Dr. Marilyn Rose, Traill College Visiting Fellow for 2011-12, is offering a number of Graduate Student Professional Development Workshops for Trent graduate students and other interested participants during the current academic year.
The emphasis in the workshops is on how graduate students can consciously develop “transferable” skills that will be useful to them while they are graduate students, but will also prepare them for workplace entry and workplace success.
The series includes six topics to be covered by Dr. Rose and two that will be presented by Trent’s own Student Services sector.
So far, two of Dr. Rose’s workshops have been held, with the next scheduled for Thursday November 24. Students who have already attended indicate that these sessions were interesting and helpful, and that the opportunities for group discussion and the strategies offered for moving forward in each area were very useful. A good number of students attending the first session came to the second as well — a good indication of their usefulness.
In the first workshop, Communicating for Different Audiences, the emphasis was on “executive communication” — ways of writing and speaking focused on occasions when there is a need to convey information clearly and directly for non-academic audiences. Dr. Rose emphasized that almost no one finds professional writing easy, even those who do a lot of it in their jobs every day. As for public speaking, she says that most people would rather be the person being eulogized at a funeral than the person who has to deliver the eulogy. However, communication can be demystified and made more comfortable if we are really conscious of who we are speaking to, what crucial piece of points we need to make, and what can be done in the medium or word length available to us. As well, the importance of editing what we have prepared, and editing out verbosity or “bafflegab” really matters, though she admits that she herself is not perfect in this regard.
In the second workshop, on Conflict Resolution, students learned about the basic styles that individuals typically adopt in dealing with conflict. The emphasis was on the importance of identifying the problem and figuring out how to work together to solve it. Some conflict resolution styles are more effective than others, and students were invited to identify their own preferred or habitual style — and then to think about how to employ other styles too. This is especially important given the fact that no one approach fits all conflict situations. We all need a repertoire of approaches and strategies to draw upon. Student discussions on issues involving conflict that they identified as of concern to them were lively and engaged, and participants indicated that they would have liked to have had the chance to go on longer, which is always a good sign.
The GSA urges grad students to attend these workshops if they can. Dr. Rose has also indicated that the post-notes that she circulates to participants after each session can be obtained from her by grad students who were unable to attend the earlier workshops. If interested, send your request, including your name and the name of grad program, to mrose@brocku.ca.
