Zero-Credit Career Exploration Courses
Graduate students and postdocs at UT Austin are invited to register for free, zero-credit career exploration courses, offered by Texas Career Engagement annually:
NSC 098D: Investigating Career Options for STEM Advanced Degrees (Fall semester)
GRS 096: Exploring Career Possibilities for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Advanced Degrees (Spring semester)
Each course is designed for graduate students and postdocs to explore career options and apply career research strategies in a supportive and motivating group setting. Courses meet weekly for lectures, group discussion, and interactive experiential learning. All course participants engage in project-based learning. As a result of the course, participants will be able to:
- Identify skills, interests, and values that will guide career exploration and decision-making
- Understand breadth of career options available to advanced degrees in their discipline
- Apply career research strategies to career exploration
- Explore ways to frame their experiences and skills in different career contexts
- Build confidence in developing a professional community
STEM Course Details
Registration
NSC 098D is offered only in the fall semester. Graduate students may register online for NSC 098D during their regular registration period. Postdoctoral scholars can email Texas Career Engagement at careerengagement@austin.utexas.edu to be added to the course.
Syllabus
Download the NSC 098D course syllabus: Fall 2022
Assignments
The main assignment of the course is to complete a Career Transition Guide. Students are supported in identifying their career interests at the beginning of the semester, and are placed into small groups to apply their graduate research skills to collect information about a career of interest pursued by advanced degrees and present that information in a PDF guide. Example careers include research-intensive faculty, science policy analyst, life sciences consultant, academic staff scientist, regulatory affairs specialist, and more. These Career Transition Guides are added to a library of career exploration resources accessible to all advanced degrees at UT on the Texas Career Engagement website. The Guides will include an overview of the career, example job titles and employers, information on compensation and location of jobs, advice for getting started and applying, and a review of required skills as they relate to common job responsibilities. This project is broken into smaller assignments with deadlines throughout the semester.
Grading
This course is Credit / No Credit, and is not computed in the GPA. Performance at the level of C (i.e. 73/100) or above is required to earn credit. Please note that receiving a No Credit may impact your ability to receive a TA appointment in the future.
Attendance = 50%
Assignments = 50%
Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Course Details
Registration
GRS 096 is offered only in the spring semester. Graduate students may register online for GRS 096 during their regular registration period. Postdoctoral scholars can email Texas Career Engagement at careerengagement@austin.utexas.edu to be added to the course.
Syllabus
Download the GRS 096 course syllabus: Spring 2023
Description
Explore career options for advanced degrees in the humanities, arts, and social sciences in a supportive and motivating group setting. Participants will work with the course facilitator to determine the scope of course topics, meeting agendas, and projects. Potential topics include but are not limited to: career research strategies, developing professional relationships with people in careers of interest, communicating your professional identity online and in job documents, conducting a job search (in academe, business, nonprofit, and/or government), and interviewing and negotiating. All participants will engage in some form of project-based learning, to be determined in consultation with peers and the course facilitator.