Graduate Program
Professional Development and Career Resources
Departmental and College Resources
- Job search support is available from the Associate Department Head and the writing consultant. Graduate students can receive feedback on vitae, resumes, and cover letters as well as discuss various career paths in chemistry. Employers such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Albany Molecular and L’Oreal have contacted the department to recruit our students.
- Mellon College of Science Graduate Student Advisory Committee organizes career development events approximately once per year. Speakers emphasize those whose career paths beyond the Ph.D. include industrial research, biotech start-up companies, science writing, and teaching in four-year colleges.
- Writing Consultant.
University-Wide Resources
- The Career Center offers credential services where they will hold confidential letters of recommendation and mail them on request. A Mellon College of Science career page is maintained by Renee Starek, the consultant for all students in the Mellon College of Science.
- The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence offers graduate students a wide variety of seminars and individual consultations to enhance teaching skills, including a Documentation of Teaching Development program for future faculty.
- The Graduate Programs Office maintains a professional development page and offers a number of seminars for graduate students across disciplines: Doctoral Career Paths panels, Graduate Women’s Gatherings, Inter-University Graduate Students of Color Dinner/Speaker Series and Professional Development Seminars.
- The Intercultural Communication Center works with non-native speakers of English to develop the fluency needed for success in research and teaching as a graduate student and as a practicing scientist. Workshops include interviewing skills for non-native speakers.
- Preparing for a Faculty Career (39-800, listed under CIT Interdisciplinary in the schedule of classes) is a seminar series originated and coordinated by Cliff Davidson in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, which introduces key concepts in developing an independent research program and teaching effectively and efficiently as a new faculty member. It is open to all engineering, science and computer science graduate students. The series consists of 6 seminars per academic year for two years. The first 6 seminars in the series covering teaching methods are expected in 2004-2005. There will be 6 seminars on research in 2005-2006. It is acceptable to register for either semester or for both semesters in a given academic year.
Science Related Career Links
- Science’s Next Wave for graduate students, postdocs and junior faculty.
(Subscription to Science Magazine may be necessary) - Science's Minority Scientists Network.
(Subscription to Science Magazine may be necessary) - The National Academies administers the Research Associateship Programs. Awards are made to doctoral level scientists and engineers who can apply their special knowledge and research talents to research areas that are of interest to them.
General Career Links
- Advice and templates for job search correspondence for a wide variety of types of letters to employers is available on the University of Pennsylvania web site.