Professional Development
Increasing the number of underrepresented students who complete doctoral training and advance into a postdoctoral and careers in research require effective professional development. At the University of Tennessee we want our graduates to achieve at a level that maximizes their chances of success. Thus, PEER’s emphasis is setting a bar of excellence, providing the tools to reach that bar, and being vigilant that Ph.D. scholars stay on track to success. For this reason, PEER scholars will attend a series of workshops that are both academic and social during the first year of their graduate degree program.
Prior to the first day of classes an eight day orientation will set the stage for collaborative research and to provide students with a sense of the types of developmental activities they will experience during the academic year. The collaborative spirit extended by PEER in collaboration with UT graduate school faculty and experts from other Universities establish a sense of community among the cohort. During the orientation, BioQuest Consortium introduce problem solving and team-based activities through topics such as bioinformatics education, protein structure and visualization and evolutionary tree exercises with real data sets. Scholars engage in several diagnostic assessments, social activities, and a “Self-Assessment” Workshop led by Dr. Caroline Szymeczek, Innovative Learning Innovations, Chapel Hill, NC. These developmental activities are designed to address intellectual, personal, and professional development while providing Scholars the tools they need to critically evaluate their progress in light of their goals and help scholars become better acquainted with their new classmates.