Mentoring and professional development for graduate students

It takes more than what you do in the lab to be a successful graduate student in LMP.

There are many other skills you will need to develop in your time at LMP. Below are a few ways to build them.

Mentoring

We offer a peer-to-peer and alumni mentoring program in LMP.

Skills development

The LMP Workshop Program awards students financial support for practical training in an area related their thesis work.

The ’Leadership Skills for LMP Graduate Students' series is designed to enhance your emotional intelligence and executive skills to help you achieve personal and professional success. 

Preparing to Write a Grant Proposal. This recorded workshop helps graduate students prepare a strategic plan for grant writing.

Professional Development

The graduate professional development (GPD) program run by Dr. Nana Lee and empowers students to create meaningful engagements with their research and be market-ready, regardless of discipline and career goals.

The Life Sciences Career Development Syndicate (LSCDS) serves to enhance the awareness of post-graduation career options. Managed entirely by graduate students with an interest in industry and support from the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (FoM) and School of Graduate Studies at U of T, their goal is to introduce potential career paths for graduate students in the life sciences. 

The Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC) offers free non-credit courses, single-session workshops, writing centre consultations, and dissertation boot camps. 

The GCAC is currently offering much of their programming online, with a few in-person options. Their course offerings target a wide range of needs: native and non-native speakers of English; writing in different disciplines; academic speaking as well as writing. 

Workshops allow graduate students to identify particular topics of interest: 

• learning how to develop an academic podcast; 
• writing effective abstracts; 
• improving punctuation; 
• thinking about the role of ChatGPT in academic writing. 

Communicating your science

The Peer Communication Team (PCT) is a group of upper year graduate students and alumni who will coach current LMP students preparing for any kind of oral presentation.

3MT: we are currently developing a 3-minute Thesis competition in LMP - watch this space!