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In this interview, Dr. Leslie Ekpe, an assistant professor in the department of higher education and learning technologies at East Texas A&M University, discusses the lack of professional development opportunities often available to graduate students, how she has started to fill some of these gaps at her institution and beyond, and the advice she has for other institutions to support their graduate students.

Leah Jackson, HigherEdJobs: Dr. Ekpe, you’ve been putting on a graduate student symposium and other professional development events for the past four semesters at East Texas A&M University. First of all, tell us about the events, what drove their development, and what impact you intend to make.

Dr. Leslie Ekpe, East Texas A&M University: In the Fall of 2023, I began my tenure-track career as an assistant professor at East Texas A&M University. I brought with me the knowledge I gained during my tenure as a graduate student at Texas Christian University, and applying it to my teaching praxis, research approaches, and service, I created and implemented graduate student professional development opportunities to assist scholars with resources they can utilize within their coursework, theses, and dissertations. It quickly became a much larger concept as I wanted to address the holistic experience of the graduate student journey.

The first session that I hosted covered several topics such as: Crafting your research agenda, learning more about the dissertation process, understanding how to apply theory to practice, gaining more knowledge around publishing (in different venues, i.e., op-eds, journals, conference proceedings, etc.), and finding a balance within the graduate student tenure.

What started as an opportunity for graduate students at East Texas quickly expanded into a nationwide opportunity for graduate students at several colleges and universities, and even internationally, with students represented from Uganda. The professional development opportunities are open to all graduate students across the globe.

I developed the graduate student professional development opportunities, knowing that in addition to learning in the classroom, learning takes place outside the classroom as well. The sessions offered within the symposiums, writing retreats, and workshops involved structured topics that were closely aligned with the speakers’ research and practice. Most speakers were faculty members at various institutions. All of the speakers brought a breadth of knowledge to the sessions, leaving students with applicable resources to apply to their research, classwork, conference proposals and presentations, and future academic contributions.

The first Graduate Student Workshop was constructed around topics that I curated. After instituting a post-survey where graduate students suggested topics for future graduate student professional development opportunities, I began to incorporate topics around the suggestions provided by scholars.

Fast forward to Fall 2024, the November Writing Retreat had more than 350 graduate students registered to attend the virtual offering. I hope to continue offering these professional development opportunities in the future with the support of institutional funding and external grants.

Jackson: What topics do you try to cover and why?

Ekpe: Session topics have included “Publishing 101,” “What Should I Be Doing Each Year of My Program?,” “Writing a Literature Review,” “Activism in the Academy,” “The ‘WHY’ of Your Doctorate,” and more.

Each session involves a 40-45-minute presentation from faculty whose interests/research align with the topic, followed by a 15-20-minute structured Q&A. I reach out to all of the speakers who take part a semester in advance. Through each session, students can comment in the chat or drop questions throughout the presentations. This allows students to engage with one another on similar inquiries and engage with the speakers throughout the sessions. Additionally, graduate students can choose which sessions they wish to attend, which adds flexibility since most events are offered during the days of the work week.

Jackson: Why is a well-designed professional development program/event like this so important for graduate students?

Ekpe: Most importantly, these sessions were completely free of charge. Graduate student professional development opportunities often have a cost associated with participating, which creates barriers. It is important to me that these opportunities are free for graduate students, as I do not want graduate students to feel as though gaining the knowledge offered in professional development sessions would be a financial burden. Participation in experiential learning can greatly contribute to students’ overall success during their graduate tenure. From the surveys collected, graduate students had this to say after attending the sessions:

“Thank you for this! I’m a PhD student in an online program at a PWI, and sometimes I feel isolated and invisible, the only Black girl in my classes, my program. The imposter syndrome is very real. I needed this day to connect with people who look like me, sound like me, act like me, and don’t apologize for being Black or a person of color and for wanting to research our issues our ways. The energy from Dr. Ekpe, presenters, and participants was rejuvenating and liberating. Please keep offering this event.”

“This symposium was incredible. I look forward to this opportunity. This space allows EdD students access to renowned scholars who typically may be hard to reach. They are sharing resources for FREE and sharing nuggets of information that will help us beyond belief. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

The sessions offer graduate students a stress-free space to participate freely in multimodal instructions that some students are privy to, while others are gaining new knowledge. Because professional development opportunities offer graduate students a chance to expand their knowledge outside of classroom instruction and build professional networks with other graduate students and presenters, these opportunities ultimately contribute to scholars’ advancement during their tenure.

Jackson: Tell us a bit about the funding. You’ve clearly lined up some impressive guests from across the country — are they paid or volunteer?

Ekpe: In the first academic year (2023-2024), I applied for a Faculty Student-Led Grant within my university that supported the initiative. With this grant, I was able to provide speakers with an honorarium. It was important to me that I honor the speakers with a financial gift, as their time and efforts were greatly appreciated.

Jackson: What is your advice to other professionals or institutions in creating similar professional development programming for their graduate students? Where can they start?

Ekpe: Providing opportunities similar to the events I’ve put on does not have to be a separate endeavor. Faculty can provide similar opportunities in the classroom by instituting new ways of learning (whether that be through guest speakers, collaboration opportunities between students, providing information on similar sessions offered outside the classroom, and allowing students to control their learning through student-led instruction).

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Whether it is in the job search process or your day-to-day work in higher education, knowing how to communicate your impact is critical to your professional growth and the mission of your office. Here, we will discuss what impactful language looks like, the common pitfalls for us educators, and ways readers can incorporate these practices into their workplace interactions.

Before we talk about impact, let’s start with communication and its purpose. In higher education, we often process a large amount of information and communicate in an insightful way. This applies to researchers who conduct literature reviews and identify gaps in existing findings, teachers who organize learning materials and share with students, or administrators who compile sources and write reports or proposals. Additionally, those of us in staff or administrator positions find ourselves relying on our written and oral communication to build up our own reputation and elevate the mission of our respective offices.

In order to communicate effectively, experts often highlight the importance of knowing your audience. Peer-reviewed articles share knowledge with researchers with similar academic backgrounds; teaching and learning welcomes students into dialogues and provides them with more nuances; and administrative reports or proposals are to document and sometimes persuade others to take actions. Similarly, elevating certain projects or connecting specific roles to the strategic planning or mission of an organization requires a deep understanding of segmented audiences, which we will discuss later in this article.

What do we mean by impact, then? Researchers define impact as “the effect or change over time that we can see, demonstrate, measure, or capture on different stakeholders, and which happens as a result of an activity or an organisation.” In the context of higher education, not only do we see this shift to demonstrating the value of certain contributions to specific groups or the institution at large, but also increasingly robust methods to measure or capture the impact for internal and external constituents.

Strategies for Communicating Impact

When it comes to the necessity of incorporating impactful language, examples often come up in career development, such as job search or interviews.

Embrace power verbs: Building on the tried and true advice on action verbs, power verbs project strengths that effectively convey an accomplishment, making it easier for your audience to imagine you doing the actual tasks or being at work. For example, using words such as “streamlined” or “revived” give additional attention to processes or outcomes.

Present results and integrate reflections: Building on principles of storytelling, leverage both data and insights to strengthen your claims. When you can, quantify your work and drill down to specific areas of impact. The metrics or numbers can help readers grasp the scope of past projects or programs, people involved, and any details relevant to operations, marketing, finances, or performances. During interviews, also share your reflections and lessons learned to provide depth to your examples. Demonstrating self-awareness of what went well and what could be improved is often a plus for hiring teams and your future colleagues.

Know Your Audience

Now that we have explored some strategies, let us look at how to adapt them to three audiences you may encounter in your professional sphere: colleagues, supervisors, and administrators.

Colleagues: Your colleagues — whether they be team members, campus collaborators, or professional contemporaries — can be your greatest champions, particularly when it comes to celebrating the day-to-day wins that may otherwise get overlooked in more strategy-focused conversations. Your meetings or conversations with them provide opportunities for debriefing and reflection. Create opportunities to talk about outcomes for your events, projects, and initiatives, and allow your colleagues to do the same.

Another key way to communicate your impact is through social media posts, particularly on platforms where you are connected to fellow practitioners in the field. Photos increase engagement on posts, so try to remember to take pictures and include them alongside key metrics in your posts. While it may feel awkward at first, doing so helps you increase awareness for your unit and build your professional brand.

Supervisors: While your colleagues provide vital daily support, your supervisor is another key person with whom you need to communicate your impact. With the category of supervisors, we mean the individual(s) to whom you directly report. Being able to communicate your impact to them is particularly important during the performance evaluation process.

When talking about work, especially when you collaborate with others, it can be easy to default to using entirely “we” statements. This framework works well when you are recounting projects to groups or amongst colleagues. It helps to simplify the narrative and keeps your explanation from being too long-winded.

However, in performance evaluations, it is important that you shift from the “we” to the “me” mentality, at least when it pertains to honestly conveying your actions and responsibilities within different projects. Focusing on what you took ownership of, and the outcomes of your actions, makes your impact more clear. With this, we do not mean ignoring the work of others. Rather, we want to encourage you to fight the urge to be overly gracious at the expense of downplaying your achievements.

Administrators: For the sake of this article, we are categorizing key leadership positions under the administrators category. Think of deans, provosts, vice presidents, and so on. They are individuals that you may not encounter on a regular basis but whom you may find yourself reporting to on a semi-annual or annual basis. People in leadership roles often operate at “30,000 feet,” meaning that given the breadth and depth of their work, they often only have the capacity to hear about high-level outcomes. The reports you create for them, therefore, need to reflect this reality.

To effectively communicate your impact, make sure to include the metrics that showcase how your work is supporting institutional strategic plans. While the day-to-day wins are important, it is important that administrators know how your program’s impact aligns with the broader success story of the unit and college or university. What metrics might you highlight? Consider promoting positive programmatic improvements, such as increases in quality and attendance, or a boost in the unit’s visibility and image. Both data points mean that you need to collect quantitative and qualitative data.

Conclusion

The language we use to describe ourselves or our work is often a reflection of how we see ourselves. In fact, there is power in self-advocacy, documentation, and concrete steps we can all take to boost our professional and personal well-being. Our confidence derives from both internal and external validations, and we can take control of how we perceive our own value by articulating our own impact.