Collaboration in the Human Sciences

Day 1 Keynote Panel: Collaboration Across Disciplines
Rita Landgraf, Director of UD Partnerships for a Healthy Community at the University of Delaware, Dr. Alison Kapryn, Associate Professor in the Human Development and Family Sciences Department of the University of Delaware, and Charles Hecsher, Co-Director for the Center for the Study of Collaboration at Rutgers University share what they have learned about collaboration through their experiences working with people in the business, government, community members, and nonprofit sectors. Speakers’ real-world experiences illustrate the importance of collaboration, the collaboration process, and the skills they found were needed for successful collaboration. Panel is welcomed by graduate steering committee.

Day 1 Professional Development Workshop: Creating Your Brand

Jill Gugino Pante, Director of UD’s Lerner Career Services, and Heather Tansley, Assistant Director of Communications & Operations in the UD Career Services, lead a session showing graduate students how to brand themselves professionally to attract potential collaborators and employers. Participants learn to promote themselves in a memorable way through online platforms and social media.

Day 1 Professional Development Workshop: Collaboration Technology
Heather Tansley, Assistant Director of Communications & Operations in the UD Career Services, and Tanisha George, Graduate Assistant at UD’s Lerner Career Services, introduce graduate students to the many useful technology platforms that can initiate and enhance collaboration efforts. Participants learn methods to extend their reach across interdisciplinary and geographical boundaries to work productively with people from other departments, universities, and countries.

Day 2 Keynote Panel: How to Become Your Most Productive Team

A team of researchers and developers led by Cole Galloway, creator of the Go Baby Go initiative at the University of Delaware, who have worked together on a project share different perspectives about their collaboration process. Speakers’ real-world experiences illustrate how to best facilitate collaboration and potential pitfalls to avoid.

Day 2 Professional Development Workshop: Collaboration Self-Evaluation

Collaboration and team work are integral facets of graduate school and life. This session, led by Kathleen Murphy, Associate Director of the Institute of Public Administration at the University of Delaware, provides participants with a hands-on, self-discovery experience where they conduct a self-evaluation quiz to evaluate their collaboration style. Each participant learns to recognize his or her own style of collaboration when working in teams and how he or she deals with conflict. Participants leave the workshop with a better sense of their strengths and areas for improvement when collaborating and how to effectively work with team members who have different collaboration styles.

Day 2 Workshop: How to Cultivate Collaboration in Graduate School

Participants work in small groups to discuss ways departments can better foster graduate student collaboration. Each group is assigned a few previously identified barriers to collaboration experienced by graduate students and tasked with developing solutions to these issues. This activity results in an inventory of recommendations of how universities can better cultivate future collaborative experiences for their graduate students. These suggestions will be presented to the department heads of students participating in the conference, and may also be reported in news articles and research study manuscripts following the conference.