For Institutions
We partner with universities to offer high touch courses to help graduate students unpack the hidden curriculum of graduate education and thrive
We offer a suite of targeted workshops to support your graduate students, and are happy to develop custom workshops to suit your needs.
We offer an introductory 4-week mini-course with live virtual meetings and content to introduce key practices for of learning and thriving to your students.
We're here to help you support your grad students.
You don't have to do it alone!
Graduate students hail from all over the world with incredible strengths and rich life experiences, and they are an essential part of campus communities. Universities cannot run without graduate students’ teaching, mentoring, and research work.
However, too often universities and programs don’t do enough to meet grad students’ distinct challenges and needs. Only about half of all doctoral students complete their programs within six years (Clarke & Lunt, 2014), and graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety as the general population (Evans et al., 2018). Indeed, lack of institutional support can manifest in lengthy time to degree, attrition, high stress, and feelings of loneliness that can hinder learning and thriving (Sverdlik et al., 2018).
As experts in teaching and learning, well-being, and graduate education, we are here to help. We partner with universities to offer holistic supports to Masters, Doctoral, and Professional students and we also work directly with students to help them identify and move toward authentic goals. Check out our offerings, below, to learn more.
Clarke, G. & I. Lunt (2014). International Comparisons in Postgraduate Education: Quality, Access and Employment Outcomes. HEFCE.
Evans, T. M., Bira, L., Gastelum, J. B., Weiss, L. T. & Vanderford, N. L.(2018). Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology, 36, 282-284.
Sverdlik, A., Hall, N. C., McAlpine, L., & Hubbard, K. (2018). The PhD Experience: A Review of the Factors Influencing Doctoral Students’ Completion, Achievement, and Well-Being. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 13, 362-388.
We can customize and adapt any of our courses or accountability groups for your university, or organize and lead accountability groups specifically for your students. Services include:
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Customized, tailored course on secure LMS
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We can offer branded course with single sign on access
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White glove support for your students in the course and accountability groups
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Option to train graduate students to be peer facilitators and peer coaches, and to administer grad coaching programs

Workshops
To offer specific, targeted, and impactful tools, we work with institutions to offer workshops for your graduate students or faculty, or even for administrators who work with graduate students. We have a number of workshops that we are prepared to offer, a selection of which are listed below. For a deeper dive into these topics, please see our courses (or inquire about a future course!). In addition, we are very happy to work with you to develop a new workshop to suit your particular needs and challenges.
Our workshops are interactive and engaging, offering exercises to experiment with new tools as well as concrete information that participants can immediately use and adapt. We can offer them remotely or (when travel is possible) in person.
Spotlight on recent workshops:
Understanding and Supporting Neurodivergent Students
Mentoring Up
As a grad student or postdoc, why is it essential to consider your own role, goals, and participation in mentoring relationships with faculty advisors and PIs? More specifically, are there best practices that you can cultivate to “mentor up” that will benefit you and your mentor(s)? In this workshop, we’ll explore strategies to work collaboratively with advisors and mentors while also communicating what you want and need from the relationship. We’ll focus particular attention on approaches to managing advisors’ expectations for productivity and “progress.”
The term ‘“neurodiversity” (Singer, 1999) highlights normal variation in the human population regarding differences in individual brain function and behavioral traits. “Neurodivergence,” originally coined in relation to autism, is an umbrella term now used to describe developmental differences such as dyslexia, ADHD, and autistic spectrum disorder, among many others. Today, more neurodivergent faculty, students, and scholars are teaching, learning, living, and working on higher ed. campuses than ever before (Henning et al., 2022), but most institutions aren’t yet equipped to fully include them - let alone to help them thrive (Dwyer, 2022). This workshop is intended to aid postdocs and faculty to better support neurodivergent students and colleagues.
Reading and Note-making in Grad School
Overwhelmed by how much you’re asked to read in your courses? Graduate school reading demands not only increase, but they are likely qualitatively different from what you were asked to read – and how you read – in college and the working world. Not only are you expected to critically absorb and analyze an immense number of difficult texts of various types, you are expected to do so quickly. (Spoiler alert: And it’s not necessary that you read everything that’s assigned. Really.) In this introduction to reading and note-making in grad school, we’ll explore strategies for managing diverse academic demands such as selecting and prioritizing what to read; retaining more of the material; connecting texts within and across courses; and annotating effectively.
Giving & Receiving Feedback
In this workshop for graduate students across disciplines, you and your peers will learn how to give constructive feedback to classmates, colleagues, lab-mates, and assistants; gracefully hear and implement feedback from others; and ask your peers (and advisor!) for useful and timely feedback on your own scholarship. You’ll practice simple strategies to conquer the anxiety that can often come with “critique,” and will leave armed with tips and tools to give, receive, and elicit feedback positively, productively, and with purpose.
Additional Workshops:
Accountability Partnerships: Harnessing the Power of Peer Support
General Advice on Preparing for Comprehensive Exams
The Art of Saying “Yes” Strategically
Setting Yourself Up for "Success" in Grad School
Balancing Scholarship and the Rest of Your Life
Collaborating Effectively
Giving, Receiving, and Eliciting Feedback
Harnessing a Growth Mindset
Transitioning from Coursework to Research
Managing Perfectionism and the Art of “Good Enough”
Hard Conversations: How to prepare, have, and reflect on them
Learning with and from Failure
Metacognition and Preparing for Exams
Parenting in Grad School: Strategies for Learning and Life
Navigating Imposter Stress
Reframing “Time Management” to Achieve Your Goals
Navigating the Classroom for International Graduate Students
Pushing Against Procrastination

Our Free Mini-Course
We know that budgets are often tight in departments and graduate schools, and we are committed to making our services accessible. For this reason, we offer a four week introductory mini-course for free to graduate programs and departments: "Introduction to Learning and Thriving in Graduate School."
Set up on a secure LMS, the course offers four asynchronous modules, as well as four synchronous meetings with your graduate students. We ask only that you help us to promote the course and recruit your graduate students: we will do the rest!
What Our Students Say
