The Stanford University Postdoctoral Association (SUPD) was recently awarded a seed grant worth $1,000 by the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA). The grant money, along with additional support contributed by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, will be used for three workshops designed to develop soft skills to become a successful mentor, manager and teacher.

SUPD works with postdoctoral fellows in order to ease the transition into working in the education industry and becoming professors. This year’s co-Chairs, Sarah Kummerfield and Alison McGuigan, are planning the workshops along with Carlos Pineda, Sruthi King and Susan Moore.

The three workshops, entitled “Developing a Career Progress Plan;” “Interviews and Interviewing — How to Get What You Want;” and “Managing, Motivating and Mentoring Your Workforce,” are aimed at issues specific to postdoctoral students. They are designed to complement the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Burroughs Welcome Fund (BWF) book, “Making the Right Moves — A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty.”

All three workshops aim to train postdocs in different skills. “Developing a Career Progress Plan” focuses on the formation of strategies and different methods in order to succeed in a chosen career. “Interviews and Interviewing — How to Get What You Want” will teach people how to give interviews and how to select the best applicants for the job. “Managing, Motivating and Mentoring Your Workforce” is targeted at mentoring on campus.

McGuigan has clear goals and objectives for the workshops. Hopefully, she said, these workshops will “get [postdocs] to start thinking about other skills they might need outside the lab in order to be successful. In the long-term, the next generation of people entering faculty jobs will have more training and they will further emphasize the importance of these soft skills to their students.

When asked about plans for the future, McGuigan replied that the SUPD team hopes to come up with a mentoring award. Postdocs will then be able to vote for professors who have been exemplary mentors.

For students interested in the HHMI and BWF book mentioned above, it is available in Adobe PDF format on the SUPD Web site.