The Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative for graduate students was launched in the United States in 1993 as a partnership between the Council of Graduate Schools and the Association of American Colleges and Universities to prepare graduate students for faculty careers at different institutional types and to provide them with teaching‐related professional development. PFF programs have proliferated U.S. universities over the last two decades, but there has been limited research on the long‐term impact of these programs. This study at the University of Michigan examines the career paths and attitudes of graduate students who participated in an annual, intensive, five‐week PFF seminar between 2007 and 2013. The descriptive study explores the following research questions: (a) What are the career outcomes for PFF seminar participants compared with nonparticipants? (b) Does the exposure to a variety of institutional types in the PFF seminar lead to a greater appreciation of and openness to job opportunities at diverse institutions? and (c) Does the PFF seminar assist graduate students in their job searches and their chosen career paths? The results of this study contribute to our understanding of what universities can do to effectively prepare graduate students for their future careers.

Effective consulting is a key skill for educational developers. Although most educational developers are new to the field, there is limited research about how new practitioners develop consulting skills. The key research question this study explores is: How do new graduate teaching consultants develop as practitioners? This study empirically applies several “classic” models of consulting to better understand new consultants’ perceived development of expertise, preferred consulting approaches, and reflection about them. The findings are generally confirmatory of the ways that classic frameworks map onto the development of consultants. They also suggest greater attention to supporting new consultants beyond “getting started,” as well as to preparing new consultants for the differences between intra‐ and interdisciplinary consultations.

No abstract

Purpose The USA’s higher education leaders and professional organizations have called for increased professional development programming at graduate colleges to better prepare US graduate students for their future careers. This study aims to investigate the demographic characteristics of graduate students participating in co-curricular professional development (PD) and sociocultural development (SD) programming at a graduate college at a large, selective and research-intensive public university in the Midwestern USA. Design/methodology/approach Using institutional data from six semesters, the authors examined the characteristics of students that attended the graduate college’s programs at one university. The authors analyzed which students were most likely to attend PD and SD programs using multinomial logistic regression models. Findings Female students, students from US historically marginalized racial groups, and US Pell Grant recipients (low-income students) were found to have a higher likelihood of attending both PD and SD programs at the centralized graduate college. Practical implications The findings will be of interest to graduate deans and educators who support graduate students. Further evaluative research on the usefulness of such programs at other institutions would help graduate colleges better understand the role they play in meeting graduate students’ needs. Originality/value The findings contribute to the understanding of the important role of the US graduate college in the development of graduate students. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study to evaluate the backgrounds of graduate students who pursue co-curricular PD and SD opportunities.

No abstract