Graduate Professional Development
Graduate Professional Development
Make the most of your graduate experience. The College of Graduate Studies offers a variety of professional development programs and experiences to compliment your academic journey and support what comes next. These programs are divided into two categories below, Research Development and Career Development.
Research Development Programs:
Knight Research Scholars Program
The Knight Research Scholars Program (KRSP) at UCF is an innovative initiative designed to provide team-based research that offers mentorship and leadership development for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars serve as team leaders, guiding undergraduate researchers through meaningful projects while enhancing their own mentorship and leadership skills.
Graduate students and post-docs from all disciplines are encouraged to participate. Find more information here.
KRSP is hosted by the Offices of Graduate Student Life, Postdoctoral Affairs, and Undergraduate Research. For more information, contact knightresearch@ucf.edu.
Graduate Student Writing Retreat
Graduate Student Writing Retreats are a one-day, in-person experience designed to help you make focused, tangible progress on your thesis, dissertation, or other significant writing projects. This retreat offers a structured, distraction-free environment where participants will clarify writing goals, engage in sustained writing time, and learn practical strategies for overcoming common challenges such as perfectionism, procrastination, and writer’s block. The day also emphasizes sustainable writing habits, peer support, and planning strategies so the progress made during the retreat continues beyond the event.
This event is hosted by the College of Graduate Studies Office of Graduate Research and Scholarship, University Writing Center (UWC), Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), and the Center for Writing Excellence (CWE). For more information, contact gradworkshops@ucf.edu.
Student Research Week
Student Research Week is your opportunity to refine your communication skills and showcase your work to Knight Nation! There are many events throughout the week, giving you different opportunities to connect, build your research network, and share what makes UCF’s research community great.
The Student Scholar Symposium is UCF’s preeminent student research poster forum during SRW for graduate and undergraduate students to present their research and creative scholarship to the UCF community .
Student Research Week is hosted by the Offices of Graduate Student Life and Undergraduate Research. For more information, contact researchweek@ucf.edu.
UCF’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition
Graduate research is presented in a novel and exciting way at UCF’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. Doctoral and Master’s students communicate their research in just three short minutes and with only one PowerPoint slide to a panel of judges while competing to win scholarship awards. First developed in 2008 by the University of Queensland in Australia, the popularity of the competition has increased and 3MT competitions are now held in over 600 universities across more than 59 countries worldwide. The UCF 3MT is part of UCF’s Fall Research Symposium that brings together all levels of researchers at UCF.
Build your communication skills and compete for thousands in scholarships!
The UCF 3MT is hosted by the Office of Graduate Research and Scholarship and the Office of Graduate Student Life in the College of Graduate Studies. For more Information, contact gradcenter@ucf.edu
Academic Integrity (Responsible Conduct in Research) Workshops
The Academic Integrity (Responsible Conduct in Research) workshops are required for all doctoral students and are open to all students conducting research at UCF. These workshops are hosted each semester and focus on various elements of personal and professional integrity
View the current workshop schedule is available at https://graduate.ucf.edu/academic-integrity-training
Academic Integrity Training is hosted by the Office of Graduate Research and Scholarship and the Center for Ethics. For more information, contact gradworkshops@ucf.edu
Grant Seeking and Preparation Fundamentals Webcourse
The Grant Development Series Webcourse is intended for those seeking possible future careers in academia, research, and other fields demanding knowledge of research grants. This free resource equips participants with the knowledge and skills needed to successfully obtain external research funding through five modules. Users who complete all five modules and corresponding quizzes will be able to download a printable completion certificate! Access this resource in Webcourses.
This Webcourse is hosted by the Office of Research. For More information, Contact the Office of Research.
Funding your Research Presentations
Traveling to present your research? There are two opportunities at UCF to obtain travel funding. A UCF Presentation Fellowship is a fellowship that provides funding for enrolled master’s, specialist, and doctoral students to share their research at a professional meeting. Students must be the primary author and presenter. Additionally, the SGA CRT funding is available to support your research presentations.
The UCF Presentation Fellowship is hosted by the College of Graduate Studies Funding area. For more information, contact gradpresentation@ucf.edu
Career Development Programs:
Partnering with many campus partners including UCF Career Services and the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, the College of Graduate Studies offers activities and programs to prepare you for life after grad school. Many of these opportunities are listed below:
Accelerate to Industry+
UCF is a member of the Accelerate to Industry+ (A2i+) program, a nationwide initiative with over 40 universities that aims to apply active-learning models to train students for industry jobs. Workshops are offered each term, with more expansive resources being offered starting in Fall 2026. More information is forthcoming
A2i+ at UCF is hosted by the Office of Graduate Student Life. For more information, contact gradcenter@ucf.edu
Graduate Student Life Lunch and Learns
Grab lunch in the Graduate Student Center and collaborate with speakers from around UCF and beyond as we cover various topics related to your career and professional success. The schedule of speakers can be viewed on the Career Support page here.
Graduate Student Life Lunch and learns are hosted by Graduate Student Life, for more information, contact gradcenter@ucf.edu.
VMock
UCF partners with VMock SMART Career Platform to help students create a powerful resume and accelerate students’ career journey. VMock leverages technologies like data science, machine learning, and natural language processing to provide instant personalized feedback on resumes based on criteria gathered from employers and global best practices – from anywhere, at any time of the day.
VMock is hosted by UCF Career Services. For more information, contact career@ucf.edu.
Additional Professional Development Resources:
Most programs offer assistantships in which students serve as research or teaching associates or assistants. Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) may be appointed as classroom teachers (instructors of record), co-teachers, or classroom assistants, graders, lab assistants, or other roles directly related to classroom instruction. Please see our Graduate Teaching (GTA) Information page for additional details.
GTA training information is available on our GTA Training Requirements page. This training mainly involves self-paced online modules, and there is no cost to students. While it’s primarily intended to prepare graduate students to teach at UCF, it is beneficial to any graduate student who may teach in various contexts in their future positions.
The Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning offers a Preparing Tomorrow’s Faculty Program every semester. This is a voluntary program on teaching in higher education, primarily intended for graduate teaching assistants but open to all UCF graduate students. The format for this program is mixed-mode. Participants will be expected to complete a series of online modules and attend six, two-hour meetings, which will be held on the Orlando campus. Participation is limited, so please enroll early. There is no cost associated with registration.
The UCF library offers free online modules on how to avoid plagiarism using APA, MLA, and Chicago Styles. There are also modules on Conducting a Literature Review, Evaluating Websites, and Creating a Search Strategy. Please note you will need your NID and NID password to log in to these on-demand modules
The ETD+ Virtual Workshop Series is a set of free introductory training resources on crucial data curation and digital longevity techniques for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) and affiliated files.
Workshop topics include: Copyright, Data Organization, File Formats, Metadata, and Storage. Version Control
Each module is approximately 15-20 minutes each and includes the supplemental material, including slides, a guidance brief (booklet), and a printable handout summarizing key takeaways and learning objectives.