Skills Development Plan For Graduate Students
This list is the recommended timeline for when Life Sciences graduate students should develop their professional skills. Click on the links below to find a list of resources and/or workshops related to each of these topics.
Learn about how to set goals to develop these skills, including how to create Individual Development Plan.
First Year
Writing a predoctoral fellowship
Many students write their first fellowship application during their first year of graduate school. Skills developed here will be very useful if you later plan to apply to postdoctoral fellowships or research grants, or if your future career path involves applying to funding.
Oral presentation skills
Being able to communicate your science via oral presentation is one of the most important skills that a scientist can have. Group meetings, conference talks, job talks. This is one of the reasons why graduate programs already incorporate multiple opportunities to practice these skills throughout their curriculum, including journal clubs, oral exams, etc. Learn techniques for designing slides and presenting scientific “stories” early in your graduate training.
Choosing a lab
This is a critical decision that will shape the rest of your graduate training, and likely the rest of your career. Talk with peers, faculty, or with our OCPD staff to decide what mentorship qualities, lab environment, and scientific focus are important for optimizing your individual learning and career development.
Second Year
Teaching skills
Teaching is a skill needed in most jobs, whether academic (teaching students in a classroom, clinic, or research setting) or outside of academia (informal teaching of peers or colleagues). Most graduate students are required to serve as Teaching Assistants during their second year. This is the ideal time to learn pedagogical theory and techniques, and to begin practicing these skills in a classroom setting.
Communication and conflict negotiation skills
Graduate school can be stressful, and conflicts within your research group (among peers or with your PI) can easily occur under these pressures. It is key to develop good communication skills early on. This may seem basic, but there is more to communication than meets the eye: personality styles, active listening skills, bringing up delicate issues, dealing with power differentials, and negotiating when conflicts do arise.
Ethics training
Of course you should be ethical as a scientist. But situations in research are sometimes not black-and-white. It is important early on in your career to understand the history behind ethical standards, know the standards, and be able to apply these standards to more subtle situations (which you may very well find yourself in as a researcher). Plus, this is a course required by the NIH for all graduate students.
Writing a research proposal and preparing for an oral exam
The qualifying exam is an intimidating, perhaps terrifying, required stepping stone to doctoral candidacy. Your research proposal and scientific knowledge will be tested, but so will your presentation skills and your ability to think on your feet. This may be your first high-stakes oral exam, but it likely won't be your last (did you know that HHMI investigators undergo an oral exam for grant renewal?).
Third Year
Poster presentation skills
Poster presentations are the most common way that research is presented at conferences. A good poster design—and oral presentation of it—is a key opportunity for sharing your research with others, getting feedback and new ideas, and building a name for yourself.
Goal setting and time management skills
In research, good time management is key. It is important to make good decisions about which experiments to actually try, to plan experiments well, and to know when to stop trying and move to something new. And, since graduate school may account for several years of your trainee life, it is important to use this time well to ensure that you are developing other professional skills and experience that you’ll need to get to your next professional stage (postdoc, internship, job, etc.). Setting goals using an Individual Development Plan (IDP) is one step to this process.
Career awareness and decision-making
Once you have a couple of years of graduate school under your belt, it is important to begin seriously thinking about what your next career step will be. A useful step here is to consider your skills, values, and interests in order to identify a career path that matches your unique qualities and needs. It is important to do this early on in your training, so that you can begin to get the experience necessary to be competitive for your desired career path. This is also the ideal time to start a CV, so that you can add to it as you give talks and posters, gain teaching experience, sit on committees, write articles, etc. Thinking about your next career step can also give you an inspiring goal to work towards!
Networking skills
A professional network will likely prove invaluable to you as you move toward your future career—in big steps such as finding a job or getting letters of recommendation, but also in smaller steps such as identifying collaborators, learning a new experimental technique, identifying potential postdoc labs, etc. “Networking” simply means meeting other people, and developing professional relationships with them. This includes approaching and meeting new people, corresponding by email, etc.
Fourth Year
Mentoring skills
Mentoring is an important skill that can make someone a successful and highly valued member of the faculty or of an industrial scientific team. You will likely find yourself mentoring a rotation student, undergraduate, or high school student in the lab—an excellent opportunity to develop and practice your mentoring skills (and can be a big plus on your CV). Mentoring skills include listening skills, when to hand-hold and when to let the mentee work independently, communication skills, and time management skills.
The publishing process & writing skills
Before you begin to write your first paper, be very clear on what goes into a paper, how long it typically takes to write one, what criteria are used to review your paper, and what to expect (and how to handle challenges) during the review process.
Teaching skills and experience
If you are considering an academic career path, then additional teaching experience beyond your required TA-ship is important.
Fifth or later years
Looking for a postdoc
If a postdoc is your next step, you’ll need to have a CV and cover letter ready to go, have a stellar research seminar prepared, and be ready to ask the tough questions to really learn about the prospective lab/PI during your interview visit.
Writing a postdoctoral fellowship
You can apply to some postdoctoral fellowships as you finish up your PhD research. Many postdoctoral fellowships are structured similarly to grant proposals for principle investigators.
Job search skills
Whether a career in academia, industry, or another pathway, you will need to develop a tailored CV/resume and cover letter, and develop interviewing and negotiation skills.