Rojewski Julie M W, Ayala-Lopez Nadia, Nguyen Sean, Watts Stephanie W
MSU Graduate School, Michigan State University, 466 W. Circle Drive, Room 130C, East Lansing, MI 48824-1317 USA.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD USA.
SN Soc Sci. 2021;1(6):140. doi: 10.1007/s43545-021-00137-2. Epub 2021 May 17.
Career development programs are a valuable part of any student's experience, and increasingly is an expected part of graduate school training. While such programs are commonly available to undergraduates, there is a growing need for career support to be offered to graduate students. Making the case for resources can be a challenge in this domain, however. Research on the impact of career services for graduate students and post-doctoral scholars is a growing scholarly concern. However, there remains a need to better understand what level of intervention is most appropriate: What kind of activities, how much time, and what resources would best serve the professional development needs of graduate students and post-doctoral scholars? And to answer these questions, a more foundational one: what activities are drawing the attention of graduate students and post doctoral trainees, and in what activities are they spending their time? In this manuscript, we describe how Our University approached this research question by developing an online data tracking system to capture graduate and post-doctoral trainee participation in one co-curricular professional development program. We demonstrate how this data tracking system can be used to advocate for institutional resources in career development programming, for research, and for practical purposes such as advocating for institutional support and for program design and assessment.
职业发展项目是任何学生经历中宝贵的一部分，并且越来越成为研究生阶段培训的一个预期组成部分。虽然这类项目通常对本科生开放，但为研究生提供职业支持的需求也在不断增加。然而，在这一领域争取资源可能是一项挑战。对研究生和博士后学者职业服务影响的研究日益受到学术界的关注。然而，仍有必要更好地了解何种程度的干预最为合适：何种活动、多少时间以及哪些资源最能满足研究生和博士后学者的职业发展需求？为了回答这些问题，还有一个更基础的问题：哪些活动吸引了研究生和博士后学员的关注，他们又把时间花在了哪些活动上？在本手稿中，我们描述了我校是如何通过开发一个在线数据跟踪系统来捕捉研究生和博士后学员参与一个课外职业发展项目的情况，从而解决这个研究问题的。我们展示了这个数据跟踪系统如何能够用于在职业发展规划中争取机构资源、用于研究以及用于实际目的，比如争取机构支持以及进行项目设计和评估。
