It's been a while since I posted on my blog, but I wanted to reflect on my time over the past year since I defended my PhD. 

A year ago, on Wednesday, July 12th, I became the first Nigerian, 4th Black woman, and 6th Black student to defend a PhD in Computer Science from the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University!

Since then, I’ve started my career at the world’s foremost think tank, attended numerous prominent convenings, had 50+ speaking engagements, reached 200+ citations of my research, and engaged in collaborations that have produced nearly a dozen research papers, policy commentaries, white papers, and technical reports.

Data from the Computing Research Association (CRA) Taulbee Survey, the principal source of information on the enrollment, production, and employment of PhDs in computer science, information science, and computer engineering in North America (United States and Canada), also indicates that I was 1/18 Black students and 1/387 women to graduate with a PhD in Computer Science during the 2022-2023 academic year.

While the numbers for women CS PhD graduates have gradually increased over the past decade, the production of Black CS PhD graduates has remained dismal, never exceeding more than 2% of all awarded computer science doctoral degrees in North America. As the world continues to contemplate the harms caused by technical systems, particularly those enabled by AI, how do we reconcile that communities most likely to experience disparate impacts continue to be underrepresented in researching, developing, and critically evaluating these systems?

This past year has taught me much about myself, both personally and professionally. It has also helped me define the kind of research I want to pursue and the impact I want to make within the fields of AI, global development, and technology governance. Over the next year, I look forward to pursuing new opportunities to scale my impact and create opportunities for marginalized voices to contribute to AI research and shape public policy. 

In the meantime, I hope to revive this blog and provide more resources for those looking to pursue graduate programs and earn graduate degrees, especially in STEM. While I may no longer be a "collegesista," this platform will always be a part of my identity. I appreciate everyone who has read this blog over the years, supported my work, and shared my content. Stay tuned!

Learning to navigate life as a graduate student can be daunting, but professional development workshops can help ease your transition to graduate studies, support your progress in your program, and help you navigate your future career. As PhD students consider their career paths upon graduation, it is quite important to engage in programs that allow you to explore both academia and industry. For those potentially interested in academic roles, future faculty programs are a great way to learn about the application process, life as a professor, engage with current professors, and network with other graduate students and postdocs who could eventually become your peers. Throughout my time in graduate school I have attended a plethora of workshops that have supported me at every stage in my graduate journey and provided me with the skills to successfully manage relationships with my advisors, craft research projects, and seek out postdoctoral opportunities. 

Finding Professional Development Programs

While many universities provide internal workshops and courses to prepare their grad students for academic roles, finding external programs can be difficult for those not familiar with this space. To help ease this process for graduate students in computer science and related engineering fields, I’ve curated a list of over 30 workshops that can be attended across all stages of your PhD program. Many of these workshops are also available for Master’s students and for students in the physical and biological sciences. For students that are unable to attend external workshops due to time, physical, or other constraints I highly suggest connecting with the career offices, postdoctoral studies offices, and faculty development centers at your respective institutions to find programs that you can participate in on campus. 

For those interested in careers outside of academia, connecting with offices that specialize in this area (at Cornell, our office is called Careers Beyond Academia) or entrepreneurship centers can be quite valuable. Fortunately, due to the COVID pandemic, many programs are also available virtually. There are national organizations devoted to faculty development such as the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) that provide online training modules, guest expert webinars, and two-week writing challenges to support students through their graduate school journeys. Additionally, I find that finding relevant campus listservs and reading newsletters such as the Cornell’s Graduate School weekly newsletter keeps me informed of events across campus and at other universities. Professional development programs also vary in nature and can take the form of short courses or half-semester courses. At Cornell, examples of these courses include GRAD 9110 - Professional Career Foundations which helps students learn best strategies for pursuing a successful job search and ALS 6015 - The Practice of Teaching in Higher Education which engages students in learning theory and how to apply such methodologies in teaching environments. 

One great thing is that professional development programs are not limited to students who are already in graduate school. As the first person in my immediate family to pursue PhD studies, I knew that I would need quite a bit of support to help me navigate the graduate school admission process. In addition to workshops hosted at my undergraduate institution and writing assistance I received through my campus career center, I found that attending external conferences and workshops helped strengthen my graduate school applications which ultimately led me to Cornell. The list I shared also includes a number of pre-doctoral programs and links to a much larger list by the McNair Scholars Program, a popular graduate school development program for underrepresented undergraduate students. As with the graduate school professional development programs, nearly all of these programs are fully-funded and cover expenses for accepted applicants.

My Experiences Participating in Professional Development Programs

As a graduate student who has varied interests ranging from academia to industry to entrepreneurship, I found it necessary to try and explore as many career options as possible. As a PhD student, your objectives throughout your program include conducting research, publishing papers, and teaching, which often prepares you for a limited set of careers that happen to align mostly with those in academic settings. While all of these commitments can leave limited time to pursue external opportunities, I found the time that I used to participate in these opportunities valuable not only to my professional development but also to help shape how I approach my research and expand my perception of what I could accomplish as a PhD student.

On-Campus Workshops

As I mentioned earlier, on-campus programs can be much more accessible to students who cannot travel for off-campus opportunities. I have personally benefited from such events and encourage graduate students to pursue similar opportunities at their respective campuses. I am fortunate to attend a large university that has funding to provide many forms of professional development to grad students and postdocs. At Cornell, events such as the Summer Success Symposium help new and continuing graduate students hear from inspiring speakers and connect with fellow students. I also participated in the Future Professors Institute, an event that invites campus administrators and external speakers to lead workshops, give talks, and speak on panels regarding topics that range from advancing inclusive research environments to preparing for tenure. While the two events I mentioned previously were both one-day events, an academic year-long program that I participated in was the NextGen Professors Program which is a career development program aimed towards preparing Cornell graduate students and postdocs to pursue faculty careers at large research universities, undergraduate-focused institutions, or community colleges. The program consisted of monthly meetings and mentoring sessions with faculty members at external institutions and aided participants in preparing their application materials and job interviews.

External Programs

Participating in external programs has enabled me to extend the learnings I’ve gained through my participation in on-campus professional development programs at Cornell. Early in my PhD, I attended the CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop for Women and CRA URMD Grad Cohort, which were two-day programs that consisted of workshops on topics ranging from finding a research topic to pursuing summer internships, poster sessions, and panel talks. Attending these workshops was essential in helping me build a network of graduate peers and faculty mentors that I have stayed connected with throughout my time in graduate school and who I have seen at many conferences and workshops since then. As I’ve progressed to the later years of my PhD, I’ve begun to focus more closely on programs that provide tailored support in pursuing post-graduate career opportunities. 

External Future Faculty Programs

Over the past year, I’ve attended external future faculty programs at Georgia Tech, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and UC Berkeley. These programs all lasted from 3 to 4 days and involved workshops, panels, and lots of time for networking with professors and fellow graduate students. While you can find tons of information online about applying for faculty positions, I’ve found that in-person workshops help you get unique, nuanced perspectives from scholars who have gone through the process and the opportunity to ask questions to often very busy professors who allocated their time specifically for program participants. The Georgia Tech FOCUS program was very influential in teaching me about different types of faculty at the institution like non-tenure research faculty roles that include research scientists and engineers and other non-tenure track faculty members like Academic Professionals who often jointly hold administration duties like deanships and Professors of the Practice who are internationally reputed academic, business, and government leaders. While I prepared teaching, research, and diversity statements for nearly all of my applications to future faculty programs, attending NextProf NEXUS at UC Berkeley provided me a chance to get personalized feedback and revamp both of my research and teaching statements. The WiscProf program also gave me a unique opportunity to present a practice job talk, an essential part of the interviewing process, to faculty members across two engineering departments. These programs also helped me realize that I would like to take some time conducting research projects in industry before pursuing a tenure-track role to give myself time to refine my research agenda and gain more experience guiding younger scholars in research projects. 

Industry Workshops

In between the future faculty programs I attended, I was fortunate to participate in the Diversity Connect workshop at McKinsey, a program geared towards preparing underrepresented PhD, Law, and Medicine students for careers in management consulting. The application process for this experience was quite different from the future faculty programs as the focus was to understand my capacity for analyzing and presenting case studies. After filling out a general form with my academic and professional details, I was instructed to complete a game-based assessment that involved optimizing a hypothetical ecosystem. The structure of the program itself was also quite different and on a much shorter timeline. Participants in the program flew in early on the first day of the workshop, listened to panels, and split up into groups to start addressing a case study. We spent the rest of the day analyzing the problem and preparing for a group presentation which was held the following day. After presenting and receiving feedback from other participant groups, we had the opportunity to network further and concluded the program. While short, I found my time at McKinsey helpful in understanding that being at a big firm doesn’t align with my interests but that I am interested in providing individual consulting services along with pursuing a research career in academia or industry. 

Takeaways

My experiences in these programs were all different, but each provided me with valuable information that has enhanced my search for postdoctoral opportunities. While future faculty and industry programs are structured with an intent to attract top-tier candidates, there is no expectation or pressure for you to pursue a role right away but they provide great preparation for when you do apply. Now that I am actively on the job market, the benefits of attending future faculty and industry programs have given me an opportunity to understand my strengths, address my weaknesses, and figure out what career path is right for me. I also got a head start on my application materials, which has saved me a lot of time and made my application process much smoother. Overall, I can thoroughly say that I enjoyed participating in these programs and I hope that fellow graduate students can learn from my experiences. Don’t be afraid to pursue these life-changing opportunities!

This piece was originally commissioned for ProFellow, a free resource for fellowships. You can access the original article "How to Find Professional Development Opportunities for Graduate Students" here.

 Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog! This is my first post of the year and I’m happy to start with a post on grad school. Grad school application season is in full swing and after what I’m sure has been a rough year for many, a lot of people are looking to advance their studies by going to graduate school. Fortunately, many programs are opening back up after admission hiatuses and as vaccination rates increase, campuses are slowly but surely getting back to “normal” but it surely looks different from before the pandemic began.

Check out all my old posts pertaining to my graduate school application process and journey:

• How to Apply to Grad School

• Should You Go to Grad School

• Why I Decided to Attend Grad School

For those of you in Computer Science and related fields (Information Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Operations Research, etc.) I update GitHub lists with curated links to graduate applicant support programs and graduate fellowships. These lists are loaded with tons of resources to help you apply to graduate school and fellowship programs. Feel free to check them out and share!

In my next post, I’m looking forward to updating you all on how the past year has been for me and things I’m looking forward to as we go into Winter Break. It’s so great to be back!

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Thanks for reading! You can catch up on my previous posts here. Feel free to share this post and follow me on all social media platforms @CollegeSista! Have questions about applying to grad school, life as a graduate student, or Cornell in particular? Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn or through email!

Now that Fall is officially here (along with this chilly Ithaca weather...the leaves are beautiful though!), I figured that I’d do a brief update on what I’ve been up to since the summer! As with many graduate students, my plans for the summer changed drastically and I had to adapt quickly to the circumstances. While I was looking forward to traveling a bit and pursuing a research study in India, I’m grateful that I have the privilege to conduct my research from almost anywhere in the world and didn’t experience any major setbacks. I’m extremely proud of the work I completed this summer and am looking forward to pushing towards candidacy by mid-2021 (fingers crossed)!

• I’ve become much more consistent in working out! With the help of a couple of fitness apps, I’ve settled into a routine consisting of a run/vigorous walk followed by a ~30 minute HIIT/cross-training workout. I feel so much better, especially after getting some fresh air outside, and am enjoying the bit of body tone I’ve gotten back. Hoping that I can keep this consistency throughout the long Ithaca winter! 
• Did a slight rebrand for CollegeSista! The power of Canva is so understated, I feel like a professional designer at times. I really love the collegial look of my logo, which falls more in line with the theme of my blog.
• I spent the majority of my summer working on a research study to learn more about perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) in India. I also submitted this project to a major conference in one of my fields and am really excited to share this work! I’m so pleased to be at a place in my research where I’m content and truly passionate about what I’m doing.
• I deeply enjoy speaking and honing my presenting skills and being in quarantine has definitely given me a lot of options to do so! I presented at a couple of workshops and conferences and enjoyed sharing my work with others from around the world. 
• I completed two certificates in Women’s Entrepreneurship and Venture Deals! I have so many passions outside of academia and being able to pursue them (to a certain extent) has made me more balanced throughout my studies.

Honestly, it’s been hard making time to write for CollegeSista and I really miss it! Writing for this blog is a way for me to express my non-academic thoughts, and it’s therapeutic in a way. Throughout this quarantine period, I’ve been going through a wave of emotions which has resulted in varying peaks and valleys of productivity. I’ve been reading for pleasure less, procrastinating a bit more on my work, and have found myself going to bed at extremely strange times. I believe in the potential of CollegeSista and am going to be more intentional in building that potential. I’m eager to share my insights and hope that you’ll stick around for the journey!

Note: As graduate students, it can be hard managing our time with all the stuff we have to do ranging from conference deadlines to course readings and to research. The 2020 election is coming up soon, so please ensure that you’re registered to vote! 

Thanks for reading! You can catch up on my previous posts here. Feel free to share this post and follow me on all social media platforms @CollegeSista! Have questions about applying to grad school, life as a graduate student, or Cornell in particular? You’re welcome to contact me on LinkedIn or through email!