Graduate students at the University of Minnesota could soon expect better resources to help them find jobs outside of academia.
To combat a disparity in career services offered to graduate students in different colleges, the Council of Graduate Students is planning an initiative to expand career resources in more colleges this year.
Each college’s graduate program has their own separate career resources. Some colleges have strong resources, such as the College of Biological Sciences, while others, especially the College of Liberal Arts, have a pressing need for more, COGS President Nicholas Goldsmith said.
Despite the variancevariation, he said the graduate student government wants to improve resources in each individual college.
Resources for graduate student career services are located in the Graduate School , individual colleges’ graduate programs and other groups.
Graduate students lack resources to connect them with jobs in private sector businesses, as opposed to jobs at universities, Goldsmith said.
“Academia is becoming — or is already — an alternative career,” he said.
While COGS’ initiative is still in the planning stages, some colleges are independently creating programs for the same purpose. CBS introduced the Emerge program in fall 2014 to help grad students find jobs outside of universities.
CBS Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education Thomas Hays , who created Emerge during his tenure as interim dean, said the Emerge program will be made available to other University colleges this fall.
The program will also expand in collaboration with the Nelsen Biomedical Group, Hays said. He said while the Graduate School is partially subsidizing the program, students will need to cover some of the costs to participate.
At the same time, the University’s Graduate School is taking steps to extend its Academics and Professional Development programs, which offer events like workshops and speakers.
Henning Schroeder, dean of the Graduate School , said the school gathered representatives from the University’s graduate programs to identify the need for career services.
Schroeder said the Graduate School created an internship program to meet the needs of students and is now trying to expand the program to other colleges.
For now, COGS’s members plan to discuss career services in meetings throughout the year .
“Things move at different paces in different colleges, particularly with something so decentralized,” Goldsmith said.
