4.1 Tuning In to Graduate Student Professional Development

Lisa Aikman, Educational Developer, Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars Centre for Teaching and Learning, UTSC
Alli Diskin, Programs Coordinator, Teaching Assistants' Training Program, CTSI
Andrea Graham, Graduate Programs Team Lead, Centre for Learning Strategy Support, Student Life
Joel Rodgers, Coordinator, Graduate Student Professional Development, FAS

Finding the Frequency: Clarity, Purpose, and What Matters Most    

Graduate student professional development is central to shaping thoughtful, confident, and well supported emerging scholars and professionals. Across the university, however, faculty and staff rarely have opportunities to reflect together on how departmental cultures, supervisory relationships, and institutional structures influence graduate students’ growth in their academic and professional roles.

This Jam Session invites colleagues into a roundtable conversation that begins with short opening reflections from a small panel who work closely with graduate students across U of T’s three campuses. These reflections set the stage for an open discussion about the conditions that support or hinder graduate student professional development, the kinds of messages graduate students receive about what matters, and the places where signal and noise shape their experiences.

The conversation centers the knowledge and experiences of participants. Broad questions guide the discussion, encouraging comparison across units, sharing of effective practices, and candid exploration of challenges related to mentorship, communication, workload, role expectations, and local departmental cultures. As participants speak with one another and with the panel, themes and insights emerge organically.

Participants will leave with a clearer sense of the supports that make the most difference in graduate student professional development, a better understanding of the pressures and obstacles that complicate it, and a short set of ideas or questions they can bring back to their own departments.