Welcome to the OCPD

• The OCPD is currently directed by Naledi Saul. It is one of three offices, along with the International Students and Scholars Office and the Office of Postdoctoral Scholars, under the umbrella unit of Career Advancement, International and Postdoctoral Services (CAIPS), led by Assistant Vice Chancellor,  Bill Lindstaedt. To read more about the office's organizational structure and staffing, visit the Meet Our Team page.

• The OCPD team  serves approximately 4,100 UCSF students and postdoctoral scholars, including health professional students (dentistry, global health, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and physical therapy), as well as graduate students and postdocs in the basic and social/population sciences.
• We also serve those we call 'super-postdocs', who are individuals who joined UCSF as postdocs, but still have a similar role, even through they no longer have the postdoc classification. The OCPD is funded by a combination of centralized campus funds, student service fees and grants for special initiatives.
• The Office of Career and Professional Development was established in 2001. Originally named the Career Center, in 2006 the office changed its name to reflect the augmented mandate of professional skill development, including training in the areas such as working effectively on teams, grantsmanship, teacher training, supervisory and mentoring skills, presentation skills, communication skills, networking skills and building one's professional identity. 

The Office of Career and Professional Development, along with the Office of Postdoctoral Scholars and the International Students and Scholars Office, report to Bill Lindstaedt, the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Career Advancement, International and Postdoctoral Services (CAIPS). The CAIPS AVC reports to the Vice Chancellor for Student Academic Affairs/Dean of the Graduate Division, Elizabeth Watkins. 

The OCPD focuses on knowledge and skill acquisition in four categories: self assessment, career exploration, job search strategies and professional success skills. You can also see all of our programming here.

• The OCPD's mission is to teach students and postdoctoral scholars the professional skills required for career success. To that end, the OCPD offers a slate of programs, services, grant-funded initiatives and resources tailored to biomedical trainees.
• Our approach is to collaborate with stakeholders across the university to design and implement evidenced-based interventions that develop key competencies in the areas of self assessment, career exploration, job search strategies and professional success skills. OCPD's vision is for every student and postdoc to leave UCSF with the knowledge, skills and confidence required to succeed.
• All of the materials on the OCPD website can be freely distributed with appropriate citation. If you have additional questions, contact us at [email protected].

We offer programs, 1:1 career counseling, and online resources. To manage demand, we mapped the annual demand cycle based on key deadlines to our populations (residency application, AAAS Fellowship, consulting season due dates, etc.) and developed strategies to manage the those demands.   We pair and 'breadcrumb' programs to lead students/postdocs to the next event (e.g., have an interactive CV workshop with short follow up 20-minute review appointments, or publicize an upcoming interviewing workshop at a cover letter workshop, etc.); built out interactive workshops to limit the number of 1:1 counseling appointments. Finally, we co-sponsor and cross publicize registered campus organizations and fellow department career and professional development efforts across campus. 

The OCPD is funded by a combination of centralized campus funds, student service fees and grants for special initiatives. Over 90% of our budget is permanent funding.

We develop learning outcomes for all of our programs and try to pre- and post-assess new programs to see if those learning goals are met. We have also received grant funding to validate some of our tools,( e.g., the Academic Career Readiness Assessment Tool, created by Laurence Clement, track website hits to determine which pages are most utilized, and are included in the various assessment surveys across campus (eg., the School of Pharmacy student exit survey, the Student Services Survey, etc.)