Career Diversity in the Arts and Sciences

Completing an advanced degree requires a unique set of skills that include leadership, project management, analysis, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and communication. Graduate students typically develop competencies in these areas under conditions of close mentorship that heighten their ability to think and act creatively and autonomously.

Completing a master’s or a Ph.D. sharpens not only the ability to think in new ways about particular subjects, but the wherewithal to execute one’s vision in a variety of workplace contexts – an act that some call “critical doing.”

A number of growing professions rooted in solving interesting and complex intellectual problems benefit from – if not require – team members with graduate-level education. Graduates of programs in STEM and humanistic disciplines can locate enriching and fulfilling work in consulting, business, administration, conservation, industry research, and in roles within the federal government.

Many of these professions offer the same opportunities to develop answers to the pressing questions of our time as one might find in an academic environment. It takes the same commitment to thinking outside of accepted frameworks to not only find or create these opportunities, but to embrace them as one’s own.

GSAS Futures is here to help you begin your career plan today. Explore ways to excel in academia via the GSAS Preparing Future Faculty initiative, and explore career options suitable for graduates in STEM fields and the humanistic disciplines.