Resources | Professional Development

Professional Development

At Rice, we want you to grow both academically and professionally. We've put together a collection of resources (found both on-campus and off) that will help you take your career to the next level.

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Center for Academic and Professional Communication

Writing & Communication

CAPC’s main service is to give feedback on written documents and oral/visual presentations through consultations. However, CAPC can do more than help you earn a fellowship! This center hosts workshops on things like academic conversation skills, tips for academic writing, thesis boot camps, etc. CAPC also offers classes UNIV 600, 601, and 602 for students who want to improve their English speaking and writing in an academic format. These are just a few of our favorite things.

Center for Career Development

Career Exploration & Preparation

The Center for Career Development (CCD) offers programs, services, and resources to help guide Owls in pursuing their career goals. By educating, connecting, and empowering students, the CCD assists all Owls in their career readiness inside and outside the hedges. They will edit your resume or provide tips for your LinkedIn page to help you land a job. They also host a plethora of workshops and events to help you be the best candidate. If you’re not sure what you want to do after graduation, the CCD has tools and career counselors to help you navigate your values, internships, and strengths to help you find your next steps. Owls also have access to 12Twenty, a database where employers post thousands of full-time and internship positions across majors and classifications.

Center for Civic Leadership

Leadership & Management

The CCL provides integrated curricular and experiential learning opportunities that enable students to understand the complexity of social issues, their roles as active members of society, and the mechanisms for achieving equitable and inclusive communities.

Center for Teaching Excellence

Teaching & Mentoring

The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) is a great resource for grad students and postdocs who want to become more effective teachers. They offer a certificate in teaching and learning, 3-hour interactive institutes, TA training, teaching consultations, classroom observations, and more! CTE seeks to transform teaching through mentoring, innovative practices, collaboration, scholarship, and advocacy.

CITI Training

Research & Data Analysis

As a member of the Rice University community, all graduate students (including all professional Master’s students with the exception of MBA and MLS) are required to complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Responsible Conduct of Research online course by October 1st for students starting the fall semester, and by February 15th for students starting in the spring semester. For more information regarding training requirements for graduate students, click here.

Data Consulting Clinic

Research & Data Analysis

Squeeze more from your data! The Rice Data Science Consulting Clinic offers free advice in data modeling, machine learning, and more. Every Monday, 1-4pm stop by Razor 113 for free advice and assistance on all your data science challenges.

Digital Media Commons

Research & Data Analysis

The Digital Media Commons supports the creation and use of multimedia in education, scholarship, and creative expression. Working toward this end, we provide services that include hands-on training, assistance with digital projects, and access to the essential tools for creating digital resources such as digital video and audio, images and animations, PowerPoint presentations, web pages, and more.

Doerr Institute for New Leaders

Leadership & Management, Professionalism

The Doerr Institute offers executive-quality leader development experience at no cost to Rice students and postdocs. They offer individualized coaching from certified coaches with the objective of connecting Rice students with the awareness and tools that will help them find, sharpen, and grow their true leadership potential.

Enventure

Leadership & Management, Career Exploration & Preparation, Professionalism

Enventure provides students with experience, career guidance, and community, and provides medical innovators with consulting, diligence, and advising to grow a company.

Fondren Library Lib Guide

Writing & Communication, Teaching & Mentoring, Research & Data Analysis, Leadership & Management, Career Exploration & Preparation, Professionalism

The Lib Guide is a collection of resources aimed to help you succeed in grad school, find fellowships, enhance communication skills, explore career options, and more.

Humanities Research Center

Research & Data Analysis, Career Exploration & Preparation

The HRC identifies, encourages, and funds innovative research projects by faculty, visiting scholars, graduate, and undergraduate students in the School of Humanities and beyond.

Imagine Ph.D.

Career Exploration & Preparation

Imagine Ph.D. is a career exploration and planning tool for the humanities and social science fields. This website will help you assess transferable skills and work-related interests, explore jobs pursued by PhDs that align with your skills, and plan graduate program or career goals. Use this tool to map out your next steps for success!

InterSECT Job Simulations

Career Exploration & Preparation

InterSECT is an online platform that allows PhD-level scientists and humanists, regardless of professional stage, to explore future career options. InterSECT engages with an individual’s interests and extrapolates these interests to positions in actual professional settings in industry, academia, and government sectors. While the simulations do not evaluate an individual’s performance on the task, they offer insight into the specific, real-life duties of varying career paths. By completing job simulations you can consider which careers are of interest to you and utilize provided resources to explore future courses of action by following up with professionals in the career field.

Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie)

Leadership & Management, Career Exploration & Preparation

Lilie focuses on teaching both entrepreneurial skills and the entrepreneurial mindset. We prepare our students to be entrepreneurs in whatever walk of society they choose, be it a technology startup, government, civic groups, non-profits or large corporations! Lilie offers experiential courses, co-curricular opportunities, and an array of resources to support student learning in entrepreneurship.

MyIDP

Career Exploration & Preparation

MyIDP will give you exercises to examine your skills, interests, and values by creating an individual development plan (IDP). From a list of 20 scientific career paths, it will predict which paths best fit your skills and interests. myIDP will also serve as a tool for setting strategic goals for the next steps.

National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity

Writing & Communication, Leadership & Management, Career Exploration & Preparation, Professionalism

The NCFDD is an organization that provides online career development and resources for faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. This membership provides access to a series of resources, including a weekly 'Monday Motivator'; monthly webinars focused on building skills for success in academia, including creating a plan for the semester, time management, productive writing, and engaging in healthy conflict; access to monthly guest speakers and multi-week online courses on topics such as reducing burn out, and challenging race and gender bias in student evaluations; and monthly accountability buddy matches.


To access, click here, then choose "Rice University” from the drop-down menu. Select “Activate my Membership” and complete the registration form using your @rice.edu email address. Activate the account in the email you'll then receive.

The Postdoc Portal Career Exploration & Preparation

The Postdoc Portal brings together graduate students past candidacy and postdocs from across the country who are looking for a postdoc position with research groups at the 9 RUA institutions interested in hearing from potential postdocs. Postdocs start by creating a postdoc profile containing some biographical information and research interests. Research groups at RUA institutions create a Research Group profile describing their research. Profiles are automatically matched based on shared research interest. Contact information is provided to encourage matches to reach out to each other if they are interested in finding out more information.

You can visit the portal at postdocportal.org for more information. If there are any questions or concerns, please contact RUAConcierge@caltech.edu

Rice Business Plan Competition

Writing & Communication, Leadership & Management, Professionalism

The RPBC is the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition. The competition is designed to give collegiate entrepreneurs a real-world experience to fine tune their business plans and elevator pitches to generate funding to successfully commercialize their product. In 2018, over $2M in prize money was awarded, with all teams winning at least one cash award.

Rice Center for Engineering Leadership (RCEL)

Teaching & Mentoring, Leadership & Management, Professionalism

RCEL provides professional development courses in engineering management, leadership, and communication! Learn to to lead teams effectively, build a toolkit of communication skills that will give you the knowledge and confidence to be an effective engineering leader, and master strategies and tools to more effectively manage projects.

Sallyportal

Teaching & Mentoring, Career Exploration & Preparation

Sallyportal fosters connections among Rice students, alumni, parents and campus partners in support of career exploration, networking and mentorship. This is the best connection to Rice alumni. Build an organized profile that has a detailed and personable summary and an experience section that highlights your strengths and achievements; reach out to Rice alumni; and arrange informational interviews with several people in the field you want to learn more about.

The Versatile PhD

Career Exploration & Preparation

Versatile PhD is an online resource to help humanities, social science, and STEM graduate students and Ph.D.s in all fields identify, prepare for, and succeed in non-academic careers. Take the “Options 4 Success” career exploration course to identify career paths and confidently manage your transition from university to high-quality non-academic professional placement. Join forums and peruse the members list (over 100K members) to reach out to professional PhDs to ask about their path to obtain their career.