Faculty & Staff

We offer a variety of services to help faculty and staff integrate career diversity into the curriculum and support career options beyond academia:

Request a customized workshop for your department, institute, lab or class. Workshops are available free of charge to all graduate departments. Career and professional development topics include:

• Exploring career paths
• Designing your career 
• Creating career & individual development plans (IDP) 
• Preparing application documents (e.g., CV, resumes, cover letters)
• Practicing interviewing (including job talk and chalk talks) 
• Negotiating job offers 
• Strengthening mentorship and menteeship 
• Preparing for the academic job market and 
• Using AI and social media in the job search
• Networking
• Have another idea? You can meet with our team to create a custom workshop to meet the career and professional development needs of your students and postdocs.

Do you have an alumnus or speaker you are collaborating with for an event, but would like to increase attendance beyond your department or group? Our office can work with you to promote your event to graduate students and postdocs across campus, or potentially co-sponsor speakers or employers. To learn more, email Annie Maxfield, Director of the Office of Career and Life Design at the Graduate School.

If you are looking to hire a graduate student, we can help! Our team manages a listserv that shares GA, TA and GRA positions with graduate students across campus. 

Circulate your UT position on the graduate student campus jobs listserv.

• Graduate Assistantships: post your GA position on HireUTexas powered by Handshake, then you can post it on the listserv at graduatestudentcampusjobs@utlists.utexas.edu
• GRA, TA or AI: post positions directly to the listserv, please be sure your position includes contact information, rate of pay and the dates of employment. 
• For more detailed instructions on posting campus jobs to the listserv, visit UT Lists.

We offer training and resources for faculty and staff to support career options within and beyond academia. This includes faculty training on the following topics: 

• Utilizing career exploration tools and resources (e.g., ImaginePhD, myIDP, and more)
• Best practices for mentoring graduate students and postdocs
• Incorporating career diversity into curriculum design
• Identifying and connecting with alumni for events and initiatives (e.g., Alumni@Work)

We can help faculty integrate career support for diverse career paths into their curriculum. We have collected syllabi from multiple universities that have integrated career and professional development for a wide variety of careers and disciplines. Email Annie Maxfield to meet and discuss ways we can support the overall learning outcomes for your course.

We can provide a training plan and career and professional resources to support grant applications that have a required career planning or professional development component (NIH, NSF). A sample life design training for NIH Training Grants is linked above.

Stay informed on employment opportunities and labor trends for new graduate program proposals. Understand the hiring landscape at UT through our online platform. Contact: Annie Maxfield, Director of the Office of Career & Life Design in the Graduate School to set up a meeting about your graduate program proposal and how we can help. 

As a faculty member, you can influence the way your department exposes and prepares students for these options. Below are resources, tools, and opportunities for faculty and department staff to advocate and integrate career development into curriculum and department culture while better preparing advanced students for a more diverse range of career pathways.

• Setting Grad Students Up for Success: How Faculty Can Support Students’ Career Exploration
• Faculty Guide for Graduate Student Career and Professional Development Milestones
• Modern Language Association Doctoral Career Planning Guide

Council of Graduate Schools PhD Career Pathways Reports

• Closing Gaps in Our Knowledge of PhD Career Pathways: Preparing Future Faculty for All Types of Colleges and Universities
• Closing Gaps in Our Knowledge of Humanities PhD Career Pathways: How Well Did a Humanities PhD Prepare Them? Press Release
• Closing Gaps in Our Knowledge of PhD Career Pathways: How Well Did a STEM PhD Train Degree Recipients for Their Careers?
• Closing Gaps in Our Knowledge of PhD Career Pathways: Job Changes of PhD Graduates After Earning Their Degree

Progressive, module-based workshops, resources and guides designed for faculty and department staff to build a career development program in the biomedical sciences in their departments. Created through the NIH funded BEST Consortium (Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training) and produced by UC Irvine and the NIH.

Overview of how to use ImaginePhD and ways to build career exploration and development into curriculum and culture for faculty in the humanities. Presented at the Modern Language Association Conference, January 2020.

The American Historical Association’s Career Diversity for Historians initiative is working to better prepare graduate students and early-career historians for a range of career options, within and beyond the academy. With generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Historical Association and three dozen departments from around the country are working to explore the culture and practice of graduate education and how it can better support the changing needs of doctoral students.

A free online platform where users can explore your options for careers in biology, improve professional skills, navigate your training and learn what is happening in the biomedical workforce

• Professional Development Hub (pd | hub) - Implementation Site for pd | hub Collections Storytelling workshop model 
• The American Association of Universities PhD Career Pathways Initiative – Pilot Departments: History, American Studies, Neuroscience and Chemistry 
• The Council of Graduate Schools Understanding PhD Career Pathways for Program Improvement 
• The American Historical Association Career Diversity Initiative – History Departmental Grant 
• The Mellon Foundation Planning Grant for responsible information workforce development in the humanities “Mobilize, Articulate, Connect, Sustain: MACS-imizing Responsible Information Work in the Humanities”