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 Anagha Uppal, a graduate student in Geography, who used the IPS funds to attend a two-week course on policymaking and government near New Delhi, India. Read on to watch the video and learn more about the IPS program!

By Chava Nerenberg, Graduate Programming Assistant
Friday, June 3rd, 2022 - 1:38pm

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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 Anagha Uppal, a graduate student in Geography.

Anagha used the IPS funds to attend the Vision India Foundation's two-week course on policymaking and government near New Delhi, India. Watch the video to learn more!

In Anagha's Words: What I Learned

"The Vision India Foundation, an Indian-registered nonprofit/charitable trust, hosts an annual two-week-long bootcamp on policymaking and government near New Delhi, India consisting of lectures, workshops, discussions, case studies and more. The speakers for the program were some of the premier civil servants, politicians, professors, and media figures from the country, so it was almost overwhelming how much you could explore with them if you had the energy and a foundation. For me, coming with very little exposure to the Indian policymaking sphere, I couldn't engage at that level, but what I gained was some clarity of the paradigm in which the system operates and a way to learn more when I'm ready. If you're interested in Indian policy, this course is for you. It shares a breadth of very engaged students, incredibly knowledgeable teachers, and thought-provoking organizers/administrators."

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!