The graduate journey can be a transformative yet challenging experience. This workshop is designed for graduate students as well as for advisors seeking to support their students through the complexities of academia. The goal is to develop a clearer roadmap for navigating the graduate school experience with purpose, confidence, and strategies for thriving personally and professionally.

The session will begin with an exercise to unpack participants’ hopes and goals for graduate school. Dr. Gustafson will discuss the roles, responsibilities, and sometimes competing perspectives of graduate students, advisors, and institutions. insights will help participants better understand how graduate students are perceived within the academic ecosystem and the barriers and facilitators of academic success. Discussions will draw on research about academic success but remain grounded in shared participant experiences. The focus will be on identifying opportunities and using available resources, building relationships, managing expectations and challenges, and nurturing resilience and well-being when things don’t go as planned.

Takeaways:

• Strategies to align the graduate journey with long-term goals.

• Tools for leveraging opportunities and resources in academia.

• Insights for managing challenges and building resilience.

• Insights into the roles and perspectives of the various actors involved in the graduate experience.

Outline

• The Academic Experience

  • Exercise: What are you hopes and dreams for this experience?

• The PATHS: how are graduate students viewed?

  • The institutional perspective: Are students viewed simply as funding units? What about responsibilities with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion? What is the institution’s responsibility to the student?

  • The supervisor’s perspective: What are the most common supervisor recommendations? What advice are supervisors giving? What is the supervisor's responsibility to the student?

  • The student’s perspective: Why are they pursuing graduate work? Where do they see themselves fitting in? What are the student's responsibilities?

• The realities of the experience

  • Expectations

  • Limitations

  • Opportunities

• Maximizing the experience: Tools and Tips

  • Thinking systematically and innovatively – the opportunity to read and make sense to the max

  • Making use of opportunities

    • Imagine where you want to end up and mobilize the opportunities that will get you there

  • Find a supervisor and/or other mentor to work with who views this journey in a way that is similar to your view

  • What to do when things go sideways

    • Family and friends

    • Health

    • Funding

Audience & Prerequisites

Current and prospective graduate students looking for guidance on navigating the academic experience effectively; as well as supervisors and advisors seeking strategies for improving the graduate student experience and synchronizing student experiences with institutional goals.