Career & Tools
Check out this UCSB series on grad student and postdoc professional development experiences funded by the Individualized Professional Skills (IPS) Program. This week's featured video is by Kaitlyn Ugoretz, a graduate student in East Asian Studies, who used the IPS funds to attend the YouTube Video Ranking Academy. Read on to watch the video and learn more about the IPS program!
Have you ever wished you had support to take advantage of a professional or career development opportunity that lies outside the scope of your academic research? The UCSB Individualized Professional Skills (IPS) Program is designed to help graduate students and postdoctoral scholars fill in the funding gaps for pursuing opportunities that support your professional development in a variety of career trajectories.
IPS Insights: In our series, "IPS Insights," previous awardees share about their IPS-funded experiences in short informational videos. This week's featured video is by Kaitlyn Ugoretz, a graduate student in East Asian Studies.
Kaitlyn used the IPS funds to attend the 2022 YouTube Video Ranking Academy. Watch the video to learn more!
In Kaitlyn's Words: What I Learned
"With the support of an IPS grant, I participated in the 2022 YouTube Video Ranking Academy online course offered by YouTube strategy company ThinkMedia. I attended 20+ hours of recorded seminars and completed the Video Ranking Academy Workbook to design a production and business plan for my educational YouTube channel, Eat Pray Anime. One of the fundamental takeaways from VRA is the 7R model for video production process: 1) Reverse Engineer; 2) Research; 3) Record; 4) Release; 5) Rocket; 6) Review; 7) Repeat. Prior to taking the course, I tended to only focus on Steps 2 and 3. But while taking the course, I realized that there is a lot more work to be done at each stage to make the most out of each video and create a library of content for long-term channel growth. The VRA course also helped me to understand the YouTube algorithm better, as well as my own channel and video analytics to create more valuable content for my audience. Finally, the modules on how to turn an educational channel into a profitable business helped me to come up with short-term and long-term business plans.
This type of opportunity would benefit someone who is passionate about creating quality educational content for the public and turning it into a viable alternative academic career. The course is both informative and motivating, both of which are crucial for imagining a professional future outside of or adjacent to the community. This course would be useful for YouTubers at any stage in development. I believe this experience also helped me to articulate my channel's potential impact in my winning application for the 2022 AAR-Luce Foundation Advancing Public Scholarship Grant, which will provide me $5,000 to upgrade my production equipment and create a new series in (compensated!) collaboration with other scholars."
IPS Program Overview
Awards up to $1000 are granted to eligible UCSB graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from any discipline who wish to individually tailor their career paths with outside professional development opportunities. The purpose of the IPS program is to help grad students and postdocs take greater agency in their own career path by funding exploration of a range of professional development opportunities across a variety of career and skill interests.
The IPS Program is a collaboration between the Professional Development Series at the Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships; Graduate Division; the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; UCSB Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative and CNSI Technology Incubator; Career Services; UCSB's divisional deans; and external donors. Learn more about the program here!