Ontario universities launch professional development website for graduate students

Seven research-intensive Ontario universities have come together to create an online training resource to help graduate students prepare for the working world.

Developed by the Ontario Consortium for Graduate Professional Skills — and collaborated on by Western University, McMaster University, Queen’s University, the University of Guelph, the University of Ottawa, the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo — mygradskills.ca is a professional development website that provides online training tools for Ontario graduate students. Using their university e-mail account, students can access the website’s 18 training modules on topics that range from academic and professional communications to the art of entrepreneurship.

Because most graduate students are often too busy with classes and labs to work on developing or furthering their professional skills, mygradskills.ca is a resource they can utilize during their down time to help prepare for a career in academia, business, government or non-profit work.

“Graduate students have a very different experience at university than undergrads,” stated Bonnie M. Patterson, President and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), in a COU news release. “Grad students find it challenging to allocate time to consider what’s next, and so universities are offering them this extraordinary free professional development program to take online — in their own time and at their own pace.”

For more information on the modules and resources available, click here.