks), and overcome challenges (imposter syndrome, perfectionism, conflict resolution). Their career-focused workshops can help your students explore career paths and navigate the job application process. You can see current list of events on the Graduate School website. 

Careers with a focus on teaching

If your student's goal is to become a faculty member, especially at a teaching-intensive institution, help them find authentic teaching experiences (rather than just, say, being a grader). Encourage your student to find TAships that offer increased independence and to seek opportunity for guest lectureships. For example, most Colleges at UMass Amherst now invite graduate students and postdocs to teach in the First-Year Seminar Series as the instructor of record. The seminars meet only once per week, so it is a reasonable commitment. Points of contact vary for each college; check with the office of your Dean.

You can also encourage your students to get familiar with the most current, evidence- based pedagogical practices. There are many resources on campus to help with this:

  • The Office of Professional Development’s workshops range from course design and syllabus workshops to practical topics, such as discussion, grading, feedback on writing, and time management, as well as career preparation (e.g., crafting a teaching statement, panel discussions offered by teachers at smaller institutions).

  • The Center for Teaching and Learning often invites graduate students and postdocs to participate in their workshops alongside faculty. Many of these workshops focus on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion—important areas that universities and colleges are increasingly expecting their new hires to be conversant in.

  • The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) is a national network of Research-1 institutions with a shared goal of improving the preparation of STEM graduate students and postdocs for careers that include college and university teaching. UMass grad students and postdocs have two different kinds of opportunities: on-campus workshops and online offerings. The online options include full-semester courses, workshops, coffee hours, and the like. At UMass Amherst, we also offer a mentored program in which students carry out an evidence-based teaching project in order to become a CIRTL Practitioner or CIRTL Scholar.

  • UMass's Instructional Innovation office offers workshops all semester, open to all students and postdocs, to help better use technology (such as Moodle, Echo360, or Camtasia) in the classroom. 

Recommended practices at the program level

  • Share advertisement for events offered by the Office of Professional Development. Normalize attendance at professional development events and support for students who are pursuing careers outside of academia.
  • Request that OPD offer one of their workshops especially for students in your program (opd [at] grad [dot] umass [dot] edu). Having a workshop at a regularly scheduled seminar time can improve attendance.
  • Consider hosting seminar speakers from relevant disciplines beyond academia.