Graduate Professional Development

Graduate Professional Development, build, grow enrich.

We’re here to help you prepare for career success with opportunities and resources to build your professional skills, grow your network and enrich your personal development. We invite you to participate in professional development throughout your academic program to enhance your academic and professional success.

Our Programming

Beyond the Professoriate

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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

Student working on laptop with staff from the Center for Excellence in Writing in Norton Hall on the University at Buffalo's North Campus.

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.

NEAR

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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.

Signature Events

Students work on their networking skills during a meeting of the Spark Program, offered by the Office of Fellowships and Scholarships. The class took place in February 2020 in Capen Hall.

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.

Three Minute Thesis

Seyed Hamed Ghodsi stands in fron of his static slide presenting his research.

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

Person talking with hands in front of a laptop and paper sitting across a table with another person who has their hands folded in their lap.

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.

Get Involved

The Graduate Brief

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Every Wednesday during the semester, the Graduate School emails the "Graduate Brief" to all graduate and professional students, which is a weekly selection of news and happenings within the Graduate School and its partnering offices. If you would like to be added to the mailing list, please contact grad@buffalo.edu.

Upcoming Events

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Our Partners