Soft skills boot camp: Designing a three-day student-run seminar and workshop series for graduate students

Abstract

A common challenge amongst the graduate student population is finding time to work on desirable soft skills that would create a more dynamic applicant for academic and industrial jobs. between lectures, classes, research, and duties required for assistantships or fellowships, graduate students have little time left over to attend workshops or seminars to cultivate these proficiencies. This has been a noticed occurrence with scheduled events put on by our student chapter. To combat low attendance, we hosted a three-day "boot camp" between the spring and summer semesters. This was considered opportune timing because students did not have class and had fewer time constraints, as they were transitioning from lesser to greater research responsibilities. Students were required to register for the event ahead of time using an online form, which also allowed us to determine beforehand how many students to expect. The objectives of this event were to 1) increase graduate students' proficiencies in research- and career-related soft skills; 2) connect students with available campus resources; and 3) increase networking and communication between the engineering departments. To determine what topics should be covered, two separate surveys were used; one that asked students to identify what topics they believed would benefit them the most, and one from the faculty on what developmental needs they saw for their students. Based on this data, a finalized set of seminars and workshops were developed, which covered topics such as writing skills, citation management, responsible conduct of research, making effective figures, time management, and oral communication. Guest speakers were all faculty and staff members from the university, including professors from the College of Engineering and School of Public Communications, and the University Library. Pre- and post-event surveys were used to gather audience enthusiasm and confidence in their skills. Overall, positive feedback was gathered both before and after the retreat. Our chapter plans on rerunning this program with some changes to the skills that will be discussed. We will also change the scheduling of the event so that it takes place one day per week for three weeks, as opposed to three consecutive days, in an effort to boost attendance.