Session J20: Preparing Students for Careers Outside Academia

Preparing Students for Careers Outside Academia

This event sponsored by the APS Forum on Education. According to recent AIP statistics, roughly half of physics PhD graduates go into the private sector or government labs, and 70% of PhD graduates who are in a potentially permanent position work for the private sector. However, the majority of the training and advice graduate students receive during their PhD is aimed at helping them obtain academic positions, which is to be expected given that this is the typical career trajectory of the faculty members supervising graduate students. Furthermore, a promising candidate from the perspective of the private sector looks quite different from a promising candidate for academia, and thus the manner in which graduate students should emphasize their skills and experience if they desire employment in the private sector is quite different from academia. This session will bring together physicists and/or employers from outside academia who will share their insight on how graduate students can prepare themselves for a non-academic careers, as well as how departments can support graduate students for such employment.

Panelists:
Liesl Folks - University at Buffalo
Kathy McCormick - US Department of Homeland Security
Lawrence Woolf - General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.
Stefan Zollner - New Mexico State University