W 4:30-6:00pm
35-434
Instructor: Monica Pheiffer
Units: 3
Prerequisites: None

Course Purpose:
What are you going to do after grad school? For many grad students, the answer isn’t always clear – especially as traditional pathways in research and academia face increasing uncertainty. Career plans can change, opportunities can feel overwhelming, and the pressure to “get it right” can make it hard to even begin. But taking the time to clarify what matters to you can change everything. This course is designed to help you step back, reflect, and intentionally shape your path forward.

Through guided exploration of your identity, values, and aspirations, you’ll gain clarity on what a meaningful career could look like for you. You’ll analyze real job descriptions, assess your current capabilities, and receive feedback from peers and mentors to identify areas for growth. From there, you’ll craft a personalized leadership development plan, grounded in experience, education, and exposure. Through a mix of structured exploration, peer dialogue, and guided planning you’ll build an action plan for your growth through and beyond graduate school. By the end of the course, you’ll walk away with more than a plan; you’ll have a clearer sense of who you are, where you are going, and how to get there. The goal is not to prescribe a path, but to empower you to chart one that is meaningful, ambitious, and uniquely yours.

Intended Audience:
This course is designed for graduate engineering students who are actively exploring how to align their technical expertise with meaningful professional impact. Students will be invited to participate by recommendation from the Riccio-MIT Graduate Engineering Leadership (GradEL) staff, based on demonstrated readiness to engage deeply in personal and professional development. Ideal candidates for this course have:

— Taken initiative in shaping their academic, research, or extracurricular experiences

— Shown leadership potential, whether formally (e.g., mentoring, leading a project team) or informally (e.g., influencing peers, contributing to group success)

— Engaged actively with the GradEL program or other opportunities for growth and collaboration

Course Objectives:
The course’s primary objectives are to empower its participants with tools for intentional career planning and develop a custom engineering leadership development plan to guide their next steps within and beyond graduate school. By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Clarify your values, purpose, and vision for a meaningful career through guided reflection and peer dialogue.

2. Explore and evaluate potential career paths by analyzing job descriptions and identifying alignment with your purpose, capabilities, and aspirations.

3. Design a personalized development plan grounded in the E3 Framework (Educat1ion, Exposure, Experience) to guide your growth through and beyond graduate school.

Over the course of the semester, you will contribute to a personal engineering leadership development plan. This workbook will be a unique artifact from the class that you will be able to take with you to the future teams you either join or lead.

If you are interested in this course, please reach out directly to Monica Pheifer mpheifer@mit.edu.