The 2024 conference of the Graduate School’s professional development program, held on campus April 5 and April 8-12, attracted over 700 attendees from Princeton and 100+ other institutions. Participants attended alumni career panels, keynote speeches, award ceremonies, fireside discussions, and interactive workshops. All of the conference sessions were united by the theme of building clarity, confidence, and connections to help graduate students excel in graduate school and envision the many academic and nonacademic career paths available to them. 

Over six days, graduate students explored opportunities at the second annual Internship-Fellowship Fair and Showcase and heard keynotes such as the one offered by Jessica Calarco on thriving in graduate school. Participants picked up new practical skills and tools such as writing for a wider audience. The conference also celebrated champions of graduate student professional development, including the ten campus partners feted at the Clio Hall Awards and the recipient of the 2024 GRADitude Award, Emily Miller of the Association of American Universities. 

An occasion for clarity and exploration 

Career insights from public humanists, university presidents, and more

Many of the week’s events focused on the opportunity landscape after graduate school. This is a key area of inquiry for Forum participants such as Spanish & Portuguese graduate student Jonathan Andres Romero. Romero attended various Forum events to consider what he might do during and beyond his time at Princeton. According to Romero, he is "obsessed" with discovering ways for his academic work to reach a wider audience and have an impact.

The most “fascinating” event for him was a panel discussion with five public humanists that was chaired by Yassine Ait Ali, a graduate student in French & Italian. Desiree Barron-Callaci of the American Council of Learned Societies and Robert Townsend of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences spoke about the national research and data their organizations are disseminating via reports on topics such as the public perception of humanities and best practices for “preparing publicly engaged scholars.” Carin Berkowitz of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities spoke about her work in providing funding and capacity building to “tiny local non-profits,” which contribute to “a more democratic, inclusive, vibrant humanities.” Clifford Robinson of the Princeton Public Library spoke about the Library’s role in supporting public humanities projects at the local level, including projects by Princeton students. Robinson summed up the consensus among the speakers when he described public humanities as an important route for anyone “bristling at the limits of an academic discipline.” 

Panelist Genevieve Allotey-Pappoe recently defended her dissertation in the Music department and spoke at the event about connecting her work to the public. Through her research, she found herself with over 300 minutes of interview material about Black music in Spain from the 20th century to today. She decided to share this material with a wider audience, and the result was a podcast, “Black Music Nomad.” 

After the event, Allotey-Pappoe reflected on her participation in the context of her long involvement with GradFUTURES. “I wouldn’t have been able to be on that panel three years ago,” she said. “I never really entered thinking ‘I want to be a public intellectual.’” However, after “years of exploration” – including several fellowships with GradFUTURES – she found that she could “fill a gap between the music industry and academia” through public-facing projects such as the podcast. “GradFUTURES is not a space where students are judged for thinking about things beyond academia,” she added.

For Miller, a graduate student in Music, the fireside chat with current, former, and incoming university presidents was notable because it illuminated a new potential pathway for herself. She has participated in a number of GradFUTURES opportunities, in part to “collect different pieces of data” on what she might like to do professionally after her time at Princeton. Now entering her sixth year and pursuing academic positions, Miller “really enjoyed” the conversation on the longer-term trajectories of Princeton President Emerita Shirley Tilghman, Ann Kirschner *78 (English), and Michael Avaltroni *03 (Chemistry): “It was interesting hearing the larger zoom-out lens,” she said, relative to her own interest in mentoring and longer-term planning. 

Alumni panels showcased varied career paths

The week’s alumni career panels kicked off on April 9 with “Policy Careers for Social Scientists," which included graduate alums from the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and History. While each panelist engaged state and federal public policy in different arenas (including nonprofits, think tanks, and corporations), they all emphasized the many opportunities for flexible research experts within the eclectic, acronym-loving world of policy. Benjamin Sacks *18 (History) – now a policy researcher at RAND – characterized the policy sphere as having many “places for people who think outside the box.” 

Each of the speakers placed their experiences at Princeton within longer personal narratives that led to their professional “aha moment.” For Austin Edwards *23 (SPIA, MPP), an interest in policy took root during his youth in Trenton, where he could see firsthand the effects of redlining and disinvestment. A high school civics class pointed him towards policy: “I knew I had to be involved in the allocation of resources,” he said. Both Edwards and Janellen Duffy *03 (SPIA, MPA) work in New Jersey state policy at Salvation and Social Justice and at River Crossing Strategy Group, respectively. They both emphasized the “tremendous” need for subject matter experts and Ph.D.-level researchers in local government. In particular, Duffy noted that policy careers are well-suited for the kinds of researchers who can “focus on increments and the long game – it’s not just policy change, but implementation, too.” Michelle Nedashkovskaya *20 (SPIA, MPA), a policy lead at YouTube, became an expert in disinformation at Princeton. She has channeled that expertise into a career shaping policy at the intersection between society and technology. The constant in her educational and professional careers, she noted, has been “intense hypothesis building and curiosity.” 

Another panel featuring four graduate alums now working in science policy also underscored the importance of curiosity. Beth Zeitler *14 (Chemistry), the Associate Director of the Board on Energy and Environmental Systems at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, noted that since there is not one obvious career path open to graduate students, “You have to be able and interested to work on different topics, and have to be ready to shift when opportunities are present.” She also noted that careers and fellowships in American policy exist for interested international students. “There’s a large number of non-U.S. citizens who are qualified to do policy work” but cannot apply for certain policy-oriented fellowships. Still, Zeitler encouraged international graduate students to apply for opportunities that are open to them, such as the Mirzayan fellowships.

Building confidence through new skills, insights, and multiple mentors

Top keynote speakers addressed concerns of Princeton graduate students 

Concrete and existential questions were at the heart of several Forum panels. These included questions like: How can I uncover my intrinsic motivation? What should I look for in a mentor? How can I intervene when I witness hurtful behaviors in the workplace? How do I approach a journalist to report on my research, or how do I share it on my own? What can creativity do for scientific inquiry? 

On hand to answer these questions were keynote speakers including Amy Cuddy *05 (Psychology), Ruth Gotian, and Jessica Calarco. Cuddy’s talk was based on her forthcoming book, “Bullies, Bystanders, & Bravehearts,” to be published in 2025 by HarperCollins. The book is inspired by her own experience of being bullied by academic colleagues. Cuddy outlined the psychological anatomy of adult bullying, from “bully tests” meant to prod a potential victim’s ability to respond to the bully, to a successful outcome for a bully: complete isolation of their target. She also dispelled common beliefs about bullies. One lingering idea is that bullies themselves tend to have been bullied. Rather, it is the so-called “bravehearts,” or those who intervene when they witness bullying, who have more experience in being marginalized and receiving bullying behavior. As an example, Cuddy cited the graduate students and Black women who came to her aid when she was targeted. Throughout her keynote, Cuddy encouraged the audience to enact the “social bravery” necessary to move from being a passive bystander to a braveheart in the face of any kind of bullying.

Ruth Gotian focused on common attributes of high achievers while Jessica Calarco spoke about how to succeed in graduate school; each emphasized the importance of a diverse network of mentors. Gotian noted that people with mentors outearn and outperform their peers. She offered an exercise on building up a “mentoring team," which isn’t as straightforward as contacting someone on LinkedIn. Rather, Gotian recommends looking to a variety of personal connections to help attain clearly defined goals. Calarco also highlighted the need for a “team of mentors,” rather than unrealistically expecting just one omniscient mentor with the bandwidth and generosity to offer advice on everything from the development of a dissertation topic to planning for the future. 

The Forum's emphasis on mentoring resonated with Jonathan Romero. He appreciated Gotian and Calarco’s approach to mentoring as one based on “what people ‘know’ about you rather than what people can do for you.” He also noted that he wished he had heard this advice earlier in graduate school. “My network of mentors has happened kind of organically this semester,” Romero said, “so it would be most helpful for someone to hear this in their first year.” Peter Benson, a graduate student in English, noted that Calarco’s event and the reception that followed “opened my eyes to resources and opportunities that I wish I had been aware of much earlier in my time here at Princeton.”

August Yu, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Fordham University, can attest to the value of encountering Calarco’s advice early in graduate school. Calarco’s “A Field Guide to Grad School” was mandatory reading in his first-year professional seminar. “I love this book and owe a considerable debt to both the book and Dr. Calarco,” he said, noting that “it promotes educational justice and opens up access to exclusive resources that were once the preserve of the privileged.” Yu added that as an international student, he found that "the book's detailed guidance was crucial in helping me adapt to new academic research methodologies, allowing me to keep up with my peers.” 

Mentorship was also an important theme of a fireside chat between Rodney Priestley, Dean of the Graduate School, and Emily Miller, the Deputy Vice President of the American Association of Universities (AAU) and 2024 GRADitude Award recipient. Miller also called for multiple mentors for graduate students. She noted that “the intersection between mentorship, professional development, and well-being – these are all discussed in tandem at AAU." Miller called particular attention to the need for “equity-minded mentorship” as a corrective to the traditional one-to-one pairings that often fail to account for mentor/mentee identity. 

Throughout the Forum, students reported making connections at receptions such as the one following Jessica Calarco’s talk. At that event, students were encouraged to strike up conversations with students outside of their own academic divisions, as well as to speak with Calarco. “I had the opportunity to express my gratitude to Dr. Calarco in person and to connect with graduate students from various programs at Princeton,” reported Yu. “It was enlightening to hear about the diverse projects they are working on, and it opened up possibilities for future interdisciplinary collaborations and more.” 

Tools and tips from communications experts  

The nuts and bolts of media communication were the focus of a panel on “Media Training 101” offered by a team from the University's Office of Communications. The speakers shared insights on everything from crafting the perfect pitch to best practices when speaking with reporters. “What I liked the most about it was its concreteness,” said Ait Ali. “I liked the practical element; you don’t need general theories, you need to pick up some interesting things and go and use them.”  

In another session, astrophysicist and science communications expert Paul Sutter also offered concrete advice. He structured his talk around seven “lies” scientists and scientists-in-training tell themselves about sharing their work with a wider audience. In addition to fulfilling a public good at a time of declining trust in scientists, Sutter advocated for scientists to feel “empowered” as communicators. He encouraged students to be open to writing for blogs or popular publications or appearing on podcasts. After all, he argued, “Data is not how people change their minds: people connect through stories, not facts.” 

Creative communication and collaboration are also at the heart of creating new scientific knowledge. Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher, hosts of the Night Science podcast, challenged graduate students to avoid being siloed in one methodological field. Genre-bending, they reminded the audience, is what propels advancement, whether you’re Marie Curie or Beyoncé (or neither). One of their tips was to bring the improv stage into spaces of scientific exploration via close collaboration with one to three open-minded colleagues. “If our goal is to come up with creative new ideas,” Yanai said, “what we need to do is create a sandbox setting where anything goes."

A complete list of GradFUTURES Forum participants and links to recordings can be found here, and more information about the Internship-Fellowship Fair can be found here.