Professional Development

Achieving your goals starts with setting them. We encourage students to explore career paths and opportunities to prepare for the future they envision for themselves. Students will find programming for careers both within and outside of academia, as well as hands-on training for specific skills to make them more competitive in the job market. Follow your interests and find opportunities to begin building towards your professional goals.


  • Beyond Graduate School
    Beyond Graduate School E-Platform

    Beyond Graduate School is a one-of-a-kind, training platform that helps master’s students make the most out of their investment and build their careers. Included are video lessons on career exploration, writing application materials, interviewing and negotiating for that next career step, and much more.

  • aurora
    Beyond the Professoriate E-Platform

    “This is a very useful resource for all grad students. Because the interviews deal with the particular details of that person, a grad student can pull out only what they need. I don’t think it matters what level or program you are in, you can make use of large portions this platform.” - Anonymous UNH Graduate Student survey response.

     

UNH Graduate School Events and Resources

Navigating Graduate School

Make an Appointment

Navigating graduate school can be a daunting, confusing, difficult, and lonely process. You don't know what you don't know and often times graduate students are not even aware of the questions they should be asking nor of the resources available to them. In one-on-one meetings with Dr. Jovana Milosavljevic Ardeljan, Director of Career, Professional, & Community Development you can discuss how to maximize your graduate experience, and learn what resources, tools, and services are available at UNH and beyond.

Exploring Your Future Series: Career Options and Life After Grad School

This annual event series has been designed to help you, a student or post-doc, to understand how to match your career path to your experience and values, teach you the skills to help you land that dream job, and give you the knowledge and tools to responsibly manage your finances now and into the future. You can find descriptions and recordings of each event from 2023 below!

Key Themes for This Event: Job Searches, Career Options, Bridging Academia and Industry, Networking, Achieve A Fulfilling Career

Your graduate degree is your stepping-stone to a rewarding career, but how do you decide on that next step? In this semester’s four-part career series, Exploring Your Future: Career Options and Life After Grad School, we aim to empower grad students and post-docs with the knowledge and skills to identify exciting career paths, develop healthy & productive work habits, and find fulfilling jobs. In Finding Your Path: Exploring Careers Outside Academia, we'll talk about how to identify and stay true to your personal values as they relate to your career, assess your skills and qualifications, and the process behind your successful job search. Whether you are just starting graduate school or already have your degree, this session will help you clarify your career vision and create goals to help you turn those dreams into reality. Facilitated by Dr. Mike Ferguson, UNH Graduate School Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Recreation Management & Policy.

Watch the video recording of the event here

Key Themes for This Event: Job Searches, Interviewing, Networking, Bridging Academia and Industry, Time Management, Effective Oral Communication, Achieve A Fulfilling Career

Looking to make the most of your time in grad school to build a productive, fulfilling career?  There are many things you can do start doing today to build the future you want! This seminar will address how you can use your time at UNH to better make the jump to your future professional life. We’ll discuss tips and tricks for more effective time management so you can reach your short- and long-term goals. You will learn how to make connections with those working in and out of academia and how to market your experiences and skills to potential employers. These communication skills will help you thrive in graduate school and beyond. This is our second event in the Exploring Your Future: Career Options & Life After Graduate School series. Facilitated by Dr. Mike Ferguson, UNH Graduate School Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Recreation Management & Policy.

Watch the video recording of the event here

Key Themes for This Event: Financial Wellbeing, Finances & Funding

Financial well-being is one of life’s consistent concerns and the Graduate School wants to help you build a strong financial foundation. We continue our Exploring Your Future: Career Options & Life After Graduate School series with a focus on finances. In this session, we will focus on the ways you can manage, save, and spend your money responsibly and sustainably—right now. We will cover basic topics, including how to budget, pay off debt, build credit, conscious spending, choosing a bank, and make the most of your current income. We’ll build on this foundation in the next session, Understanding Money: Advanced Financial Literacy. Facilitated by Dr. Mike Ferguson, UNH Graduate School Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Recreation Management & Policy. 

Watch the video recording of the event here

Key Themes for This Event: Financial Wellbeing, Finances & Funding

Previously, in our Exploring Your Future: Career Options & Life After Graduate School series, we learned about basic financial literacy. This session will dive deeper into budgeting, investing, and balancing your current and future needs. We will cover advanced topics, including how to manage debt, optimize credit cards, plan for retirement, automate your money, and how to approach the big purchases (e.g., cars, homes). Questions about money can be scary, but you will leave this workshop with the knowledge to start managing and building your wealth, and maintain your financial well-being as you enter the workforce. Facilitated by Dr. Mike Ferguson, UNH Graduate School Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Recreation Management & Policy.

Watch the video recording of the event here

Online Platforms for Career and Professional Development

To learn more about how to use the tools listed below to help you in graduate school and beyond, set up and appointment with Dr. Jovana Milosavljevic Ardeljan.

Make an Appointment

Access Beyond the Professoriate

Beyond the Professoriate’s Career Training Platform is an online professional development tool where postdocs and graduate students can explore career options and learn job search strategies. Through two programs of study (Academic Careers and Professional Careers), students are empowered to make informed decisions about their career path and learn successful job search strategies from other PhDs.

Benefits of Beyond the Professoriate:
- Supporting career exploration.
- Promoting engaging learning through reflective activities that encourage students to apply what they’ve learned.
- Offering recorded seminars, reflective prompts, and assessments that guide the student experience and foster user engagement.

Access Beyond Graduate School

Beyond Graduate School is a one-of-a-kind, training platform that helps master’s students make the most out of their investment and build their careers. From video lessons on career exploration, to writing application materials, to interviewing and negotiating for that next career step — this platform helps master’s students to degree completion and through each stage of their job search.

Benefits of Beyond Graduate School:
- Supporting career exploration and building job search skills.
- Providing accessible, well-curated resources for busy master’s students.
- Offering recorded seminars, workbooks, and a one-of-a-kind informational interview library where students can learn from other master’s degree holders.

When you create your Handshake profile, you highlight your interests, your studies, and what you're looking for in a job. You indicate the locations you'd like to work in and what job roles interest you most. Handshake takes this info and shows you jobs and internships that are a good fit for you. Visit the Handshake Help Center for resources to help you get started. 

MyIDP is a unique, web-based career-planning, free tool tailored to meet the needs of PhD students and postdocs in the sciences. Creating an Individual Development Plan (IDP) allows you to explore the types of careers that would fit best with your abilities and interests. The platform gives you tools for setting plans to reach professional goals and provides many ways to make sure you stay on track. Additionally, discussing an IDP with a mentor or advisor is a productive way to discover what your coursework and training should focus on.

ImaginePhD is a free online career exploration and planning tool for PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

Humanities and social sciences PhD students and their mentors have long recognized the need for more resources to help bridge the knowledge gap between doctoral education and the realm of career possibilities. ImaginePhD is designed to meet this need by allowing users to:

  • assess their career-related skills, interests, and values
  • explore careers paths appropriate to their disciplines
  • create self-defined goals
  • map out next steps for career and professional development success

The Virtual Career Expo (VCE) is an online career expo for PhD and master’s students, postdocs, and alumni in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Humanities, Arts, and Social Science disciplines. The VCE is a place for you to promote your company, highlight types of positions offered, and recruit for current and/or future job opportunities. Attendees will include those looking for information on future careers, as well as those actively searching for positions.

UNH defines a micro-credential as evidence that reflects attainment of specific skills or competencies. Micro-credentials can be issued for formal and informal academic or professional learning experiences.  A digital badge is one example of a micro-credential. UNH seeks to equip learners with accessible pathways for skill attainment and recognition to better serve our ever-evolving NH economy. Follow this link to view digital bages offered by UNH.

Broader UNH Events and Resources

Resources for Teaching

There are teaching related resources for graduate students through the Teaching & Learning Resource Hub, the UNH Library, and under Modules Section 6 of the "UNH Graduate School Durham" page found on your myCourses Dashboard.

Current or aspiring K-12 educators can find customized graduate courses for teachers that support unique learning opportunities with individualized mentorship and classroom coaching. Please contact Candice.Morey@unh.edu for more information.

Massive Open Online Courses or "MOOCS"  focused on teaching and learning in diverse classrooms are offered by Cornell University through the web-based platform edX. MOOCS are usually self-paced and can be enrolled in a any time.

Resources for Networking

LinkedIn is a great tool for expanding your network and job searching. Take a look at the links below for some helpful tips and resources to help you make the most of it!

Departments and Branches

At Career and Professional Success we don't just fix resumes, post jobs, and practice interviews. In partnership with faculty, staff, employers, and our global alumni network, we orchestrate opportunities for experiential learning, mentoring, networking, and personal growth, equipping UNH students with the tools to thrive throughout their lives.

Professional Development & Training is an office within the University of New Hampshire whose mission is to serve individuals, businesses, schools, and organizations in New Hampshire and surrounding regions by offering a wide range of professional development opportunities throughout the year.

The Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and Learning strives to promote the highest quality of student learning by providing full-time faculty, part-time faculty, and teaching graduate students with the resources they need to implement in their classrooms the best practices in college teaching.

UNHInnovation advocates for and manages the transfer of UNH-derived ideas to the public to maximize their social and economic impact. UNHI protects, promotes, and manages UNH's innovations, supports start-up companies based on UNH's intellectual property, and develops new opportunities for university and industry collaboration.

The ECenter delivers unique, hands-on, experiential programming that inspires, nurtures, and mentors students from any major, at every step in the process, anywhere from idea development to company creation. We operate as a start-up in an academic environment, and most programs are donor funded. Led by a proven serial entrepreneur, we are rapidly demonstrating significant success throughout the UNH student community. Being co-curricular means we're able to complement what all students are learning in every classroom on campus.