GRAD STUDENT DS SEMINAR: PART 2

By Briana Keller

Background
In the Fall 2006 edition of DSNews, I shared information about the Graduate Student Dependable Strengths Adaptation. As a quick recap, the 2-day adaptation has been delivered seven times to diverse master's and doctoral students at the University of Washington over the past 2 years. Facilitators believe the adapted workshops:

• Provide a safe place to explore career issues
• Help graduate students realize it's normal to question their career paths
• Help them explore their positive experiences and qualities
• Help grad students learn about career paths outside academia

Participant Evaluations
The outcomes of the graduate student adaptation of the workshop are currently being assessed. A program evaluation is given to participants: (1) immediately following workshop completion and (2) three months later. The evaluation contains 12 forced-choice questions and 2 open-ended questions. Complete data is available from two workshop cohorts.

Immediate Outcomes
Preliminary results suggest that graduate students in over thirty disciplines feel the workshop is beneficial. Immediately following workshop completion, a high percentage of graduate students from the June 2006 and August 2006 workshops indicated the workshop helped them "very much" or "quite a bit" with the following issues:

• Remember their accomplishments (100%)
• Realize the importance of knowing and articulating their strengths during career planning (100%)
• Confirm their ideas about their strengths (76%)
• Realize that it is okay to have questions about their career path (76%)

Additionally, 86% of participants indicated the DS workshop provided a safe place for them to consider different career paths.

Longer-Term Outcomes
Analyses also suggest the positive results of the workshop are long-lasting. When asked 3 months following workshop completion, the following percentages of graduate students indicated the workshop helped them "very much" or "quite a bit":

• Remember their accomplishments (87%)
• Realize the importance of knowing and articulating their strengths during career planning (87%)
• Confirm their ideas about their strengths (80%)
• Reveal strengths they had overlooked (80%)
• Increase their level of optimism about their career potential (80%)
• Increase their self-confidence (80%)

Furthermore, the percentage of all questions endorsed at the "very much" or "quite a bit" level only decreased 4% between the workshops and the three month follow-ups (from 72% to 68%).

Participant Comments
Participants' responses to open-ended questions also reveal the workshop's potential long-lasting benefits. In response to a question about how the Grad Student DS Workshop had affected their lives in the 3 months following workshop completion, participants said:

• I realized that I have a lot more to offer than my degree, work experience and a list of publications.
• I have used my DS report to define what I actually enjoy working at. This has helped me talk with advisors, friends and contacts in different fields and also think more clearly about what kinds of positions I might be interested in.
• I have begun networking and actively doing informational interviews to figure out where I want to go at the end of the year. I feel happy and relieved about this choice.
• I was able to renegotiate my fellowship at the UW and switch fields to be more in line with my strengths.
• The DS workshop helped me understand what kinds of boundaries I might want to make for myself-and more importantly it gave me the confidence to know that I can define those boundaries.
• I feel that I have more "fuel" and confidence going into job interviews. I've begun to clearly understand what I like and need to do in the world of work and I've gained more confidence in my abilities and accomplishments.
• I feel much more confident about my ability to find and get a job I love.
• The relationships I have made with my fellow workshoppers have been very helpful both as a support group and as professional contacts.

Summary
As you can see from the immediate workshop evaluations, 3-month evaluations, and open-ended comments, the Grad Student adaptation seems to be meeting its goals and participants seem to be experiencing an array of benefits. Furthermore, the feedback we have received from participants has been instrumental in helping us fine-tune the workshop for the graduate student population.

Briana K. Keller, PhD, a CDS certified Local Instructor, is a Career Counselor with the Center for Career Services, University of Washington, Seattle. For more information on the UW/CCS Grad Student DS Seminar, please visit http://depts.washington.edu/careers/catalyst/seminar.html.