Marbouti, F., & Lynch, C. D. (2014, June), Assessing Doctoral Students’ Employability Skills  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--20092

\bibitem{asee_peer_20092}
  Marbouti, F., \& Lynch, C. D. (2014, June), \emph{Assessing Doctoral Students’ Employability Skills}
  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana.
  10.18260/1-2--20092

Farshid Marbouti and Cyndi D. Lynch.  "Assessing Doctoral Students’ Employability Skills".  2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2014.  https://strategy.asee.org/20092 Internet.  14 May, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_20092}
  Farshid Marbouti and Cyndi D. Lynch.
  "Assessing Doctoral Students’ Employability Skills".
  \emph{2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2014.
  https://strategy.asee.org/20092 Internet.  14 May, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_20092
author = "Farshid Marbouti and Cyndi D. Lynch"
title = "Assessing Doctoral Students’ Employability Skills"
booktitle = "2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2014"
month = "June"
address = "Indianapolis, Indiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://strategy.asee.org/20092}
number = {10.18260/1-2--20092}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -                     Developing a Self-Assessment Tool        to Assess Doctoral Students’ Employability Skills for IndustryWith the increase of doctoral graduates at universities, a majority of graduates areemployed by industry. However, graduate education fails to prepare students for careersoutside of academia and graduate students are criticized for their lack of professionalskills, such as teamwork, managerial, and leadership skills (Nerad, 2004). In other words,although the majority of doctoral graduates are employed by industry, they are notprepared for professional workplace outside of academia. One solution that has beenproposed by some researchers, educators, and industry administrators is offeringsystematic training and professional development to graduate students in order to preparethem for career options outside of academia (Nyquist, 2002).Preparing Future Professionals (PFP) is a two-credit hour course (blind), which utilizes aPass/No Pass grading system. The goal of this course is to prepare graduate students forjobs outside of academia. In the PFP course, students engage in weekly two-hourmentoring sessions with industry professionals and recruiters, university alumni, facultyand staff to discuss diverse professional environments including the skills, roles, andresponsibilities required in the professional work place. Topics covered include:leadership and management, financial education, project management, intrapersonaleffectiveness, communication skills, career development, and career-life balance.To assess students’ readiness in each of the described categories, we developed a self-assessment tool to evaluate students’ competency level at the beginning and end of thesemester. Surprisingly, most of the publications on necessary or employability skills foruniversity graduates focus only on the undergraduate level (e.g., NACE, 2011; Cleary,Flynn, Thomasson, Alexander, & McDonald, 2007). The few reports on doctoralgraduates, only mention broad description of desired abilities without being specific (e.g.Sugars & Pearce, 2010). Development of a self-assessment tool to measure specificemployability skills for industry can help educators and graduate students to assess theseskills and improve them.In this paper, after describing the process of development of a self-assessment tool fordoctoral graduates to assess their employability skills in industry, we report students’competency level at the end of the semester. This helps to understand the competencylevel of doctoral students and whether or not offering professional development forgraduate students is effective. In addition, we can find areas for improvement in thedesign of the PFP course to enhance students’ skills for industry.ReferencesCleary, M., Flynn, R., Thomasson, S., Alexander, R., & McDonald, B. (2007). Precision     Consultancy, Graduate employability skills. Retrieved from (July 2013):     http://aces.shu.ac.uk/employability/resources/GraduateEmployabilitySkillsFINALR     EPORT1.pdfAuthor et al. (2011)National Association of Colleges and Employers (2011). Job Outlook: The Candidate     Skills/Qualities Employers Want. Retrieved from (July 2013):     http://www.naceweb.org/s10262011/candidate_skills_employer_qualities/Nerad, M. (2004). The Ph.D. in the U.S.: Criticisms, facts, and remedies. Higher     Education Policy, 17, 2, 183-199.Nyquist, J.D. (2002). A tapestry of change for the 21st century, Change 34(6): 12-21.Sugars J. & Pearce, E. (2010). DOCNET: Doctors in Enterprise, Transferable skills and     employability for doctoral graduates: survey of the current landscape (Final report).     Retrieved from (July 2013): http://www.docentproject.eu/doc/Report_DEF_EN.pdf
AU  - Farshid Marbouti
AU  - Cyndi D. Lynch
CY  - Indianapolis, Indiana
DA  - 2014/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Assessing Doctoral Students’ Employability Skills
UR  - https://strategy.asee.org/20092
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--20092
ER  -