Rackham/Sweetland Workshops on Writing: Citations Beyond “Playing the Game”—Building a Robust Citation Policy In this workshop, participants will bring a personal research project to assess or map out a citation policy that reflects their commitments and values. Sara Ahmed tells us that, “citations can be feminist bricks: they are the materials through which, from which, we create our dwellings.” Our citation policies, “affec[t] the kind of house” in which we spend our intellectual lives (Living a Feminist Life 15). In this workshop, participants begin by reflecting on their various commitments and values before engaging in a discussion of the shared reading. The session concludes with individual and collaborative workshop time targeting feasibility in their designs. Participants assess citations in a recent project to determine the extent to which they have used citations to build the kind of “dwelling” they want to occupy and explore options for further renovating. Alternatively, participants may bring a project they have not yet researched fully in order to map a citation policy for that project. Qualifiers: This is a workshop especially designed for those in the humanities, social and applied sciences. Before the workshop, we ask that you read an eight-page excerpt (sent to those who register) from Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life.
How to Be Your Best in Virtual Interviews In this session, you will learn how to use lighting, color, clothing, backdrop, eye contact, and mirroring to make a strong impression and why it’s important to keep answers succinct, pause, be comfortable with silence, and notice non-verbal cues during interviews. Learning objectives: Learn practical steps to take to look and sound your best despite your nerves. Understand how to combine the technology, body language, and behavioral features to make a strong impression in a virtual setting. Understand what it takes (posture, breathing, and gesturing) to look and sound confident. Speaker: Amy Aines Amy Aines is a communication strategist, speaker, coach, and trainer who builds career success skills. She teaches graduate students and postdocs at universities and government agencies how to simplify the complex, engage listeners, foster productive relationships, and make a bigger impact with their work. Amy is chief executive officer of Damianakes Communications, a consulting firm she founded in 1999, and co-author of Championing Science – Communicating Your Ideas to Decision Makers, a ‘how to’ book based on her four decades of work with scientists and engineers in the wireless, tech, and biotech industries. A former telecommunications executive, Amy’s industry roles have run the gamut from corporate spokesperson for $10B company, to culture and brand builder, technical writer, employee motivator, change manager, media trainer, workshop designer, speech writer, and speaker coach. She’s had the good fortune to work with leaders at global giants and startups including AirTouch, Genentech, McKesson, BioMarin, Gilead, Cisco, Stoke Therapeutics, Exelixis, Vodafone and numerous emerging tech and biotech firms. When she’s not teaching, Amy volunteers for the STEM Advocacy Institute, Beyond the Ph.D., and Quest Science Center, and enjoys singing with the Stay at Tone Moms. This session is part of the ‘Building Essential Communication Skills for Job Interviews‘ webinar series organized and co-sponsored by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and Rackham Graduate School.
How to Design a Job Talk for an Industry Interview In this session, you will learn how to prepare slides and a narrative that will engage listeners and showcase the significance of your research, thought process, personal qualities, and experience that is most relevant to the role and company mission. Learning objectives: Understand which elements to include in a short research talk and that the purpose of the talk is about more than the technical nature of your research. Learn how to create an attention-getting opening for your talk. Understand the importance of sounding conversational, not scholarly. Understand how to structure a short talk and how much detail to provide, including what to save for Q&A. Understand the brain science reasons for limiting what you show on a slide. Speaker: Amy Aines Amy Aines is a communication strategist, speaker, coach, and trainer who builds career success skills. She teaches graduate students and postdocs at universities and government agencies how to simplify the complex, engage listeners, foster productive relationships, and make a bigger impact with their work. Amy is chief executive officer of Damianakes Communications, a consulting firm she founded in 1999, and co-author of Championing Science – Communicating Your Ideas to Decision Makers, a ‘how to’ book based on her four decades of work with scientists and engineers in the wireless, tech, and biotech industries. A former telecommunications executive, Amy’s industry roles have run the gamut from corporate spokesperson for $10B company, to culture and brand builder, technical writer, employee motivator, change manager, media trainer, workshop designer, speech writer, and speaker coach. She’s had the good fortune to work with leaders at global giants and startups including AirTouch, Genentech, McKesson, BioMarin, Gilead, Cisco, Stoke Therapeutics, Exelixis, Vodafone and numerous emerging tech and biotech firms. When she’s not teaching, Amy volunteers for the STEM Advocacy Institute, Beyond the Ph.D., and Quest Science Center, and enjoys singing with the Stay at Tone Moms. This session is part of the ‘Building Essential Communication Skills for Job Interviews‘ webinar series organized and co-sponsored by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and Rackham Graduate School.
Industry Interview Preparation to Boost Your Confidence In this session, you will learn how to develop core answers for five key question categories (Problem Solver, Team Player, Innovator, Work Ethic, Achiever) and use self-care and research to be your best during interviews. Learning objectives: Understand the five categories and potential questions. Learn how to approach creating core answers. Discuss aspects of self-care and how to prepare yourself and plan for a day of multiple interviews. How to research interviewers – where to find information and how to use what you learn to boost your confidence. Using organization websites and LinkedIn to identify and follow thought leaders from the company/organization/institution. Speaker: Amy Aines Amy Aines is a communication strategist, speaker, coach, and trainer who builds career success skills. She teaches graduate students and postdocs at universities and government agencies how to simplify the complex, engage listeners, foster productive relationships, and make a bigger impact with their work. Amy is chief executive officer of Damianakes Communications, a consulting firm she founded in 1999, and co-author of Championing Science – Communicating Your Ideas to Decision Makers, a ‘how to’ book based on her four decades of work with scientists and engineers in the wireless, tech, and biotech industries. A former telecommunications executive, Amy’s industry roles have run the gamut from corporate spokesperson for $10B company, to culture and brand builder, technical writer, employee motivator, change manager, media trainer, workshop designer, speech writer, and speaker coach. She’s had the good fortune to work with leaders at global giants and startups including AirTouch, Genentech, McKesson, BioMarin, Gilead, Cisco, Stoke Therapeutics, Exelixis, Vodafone and numerous emerging tech and biotech firms. When she’s not teaching, Amy volunteers for the STEM Advocacy Institute, Beyond the Ph.D., and Quest Science Center, and enjoys singing with the Stay at Tone Moms. This session is part of the ‘Building Essential Communication Skills for Job Interviews‘ webinar series organized and co-sponsored by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and Rackham Graduate School.
How to Stand Out as the Ideal Industry Candidate In this session, you will learn how to build your story library for common job interview topics and how to tell vivid, purposeful stories using the Predicament, Response, Outcome (PRO) formula to make your experiences and character traits relevant to what hiring managers seek. Learning Objectives: Learn why stories are more memorable than claims or reported examples. Understand the format of a story and the elements that make it vivid and more engaging. Understand how to craft purposeful stories that reveal important personal attributes and prior actions that are relevant to the role. Find pivotal moments from which to build a story library for common job interview topics. Learn the PRO formula for telling stories with a point that reveal mindsets, motivations, and values. Speaker: Amy Aines Amy Aines is a communication strategist, speaker, coach, and trainer who builds career success skills. She teaches graduate students and postdocs at universities and government agencies how to simplify the complex, engage listeners, foster productive relationships, and make a bigger impact with their work. Amy is chief executive officer of Damianakes Communications, a consulting firm she founded in 1999, and co-author of Championing Science – Communicating Your Ideas to Decision Makers, a ‘how to’ book based on her four decades of work with scientists and engineers in the wireless, tech, and biotech industries. A former telecommunications executive, Amy’s industry roles have run the gamut from corporate spokesperson for a $10 billion company to culture and brand builder, technical writer, employee motivator, change manager, media trainer, workshop designer, speech writer, and speaker coach. She’s had the good fortune to work with leaders at global giants and startups including AirTouch, Genentech, McKesson, BioMarin, Gilead, Cisco, Stoke Therapeutics, Exelixis, Vodafone, and numerous emerging tech and biotech firms. When she’s not teaching, Amy volunteers for the STEM Advocacy Institute, Beyond the Ph.D., and Quest Science Center, and enjoys singing with the Stay at Tone Moms. This session is part of the ‘Building Essential Communication Skills for Job Interviews‘ webinar series organized and co-sponsored by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and Rackham Graduate School.
King Talks Information Session This session will provide an overview of the application process, expected time commitment, and compensation associated with serving as a 2026 King Talks Speaker. Interested individuals only need to attend one session.
Writing Literature Reviews Rackham / Sweetland Workshops, co-sponsored by the Rackham Graduate School, cover a host of topics designed to help graduate students in various aspects of writing. Workshops are held monthly, in-person at the Rackham and North Quad buildings. How do I turn this never-ending tangle of literature into a neat, polished review? In this interactive workshop, we’ll cover laying the foundation for your scholarly literature review and then taking that first critical step towards composition. We’ll crowdsource tips for generating a source list, organizing it as you go, and starting to extract themes and ideas for section headings from your reading library. We’ll also cover the basics of structure to reduce the barrier for writing your first sections. Whether you’re halfway through or just starting out, you’ll have a chance to take the next step on organizing, defining your purpose, or revising your argumentation. This presentation will focus on reviews in the sciences, but concepts are generalizable to all literature reviews.
Editing and Style for Graduate Writers Rackham / Sweetland Workshops, co-sponsored by the Rackham Graduate School, cover a host of topics designed to help graduate students in various aspects of writing. Workshops are held monthly, in-person at the Rackham and North Quad buildings. How can you catch grammatical or typographical errors before submitting your conference paper? How can you “sound” like yourself while maintaining a professional, academic voice in your dissertation? In this workshop, you will focus on applying editing strategies and stylistic choices in graduate writing. You will learn tips for editing your own writing and practice identifying common grammatical and typographical errors in writing samples. You will also explore the rhetorical effectiveness of stylistic elements commonly found in academic and professional writing and practice applying them to your own writing project. Writers should bring a current writing project to work on.
Transition to Graduate Writing I Rackham / Sweetland Workshops, co-sponsored by the Rackham Graduate School, cover a host of topics designed to help graduate students in various aspects of writing. Workshops are held monthly, in-person at the Rackham and North Quad buildings.
King Talks Information Session This session will provide an overview of the application process, expected time commitment, and compensation associated with serving as a 2026 King Talks Speaker. Interested individuals only need to attend one session.
King Talks Information Session This session will provide an overview of the application process, expected time commitment, and compensation associated with serving as a 2026 King Talks Speaker. Interested individuals only need to attend one session.
Rackham/Sweetland Workshop: How to Make Revision Count – Revising Practices for Graduate Students The most critical phase in the writing process is also the most mysterious and least taught. Revision is especially challenging for first-year graduate writers learning to write extended academic arguments. What do academic writers do when they revise their work? How does an early draft become a polished, publishable article? This workshop will demystify the role of revision in academic writing–to advance and refine our good ideas!–and provide strategies to help you build quality revision into your writing practice. You will expand your revising practices and elevate your writing skills for graduate school.
Rackham/Sweetland Workshop: Who Are You Talking To? – Identifying and Responding To Your Interlocutors Interlocutors are those you engage with in your research and writing; they may appear (re: be valued) differently across disciplines. This workshop will address how reading skills and writing conventions allow you to ethically represent others’ knowledge and support your arguments. Participants will work with peers to talk through rhetorical decisions scholars make when identifying and responding to interlocutors and set goals for how to use the workshop experience in their own graduate writing careers.
Rackham/Sweetland Workshop: What’s Reading Got to Do with It? – Reading to Support Writing in Graduate School What is the relationship between reading and writing for academic purposes? How can you read to support your work as a writer in your specific academic field and discipline? In this 50-minute Rackham/Sweetland workshop, you will discover answers to these questions through guided reflection on your current reading (and writing) practices, as well as a hands-on introduction to specific reading strategies that support writing. You’ll also leave with additional resources and ideas for how to continue to explore and develop the reading-writing connection in your own academic work.
Rackham/Sweetland Workshop: How Do You Conceptualize Your Time in Graduate School? – From the Practical to the Philosophical Time management and productivity may not seem like an exciting topic, but harnessing concrete tactics and strategies for how to maintain autonomy and agency over your own schedule is a crucial skill in graduate school. You will find yourself juggling multiple, and often competing, priorities – and many of them have to do with writing…lots and lots of writing! This 50-minute Rackham/Sweetland workshop will address time management strategies across scales (from pomodoros to physical planners to semester and year-long planning), as well as considerations regarding habits and motivation. The earlier you find what works for you, the more you can tailor your schedule to fit your life instead of the other way around!
