Integration of Professional Development Practices in Doctoral and Postdoctoral Training – Approaches for Supporting Career Navigation in Chemical Engineering

Skills such as project management, collaborative problem solving, negotiation, conflict resolution, technical communications, personnel management, finance, and time management are critical for STEM careers. Such skillsets are predominantly acquired by graduate students through primary interactions with their thesis mentors or are self-sought externally, yielding variability in student preparedness for the workforce post-graduation. We hypothesize that standardization of professional development for STEM graduate students will enable graduate students to hone these skills prior to entering the workforce, and could decrease the achievement gap of underrepresented students. In this talk, we will discuss standardization of professional development within the context of a Chemical Engineering Ph.D. thesis via strategies to benchmark student and postdoc progress in individual research groups. Methods to establish a positive mentoring relationship, assess progress through Individual Development Plans (IDPs), and tailor the Ph.D. or postdoctoral training period for various target careers are discussed. Furthermore, we disseminate resources for standardizing the assessment of undergraduate research and how to train graduate students and postdocs in the skills of project management and mentorship. Resources presented in this talk will be made broadly available for group leaders and primary investigators wishing to implement professional development practices in their research groups.