Jumpstart and Accelerate Your Career
Our commitment to all students in the program is to jumpstart and accelerate your research and career preparation. We provide key strategies and tools to catalyze your professional growth as an independent applied scientist or engineer. We aim to help you maximize your success during your graduate training and prepare you for the next stages of your career.
The Knight Campus Impact Team has developed a suite of experiential workshops and applied trainings dedicated solely to your personal success.
IMPACT Week
Launch your graduate studies and get to know your fellow graduate students in an orientation week like no other. We spend two days sharpening your communication skills, working with the UO’s Center for Science Communication Research. We also spend a day on innovation and entrepreneurship, with a focus on assessing societal needs to plan research that can lead to transformative discoveries and be translated to the market. Throughout the week there are opportunities to forge new relationships with your graduate student colleagues, network with Knight Campus faculty, and learn keys to success in graduate school.
Career Development and Planning
There are many opportunities to build strengths and skills during graduate school, often too many to do them all. How will you choose? A great way to guide your professional development efforts is to create a career development plan. Knight Campus students receive individual mentoring and guidance in crafting detailed plans that help you maximize your success during your graduate training and prepares you for the next steps in your career. These plans also form a strong foundation for your communications and career planning with your research advisor.
Science Communication Training
Communicating the impact of your work is key to your success and a strategic priority of the Knight Campus. In addition to the strategies and skills that you will learn during IMPACT week, you will have access to workshops on presenting research posters, making technical oral presentations, preparing successful proposals and compelling manuscripts and communicating science to the public.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training
The mission of the Knight Campus is Science Advancing Society. Our goal is to make discoveries that address societal needs and translate these to have a positive impact on the world. We are establishing an ecosystem on the Knight Campus to help you help us achieve this mission. A core part of your required coursework is dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship and these topics are a focus in all of our courses. Additional workshops are planned to support your entrepreneurial endeavors. Many of our faculty have experience translating discoveries to the market as entrepreneurs. And, we have a dedicated Innovation Center to help support the translation process.
