Career Exploration

If you are interested in becoming a Faculty Member – PROMISE will be a great resource for you! We offer a series of Future Faculty Workshops (previously called Professor in Training or PROF-IT) including a workshop on Faculty Roles at Different Types of Academic Institutions, panels of faculty to learn from at our Summer Success Institute, a workshop called Postdoc 101 to help you learn about postdoc programs, and a summer series to prepare you for the Academic Job Market. We can also help you apply for programs geared to helping students, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, get intensive pre-professoriate training, like NextProf Nexus at the University of Michigan, WiscProf at the University of Wisconsin, or the Building Future Faculty program at NC University. We also have free CIRTL certification for those of you who want to earn a Nationally Recognized STEM Teaching Certificate.

Interested in a career outside of Academia? UMBC’s Career Center professionals are your go-to for industry/non-academic careers and they are available for virtual appointments. Students and alumni may schedule individual 30- or 60-minute appointments through UMBCworks. Simply click on “Counseling Appt” from the UMBCworks homepage menu. After selecting your date/time of choice, you will be given the option for phone or Webex video/screen-share appointment mode. An increased number of virtual appointments are currently being made available.

 

Are you in the humanities or social sciences? Checkout resources like Imagine PhD, a free career exploration tool for Humanities and Social Science PhDs. They have interesting resources that help you do guided self-assessment, help you think about ways to set goals with your advisor, and career exploration tools.  Columbia University also has a website dedicated to non-academic career options for you as well.  Finally, another site is  Versatile PhD which is free to join and has a variety of resources available even if your institution is not a member (UMBC is not, but College Park is for those of you who are alumni or concurrent students)- but some resources are not available to the public.

 

Science students and postdocs can create an Individual Development Plan (IDP) with MyIDP. Created to help science grad students and postdocs do a self-assessment of their skills, interests and values and fit the right fit for a career path. There’s evidence that these kinds of plans make a difference in your own feelings of satisfaction, progress, and success (which we could all use right now!). In addition, AAAS and Science have an index of science careers that is old, but still valuable. Finally, Check out Science Magazine’s Career Trends Booklet – available entirely online.