A collaborative model for grad student development (opinion)

As administrators charged with overseeing GRAD 360°, Clemson University’s holistic professional development program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, we have found that collaboration is key to creating a robust and relevant set of professional development offerings.

For a bit of background, GRAD 360° has nine primary focus areas: career development and exploration; teaching and learning; professionalism and ethics; research and innovation; personal health, wellness and financial literacy; leadership and management; mentoring; oral, written and intercultural communication; and social and global responsibility. Faculty and staff on campus are the primary facilitators of GRAD 360° workshops, which currently number about 100 per year. When GRAD 360° began, in 2016, identifying champions on and off campus was crucial to lifting the enterprise off the ground.

Over the past year, GRAD 360° has evolved into a campuswide effort, with faculty speakers from nine different colleges participating in the program. Faculty contribute by sharing discipline-specific expertise, teaching research skills or offering insights into academic and research careers. Some reach out to volunteer their time, such as a science education professor who recently offered to lead an updated version of a workshop on writing teaching statements for the academic job market. Others are recruited based on specific needs, like a sociologist we invited to offer a presentation on meta-analysis, a topic requested by graduate students. (One session attendee later invited that faculty member to serve on her dissertation committee, resulting in an interdisciplinary collaboration.)

Faculty-led workshops span a range of topics, including federal grant writing, taxes, organizational change management and sleep hygiene. Faculty contributors primarily volunteer because they believe in GRAD 360°’s mission, but we also ensure that they receive formal recognition letters from the graduate school that they can include in their annual evaluations.

Staff also play an essential role, leading sessions on professional development, wellness, ethics and available campus resources. This year, GRAD 360° collaborated with 18 nonacademic units, such as the Office of Sponsored Programs, Clemson Libraries, the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation, the Ombuds Office, the Clemson Police Department, the Redfern Health Center, and even the campus dairy farm. Speakers have ranged from the campus nutritionist to research compliance officers. Workshops have covered topics like healthy eating on a budget, choosing statistical analysis software, writing book proposals and essential car maintenance. Graduate students often highlight the value of these on-campus connections. For instance, one student who attended a health insurance workshop shared, “Thank you for connecting me to Courtney. She helped me figure out what to do when I drop off my parents’ insurance this year, which is a huge relief!”

Building these collaborations requires intentional efforts. We visit faculty meetings to share information about the workshops, framing them as an opportunity for students to become more well-rounded without relying on their adviser as a sole source of information. We also attend and volunteer at campus events, send monthly newsletters to faculty and staff, and solicit student recommendations for potential presenters. Small gestures, such as handwritten thank-you notes, GRAD 360° swag and lunch meetings with collaborators help maintain strong relationships.

Beyond campus, we have developed a network of external partners, particularly Clemson alumni. Leveraging the Tiger Net alumni directory, career fairs, corporate partnerships and alumni events, we’ve connected with industry professionals to host GRAD 360° workshops, participate in panels and provide career insights. For example, a partnership with the College of Science’s alumni and industry relations office led to multiple alumni-led sessions, industry panels and company site visits.

Successful collaborations require us to navigate several logistical challenges. One such challenge is scheduling workshops to accommodate the busy calendars of our contributors. To address this challenge, the GRAD 360° team has developed a workflow with an accompanying spreadsheet to organize schedules, create calendar invites and send speaker reminders; we recently hired one full-time graduate assistant to primarily work on workflow and scheduling issues.

Further, we have analyzed years’ worth of attendance data to determine the best days and times for student attendance, and have found 6 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday to be the best time for graduate student attendance. We propose these times first to our contributors because they want their efforts to reach as many attendees as possible. If they prefer business hours, we propose noon or 3 p.m. time slots, which are the next most popular options. We also aim to schedule workshops a full semester in advance so that busy presenters have more open times available.

Another challenge is ensuring quality and consistency across collaborators with unique expertise and presentation styles. To address this challenge, we created a detailed guide for presenters that outlines our process and expectations for sessions. These expectations include adding some form of audience engagement, keeping the presentation time to 50 minutes to allow for questions and including resources to share. We also work with speakers before their session to create a set of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) learning objectives, which allows us to get on the same page about the workshop’s goals and provides us with material to put on our website so that students and postdocs know what to expect by attending.

Also, one of us attends every GRAD 360° workshop as a host, introducing the speaker and simply being available for any technical questions or issues. Finally, we solicit regular feedback from participants and collaborators to inform our future offerings and help ensure that every session contributes meaningfully to our overarching goals.

While challenges exist, the benefits have been great. GRAD 360° contributes to building the graduate education community because faculty, staff and alumni who might not otherwise mentor graduate students or postdocs have a way to contribute and interact with them through GRAD 360°, contributing to a sense of shared mission among groups on campus.

Further, GRAD 360° contributes to informal peer-to-peer mentoring, such as when the graduate students who have been teaching assistants for a long time share their ideas during teaching and learning sessions with graduate students who are new to the university. Leading GRAD 360° workshops also provides other units on campus with the chance to get direct feedback from graduate students and postdocs. For example, during the Clemson Dining session, the campus dietitian received feedback about marketing student meal plans to graduate students and specifications about certain religion-based diets. And when GRAD 360° partners with alumni and industry partners, we increase the awareness of the work of the graduate school outside the university.

While the organization and facilitation of the workshops is complex, the dividends for graduate schools of offering a holistic professional development program are tremendous. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows benefit from the workshops in terms of their professional and personal growth. And with multiple individuals from inside and outside the university contributing to the development of graduate students, the graduate education environment is ultimately enriched.