Graduate Professional Development

Beyond the Professoriate is an online professional development training platform for graduate students, postdocs, faculty and PhDs that helps them successfully transition into academic or nonacademic careers.

Dissertation retreats are multiple-day, focused writing events to help you make significant progress toward completion of major projects, and are held multiple times throughout the year. The Graduate School co-sponsors dissertation retreats with the Center for Excellence in Writing. See when the next dissertation retreat is happening and join us.

The Network for Enriched Academic Relationships (NEAR) is a transdisciplinary online mentoring directory for students to find faculty mentors and allies beyond their substantive research areas. Students are able to connect with current faculty members to receive guidance and support around many different topics and issues of importance.

The Graduate School co-sponsors a number of events for graduate and professional students. Our featured events are focused on networking, financial and mental wellness, career readiness and more. From workshops to seminars to world-renowned speakers, there are hundreds of opportunities to learn at UB. Take a look at our upcoming events, designed specifically for our graduate and professional student population.

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition celebrates the exciting research conducted by PhD students by cultivating students’ academic, presentation and research communication skills. Participants are judged on the ability to effectively convey the essence and importance of their research in an engaging way to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes, with one PowerPoint slide.

Write Through is a series of articles highlighting the processes of writers who found their way through the dissertation process in a timely fashion. While everyone's process is unique, we hope you'll carry away some productive ideas and feel a little less isolated as you hear the voices of individuals who've been where you are and emerged triumphant in their dissertation journey.