Sharpen Skills

Professional development is integral to graduate education at Princeton University. It involves the systematic learning, acquisition, and application of skills and competencies that support your scholarly goals while preparing you for professional success in diverse roles within the academic, government, nonprofit, and private sectors. These competencies are in-demand in the Ph.D. labor market across all disciplines, career fields, and position types. Many are also interrelated and may be explored in any order based on your unique interests and goals. Throughout your time here, a range of programs helps you build competence and confidence in each of these highly transferable skills.

Featured Programs

GradFUTURES Learning Cohorts

Explore interdisciplinary seminars and co-curricular opportunities that bring together students, alumni, faculty, and industry partners.

Creativity Workshops

Embrace innovative thinking and apply an entrepreneurial mindset toward bold, disruptive research ideas of interest to all audiences.

Skill-building Workshops

Participate in events and skill-building workshops throughout the year across that span key competencies and sharpen in-demand skills.

The GradFUTURES Forum

Prepare for multiple futures through sessions with real-time relevance to graduate school that provide a glimpse into a world of possibilities beyond. 

Star Lessons in Leadership

Hear from graduate alums who share thought-provoking insights and candid advice based on lessons learned throughout their careers.

Future Faculty Workshops

Learn about the professional lives of faculty and the landscape of faculty roles within diverse higher education institutions in the U.S.

Additional Programs to Explore

GradFUTURES Mentor Collective

Benefit from ongoing access to a network of Princeton graduate alumni mentors, who offer guidance and advice across a broad range of fields. 

Research and Career Resources

Access a range of free resources that are designed to support you in your development, progression, and career outcomes.

Belcher
“Many brilliant people apply to graduate school and then find that graduate school is not quite what they expected. Rather than being a retreat from the world, it is in fact a training ground for a complicated, very public job, one that requires many of the same skills as other high level positions. These include networking, scheduling time efficiently, managing multiple forms of technology, following a plethora of policies, and leading people from diverse backgrounds to accomplish a common goal while simultaneously writing, researching, and teaching. Fortunately, the graduate student professional development program at Princeton University provides training in just these types of skills and thus is an essential part of graduate student success now and in the future."
 

Wendy Laura BelcherProfessor of African Literature, Princeton University, Department of Comparative Literature and Department of African American Studies