Graduate Professional Development

We offer two for-credit GPD modular courses, taught by Dr. Pamela Plant.

• MSC1100H: Success in Graduate School: a Professional Development Module for MSc Students
• MSC1101H: Success after Graduate School: a Professional Development Module for PhD Students
  
  See details on the courses' schedule and content here.    

The IMS introduced the Individual Development Plan (IDP) as a program requirement for all students who started their degree in 2023 and beyond.

The IDP is a living document that covers various topics that students consider essential to discuss with their supervisors. Your IDP is a tool you can use to help ensure you're receiving the training and guidance you need during graduate school to best achieve your professional goals. It is not a tool for tracking research progress but is instead focused on helping students identify and build the skills and experience necessary for them to be competitive in their next career stage.

What is required of students?

• Complete a draft of the IDP on your own.
• Sit down with your supervisor and finalize the IDP together ahead of your first Program Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting.
• Keep a copy of your completed IDP. You do not need to submit it to IMS, however, if you are comfortable sharing the IDP with Dr. Plant, please upload your completed document here.
• At your PAC meeting, indicate on the PAC form (last page) when your IDP was completed.
• Re-visit the form annually with your supervisor and update as needed.

If you are interested in learning more about IDP, you can also consult these tools:
 

• ScienceCareers: My IDP
• Imagine PhD
• SGS IDP Workshops (next one on Oct. 25 for students)

*Starting January 2025*

Last Monday of the month from 3:00-5:00 pm.   
Naylor Bldg, Suite 119, P. Plant office 

Many of you have spent the past 2+/6+ years in the lab, doing experiments, analyzing data, writing papers, presenting your work, and thinking about your thesis. How much time have you thought about your next big step: what you're going to do after graduate school?  

Some of you have mapped out a plan for medical school or a post-doc, and others will launch into the expansive world of the private and public sector. What are the possibilities, where do you start, what do you need to get there and who do you connect with? In other words:  how exactly do you get the career you want? 

These are some of the questions we will explore in this series of interactive small group workshops. We hope you leave feeling more confident about where you want to go, and how you plan to get there. 

The IMS Career Mentorship Program (CMP) matches upper year doctoral students with an alumni or faculty mentor in their desired career or field. Mentors provide one-on-one support and guidance for students in their professional development and career goals.

This program enables students to gain insight and directly benefit from our accomplished, well-connected and diverse IMS community. The program is complemented by exclusive social and graduate professional development events.

The IMS Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Mentorship Program is designed by IMS students for IMS students.

P2P knows how difficult the transition to graduate school can be from first-hand experience and they are here to make it a little less hectic. Modules, PAC meetings, courses, presentations - it can all be overwhelming. The Peer-to-Peer mentorship program partners incoming graduate students with an upper year graduate student to help them navigate the complex landscape of IMS and for lasting friendships. From getting more involved with IMS Students' Association to finding extracurricular activities that of interest to you, they are here for you. 

The IMS, in collaboration with the Peer-to-Peer Mentorship Program and IMSSA, runs a series of in-person and virtual career panel events covering different sectors and professions.

Save the date for our next event - IMS Connects: Working in Academia on November 28.

The Centre for Graduate Professional Development (CGPD) is a central hub for graduate student professional development at the University of Toronto. Engaging in professional development gives graduate students a unique opportunity for autonomous exploration of academic skills and professional aspirations.

To support graduate students as they navigate the complexity of the academic and professional development landscape at U of T, CGPD provides both programming and wayfinding. 

The Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC) provides graduate students with advanced training in academic writing and speaking.

Graduate students need to be able to communicate sophisticated information to sophisticated audiences. As you prepare to attend your first conference, to write your first proposal, or to publish your first paper, you will need stronger communication skills than those needed in undergraduate work. By emphasizing professional development rather than remediation, GCAC can help you cultivate the ability to diagnose and address the weaknesses in your oral and written work.

GCAC offers five types of support designed to target the needs of both native and non-native speakers of English: non-credit courses, single-session workshops, individual writing consultations, writing intensives, and a list of additional resources for academic writing and speaking.

The Centre for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision (CGMS) is housed in the School of Graduate Studies. They are a tri-campus service that works with graduate students and faculty to support successful graduate mentorship and supervisory relationships, by facilitating interpersonal skill-building and informal conflict resolution.

Career Exploration & Education supports students and recent graduates as they build their future in our changing world. They help students explore what they can do with their degree, discover job opportunities and further education. They offer a range of services and programming.

Flexible Futures Programming for Graduate Students offers a wide range of career-related programs, workshops, customized sessions and consultations year-round for graduate students and post docs.

The Life Sciences Career Development Syndicate (LSCDS) serves to enhance the awareness of post-graduation career options. The LSCDS is managed entirely by graduate students with an interest in industry and support from the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFoM) and School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto. As the largest and only TFoM recognized career development society, their goal is to introduce potential career paths for graduate students in the life sciences. 

Leadership for Grads is an engaging and interactive series of virtual and in-person workshops that help graduate students apply leadership theories in practice. Strengthen your collaboration, reflection and leadership skills while challenging and deepening your understanding of leadership in diverse contexts.

This program is ideal for grad students looking to run effective research groups, lead committee meetings and facilitate classroom environments.

Success in Graduate School and Beyond, written by GPD experts Drs. Nana Lee and Reinhart Reithmeier, is designed to empower graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in STEM with practical tools, tips, and skill development strategies to plan and create their dream career pathway. Intended as a professional development course book, this balanced, self-reflective guide to workplace readiness is organized into five sections that support graduate student development: self-reflection, wellness, skills, networking, and planning for future success.

Written in a conversational style, this guidebook includes clear learning outcomes based on the authors’ successful graduate professional development course at the University of Toronto. Covering increasingly important career subjects such as mentorships, transferrable skill development, emotional intelligence, and EDI, this guidebook solves a skills gap and builds core competencies demanded from industries and academia. Interspersed personal accounts from the authors about key topics and seven Alumni Career Profiles describing various career trajectories work to encourage self-awareness and promote essential skill development and networking proficiency. With this book, STEM students will be equipped with the abilities and tools to achieve success in graduate school and beyond.

The University of Toronto Entrepreneurship (UTE) community does much more than accelerate startups. They accelerate ideas, people, social impact, and technologies too. All while striving to create an environment that is inclusive and representative of the diverse and talented innovators and entrepreneurs around us.

UTE is a central voice for entrepreneurship across U of T’s three campuses and represents a powerful network of 12+ accelerators. They are here to support, develop and celebrate our best and brightest founders and their startups through a broad range of resources, network access and entrepreneurship activities.

Designers spend their days dreaming up better products and better worlds, and you can use their thinking to re-envision your own life, says design professor Bill Burnett. He shares five tips to try, whether you’re at the start of your career or contemplating your next act. Executive director of Stanford’s design program at the d.School, Bill Burnett uses design thinking, a career’s worth of starting companies and coaching students, and a childhood spent drawing cars and airplanes under his Grandmother’s sewing machine to inform his work on how to design your life. 

The Stanford Life Design Lab applies design thinking to tackling the "wicked" problems of life and vocational wayfinding

This is a summarized list of the 31 competencies grouped by “cluster” (similar competencies related to a common skill set). Each competency includes a definition and the observable behaviors that may indicate the existence of a competency in a person.

Attract is a how-to guide to personal branding written by Andris Pone, co-author of the Globe and Mail #1 business bestseller, Brand: It Ain’t the Logo.

The Myers Briggs Personality Assessment is a widely used tool for understanding individual personality differences. It can help people: 

• Identify their natural strengths and gifts 
• Enhance self-understanding 
• Understand and appreciate personality differences in others

The 2022 Career Outcomes Study, a project led by the School of Graduate Studies, provides a snapshot of employment outcomes for PhD graduates of U of T between 2000-2021 and Postdoctoral Fellows who worked at U of T between 2008-2021. The study uses publicly available data from open access sources (e.g., LinkedIn, company websites) to determine employment status. This follows the same methodology as the 10,000 PhDs Project published in 2018.

You can use their interactive dashboard to filter the IMS specific data. 

In an effort to better understand the careers of IMS international alumni we collected information on their employment and professional development since graduation. We used Internet searches of open-access data sources such as official university and company websites to determine the employment status of MSc and PhD international alumni who graduated from IMS between 2011 and 2021. 

See the report here.

Updated report on our MSc alumni data coming soon.

• Salma Amarin (MSc Institute of Medical Science '24) is an accomplished immigrant doctor from Libya. Salma shares her unique story as an internationally trained clinician, graduate student and parent of four young children.
• Michelle Dubinsky (PhD Institute of Medical Science '23) is a Cardiometabolism Medical Science Liaison (MSL) at Boehringer Ingelheim. Through this role, she has room to combine scientific curiosity, patient impact, as well as teaching and networking with healthcare professionals.
• Krystal Jacques (MSc Institute of Medical Science '22) has many aspirations for her career in the arts and is currently building her business and photography portfolio. She is also involved in science communication work.
• Karolina Bizinski (PhD Institute of Medical Science '21) is a Senior Management Consultant in the Healthcare Solutions, Operations practice at KPMG Canada. Healthcare management consulting is the process of guiding healthcare organizations to make business-savvy decisions and maintaining the welfare of staff and patients.
• Jonathon Chio (PhD Institute of Medical Science '21) is an MD student (class of '25) at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana. His goal is to become a Principal Investigator.
• Brian Ballios (MD/PhD Institute of Medical Science ’15) is an assistant professor of ophthalmology at U of T where he holds the J. Ardeth Hill – Fighting Blindness Canada Professorship in Ocular Genetics Research. He is also a clinician-scientist with UHN’s Donald K. Johnson Eye Institute and the Kensington Vision and Research Centre, as well as a staff ophthalmologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He also holds an associate faculty position with IMS where he supervises summer undergraduate and MSc students.
• Raw Talk Podcast Episode #125: Alumni Reunion - Former team members explore how their involvement with the podcast influenced their personal and professional lives, where their paths have led, and the wisdom they offer to listeners.