The Center's Career Training Platforms

Beyond the Professoriate has provided a valuable resource to the growing community of practitioners who support graduate professional development and career exploration. Aurora has been impactful on our campus, allowing us to support our doctoral students in their career exploration in ways otherwise not possible.

At my former institution, I collaborated with Dr. Wood and the BP team to bring Aurora to Fordham University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, a process defined by the BP team's friendliness, transparency, and flexibility, and Maren's willingness to devote ample time to explaining how Aurora works and its unique benefits to graduate student users (e.g., the asynchronous platform is amenable to busy but career-curious students who may wish to engage Aurora's content privately and as their schedules allow). Maren's expertise and thoughtfulness is matched only by her collegiality, and I'm grateful to have worked with her & BP!

I've known and worked with Beyond the Professoriate for several years, and when Aurora launched (the e-learning platform they have created), I was excited to bring it to Syracuse University. Since we subscribed last year, we've seen many students use it to help shape their career goals and searches, and I have found it personally helpful when meeting with students or speaking to prospective students. I can't recommend it enough.

Maren always brings a fantastic energy and passion for supporting PhD students and postdocs in their professional and career development as she works with academic institutions who are eager to support these populations. She has successfully scaled all of the beneficial aspects of individual career advising to institution-wide initiatives such as Beyond the Professoriate and Aurora, and has created platforms that are engaging and meaningful to the PhD students and postdocs that have the opportunity to use them.

When the University of Kentucky became subscribers to Aurora, Maren came to our campus not only to talk about the platform and how it works but also gave a workshop on entrepreneurship and share her career path. Since then, not only has the customer support for Aurora been excellent, she invited me to give a presentation on how PhDs and postdocs can remain productive during COVID as part of her amazing outreach program.