{"id":20867,"date":"2023-11-27T12:31:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T18:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medschool.prd.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/?p=20867"},"modified":"2023-11-27T12:32:49","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T18:32:49","slug":"crafting-the-next-step-aspires-career-architect-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/2023\/11\/27\/crafting-the-next-step-aspires-career-architect-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafting the Next Step: ASPIRE\u2019s Career Architect Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in the 2022 – 2023 Annual Report<\/a><\/p>\n

By ASPIRE Staff<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The BRET Office of Career Development ASPIRE Program aims to equip PhD student and postdoctoral scientists for the next professional step. For this particular initiative, ASPIRE wanted to encourage trainees to adopt the mindset of an architect, designing a career plan (or three!) for their professional journey.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a generous grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Career Architect ASPIRE module was born. \u201cHaving participated in the Stanford Life Design Studio Training, I knew that I wanted to incorporate life design principles and \u2018Designing Your Life\u2019 into our programing,\u201d said the ASPIRE Program Assistant Director, Angela Zito, Burroughs Wellcome Fund grant recipient and co-instructor. \u201cReceiving the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Guidance for Trainees award provided the support to help put this initiative in place.\u201d
\n\"\"The Career Architect program leveraged the principles from the book \u201cDesigning Your Life\u201d by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans and the Gallup Clifton Strengths Assessment. Through this individualized combination, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows gained insights into their values, work preferences, and personal strengths, which will serve as a launching pad for shaping their career paths.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s structure combined in-person meetings with self-paced readings and activities that were monitored through Brightspace, Vanderbilt\u2019s e-learning platform. Trainees engaged in a series of once-a-month two-hour sessions for six months with additional mandatory attendance at the 2023 ASPIRE Annual Career Symposium, ensuring continuous support and follow-up throughout the program. Many voiced in post-module feedback that the symposium reinforced the idea that there are many paths post-PhD and that trainees can find success and fulfillment in more than one trajectory.
\nThe intentional nature of making choices and pursuing interests was both repeated in the book as well as the symposium which participants noted made the module have a \u201cfull circle\u201d moment.
\nGraduate students and postdoctoral fellows who participated in the course positively evaluated the sessions, many reiterating the value of the \u201cDesigning Your Life\u201d book as well as the collaborative efforts of the instructors.
\nOther partners in the Career Architect initiative included co-instructor Kate Stuart, Director of Strategic Affairs and Events, BRET, and Associate Director of the Office of Career Development ASPIRE Program. Kate is a certified Gallup StrengthsFinder\u00a0Coach and presented the life\u00a0design material through the StrengthsFinder lens. Further mentorship and support was provided by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, matching Ms. Zito with Dr. Jill S. Huerta, Assistant Dean and Director, The Reynolds Center for Graduate Life and Learning, Graduate Program Director, UNC- Charlotte Graduate School. Dr. Huerta\u2019s experience in graduate student programming design helped to build the program from the ground up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe BRET Office is proud to provide this type of career planning opportunity for our current trainees because it is both unique and timely to their needs,\u201d said Kathy Gould, PhD, Senior Associate Dean of the BRET Office. \u201cI am proud that the ASPIRE team members continue to design such innovative programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the initial offering of Career Architect having wrapped up this past July, the ASPIRE Program is looking forward to recruiting the next cohort of
\ntrainees to participate in the fall 2023 program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in the 2022 – 2023 Annual Report By ASPIRE Staff The BRET Office of Career Development ASPIRE Program aims to equip PhD student and postdoctoral scientists for the next professional step. For this particular initiative, ASPIRE wanted to encourage trainees to adopt the mindset of an architect, designing a career…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":20868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[187],"class_list":["post-20867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements","tag-aspire-spotlights"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/t2-main\/medschool-prd\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/11\/Screenshot-2023-11-27-122113.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20867"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20870,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20867\/revisions\/20870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/career-development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}