Christopher Phillips, a lecturer in the Department of the History of Science, was a panelist at OCS’s “Real-Life Stories from the Academic Job Search” event.
Shawn Douglas, PhD '09, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Wyss Institute, at a workshop on building a professional online identity.
Karen Hladik, PhD '84, and Mia A.M. de Kuijper, MPA ’83, PhD ’83 (pictured at center, with student organizers), led a daylong seminar on business applications of the PhD.
A seminar on financial planning for graduate students drew a good crowd.
For the third year running, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences convened a flexible January series of seminars, workshops, and recreational opportunities for students.
Partnering with institutions across campus, including the FAS Office of Career Services, the Harvard College Library, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, and its own Dudley House, GSAS brought together more than 70 events targeted at graduate students. Some events were designed to introduce emerging research tools or impart career- development advice, while others sought to encourage new connections, new perspectives, or simple relaxation.
With these January offerings — collectively known as January@GSAS — the Graduate School is responding to students’ expressed desire for short, intensive workshops on pragmatic topics like improving presentation skills, expanding data-analysis skills, language skills, and learning new research tools.
“Students have told us they view January as a time not only to make serious headway in their own scholarly work, but to catch up on job-search preparation and other career planning they may not have had time for during the term,” says Garth McCavana, GSAS Dean of Students. “They also see it as the ideal time to work on fellowship proposals and to expand their grasp of the ever-growing roster of research technologies offered by our libraries and research centers.”
Highlights included a workshop led by two GSAS alumna on how to apply one’s PhD to the business world, a workshop on gaining confidence and overcoming the “impostor syndrome”; a session on writing the dissertation with an eye toward publication; a fellowship-writing boot camp; a financial planning session; and, as ever, Dudley House’s annual ski trip, which took 100-plus students to Sugarloaf, in Maine.
This January also included a roster of courses sponsored by the Graduate Student Council and taught by graduate students, who were awarded stipends after a proposal process. We list the intriguingly diverse topics (with instructors) here, as inspiration for next year.
January@GSAS Mini-Courses
Analyze Data and Create Figures with Mathematica!
Instructor: Adam Palmer
Big Ideas for the New Year: Intro to Plato
Instructor: Daniel Bertoni
Capitalism and Freedom
Instructor: Syed Shimail Reza
← Chocolate, Culture, and the Politics of Food
Instructor: Carla Martin
PhD student Carla Martin taught a GSC mini-course on chocolate.
Everything You Need to Know About Going Crazy at Harvard
Instructor: Anouska Bhattacharyya
Magic and Scientific Thinking: How Insights from Magicians Can Broaden Our Thinking About Problems/Questions in the Sciences
Instructor: Zofia Kaliszewska
Microscopy to the People: Magnifying your Vision in a Fun, Informal Setting
Instructor: Emily Gardel
Myths, Facts, and a Taste of Food and Fitness in the 21st Century
Instructor: Cara Fallon
Obesity: Where Is It Taking Us? What Are We Doing About It?
Instructor: Mandrita Datta
Instant Spanish-Cambridge and Longwood →
Instructor: Cherie Ramirez
Students in Cherie Ramirez’s “Instant Spanish” mini-course — a quick skim for travelers and beginners.
Photoshop Essentials
Instructor: Peter Macko
"Poetry makes nothing happen."-What is poetry good for?
Instructor: Eleanor Spencer
Strangers in the Middle Kingdom: Non-Chinese People in Chinese History
Instructor: Xin Wen
The Art of Survival
Instructor: Katie Kohn
The Fight to Save the World: Global Health and Human Security
Instructor: Jason Silverstein
The Human Face and its Role in Our Everyday Judgments and Decisions
Instructor: Christelle Ngnoumen