Communication Skills Certificate

The Graduate Professional Development Team’s new Communication Skills Certificate offers all masters, doctoral, and postdoctoral scholars an opportunity to develop their verbal and written communication skills for their academic program and professional career.

Based on feedback from participants in past iterations of the former writing certificate program, we have expanded the Communication Skills certificate structure to support communication in various contexts. Our foundational workshops cover essential skills for clear, concise, audience-centered communication and elective workshops on a variety of academic and professional genres, along with experiences that support productive verbal and written communication habits and deliverables such as journal articles, dissertations, presentations and theses.

Trainees who earn the new Communication Skills Certificate will:

• Develop productivity and goal setting strategies for approaching new contexts of communication
• Practice strategies for approaching common academic and workplace genres
• Adapt communication strategies and genres for their own discipline, professional interests, or goals, such as writing for experts in their disciplines and communicating the value of their research to lay audiences
• Implement effective writing stylistic strategies from the texts that they read into their own writing and communication style, thus strengthening their critical reading skills
• Demonstrate effective writing strategies in one public-facing deliverable such as an article publication or a conference presentation
• Earn a notation on their transcript

Communication Skills Certificate Requirements