Resources for Academic Professional Development

In the course of being a graduate student and working in university organizations, I have found immense value in the resources that others have developed and generously shared online. I hope that materials I have developed can likewise help others. Materials and resources are organized below by topic, with brief descriptions of how they came to be.

Social Media

A Naysayer’s Introduction to Social Media pdf

I put this together to start conversation about how to use social media for a monthly conference call for NSF RED grantees. This short handout covers three common complaints and provides encouragement about getting started.

Demystifying Social Media pdf

This two-page resource covers research-based tips for academic social media use and the anatomy of a tweet. I was leading an hour-long monthly NSF RED conference call and wanted to compile and organize my takeaway points in a shareable format.

Graduate Student Professional Development

A Journal Club: Focus on Contemporary Sociology pdf

This monthly group was developed with a fellow senior graduate student to keep up with new research in sociology and to create peer mentoring opportunities. The linked document is a syllabus of sorts.

A Student-led Professionalization Series pdf

Co-developed with one of the leaders of the graduate student association, we organized sessions to make implicit and inequitable aspects of graduate school more explicit and equitable. The linked document outlines the mission statement and notes from discussions about joining the scholarly community and the academic job market.

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