Guidance for Programs

Organizing a Graduate Alumni Panel

A practical how-to for graduate programs planning an alumni panel discussion — e.g., “Careers Outside Academia” as the example topic.

Graduate students want to hear from alumni from their program

Why Host an Alumni Panel

An alumni panel gives current graduate students a candid, first-hand account of where a degree like theirs actually leads. Alumni have direct-experience, real-world, practical advice about career paths and the value of their graduate degree. It's primarily for current graduate students, but it also gives prospective students (upper-year undergrads exploring grad school) a realistic preview, and gives faculty a window into where recent graduates land.

Format at a Glance

Online is usually the easiest way to maximize participation, since alumni can join from anywhere — but in-person and hybrid formats work well too, especially when paired with a social or networking activity afterward.

Recruiting Your Panelists

Contact alumni directly. Your program should do the outreach. Faculty and program staff typically have far more credibility and rapport with your own graduates.

• Start or update an alumni list. If your program doesn't already track graduates, LinkedIn and similar tools are effective for locating them. Work-study students are well suited to this kind of task.
• Coordinate with IQAP review. If your program recently surveyed alumni for its IQAP cyclical review, you likely already have current contact information — updating that list may be most of the recruiting work already done. Consider timing future alumni surveys to serve both IQAP and panel recruitment.
• Consider diversity. If your alumni volunteer numbers allow, diversity considerations that might include degree level and sub-disciplinary topics among many others. Large numbers of volunteers might be an opportunity to run a panel series instead of a single panel.

Choose Your Topic

One panel format, many possible topics — pick the one panel topic or run a short series. A 60-minute panel should have a maximum 3 to 4 prompts. Sample alumni prompts for each topic are listed below for inspiration.

Careers Outside Academia   EXAMPLE

Alumni now working outside the professoriate, across industry, government, or the non-profit sector.

• “ What does a typical week look like in your current role?
• “ Which skills from your graduate degree transferred directly to this job?
• “ What surprised you most about job-hunting outside academia?
• “ What advice would you give someone weighing whether to leave academia?

Careers in Academia

• How did you navigate the academic job market?
• What advice do you have for people with non-tenure-track roles who are seeking a tenure-track job?
• What preparations did you find most critical throughout the academic hiring process?
• What would you do differently in preparing for an academic career?

Finding Your First Job

• How did you land your first position after graduating?
• What did your job search timeline look like?
• What's one thing you wish you'd started earlier?

Building Your Professional Network

• How do you approach networking, especially outside academia?
• Which relationships from grad school still matter in your career?
• What's one small networking habit that's paid off?

Purpose

This page provides a rationale and practical strategies to incorporate OYF into existing graduate course or milestone content. Some programs have already incorporated OYF modules into a professional development or career skills course or milestone. As OYF is already designed to be highly flexible to meet the needs of busy grad students, it is ideal for combining into existing courses. That is, while OYF learning outcomes are generic, the modules are designed and often delivered from top experts on campus.

How would it work?

Build in flexibility – While OYF is rather consistent with its offerings, we advise programs to build in flexibility when incorporating the modules into a graduate course or milestone. Asynchronous online modules are the most reliably available modules, while some synchronous in-person modules may not be available every year. One of the best ways is to simply provide general parameters as in most of the following examples: