SGSI 2024: Designing the Professional
Monday, Sept. 9 – Friday, Sept. 13, 9 AM - 2 PM
What do you want out of life after graduate school? Wondering how to weave together what fits, is doable, and will be truly meaningful? Join us for Designing the Professional, from the people who brought you Designing Your Life. This course applies the principles of design thinking to the "wicked problem" of designing your life and vocation while in and beyond Stanford. We'll approach these lifelong questions with a structured framework set in a seminar where you can work out your ideas in interaction and conversation with your peers. Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows. If oversubscribed, preference is given to doctoral students near completion of their degree.
Instructors
- Dustin Liu, lecturer & fellow, Life Design Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering
- Kathy Davies, managing director, Life Design Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Audience & Capacity
Open to all graduate students in any discipline*, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows. If oversubscribed, preference is given to doctoral students near completion of their degree. Space is limited to 70.
*MSx Class of 2025 and first-year MBA students are ineligible to participate due to mandatory program requirements.
Objectives
By participating fully, you will:
- Learn a framework for orienting your goals, actions, and philosophy regarding career and professional life, and for locating career within life overall.
- Develop an approach to plotting a pathway to meaning-making and success as a professional.
- Ideate different life and career paths.
- Use practical skills and exercises for investigating alternatives and life and career "prototypes".
- Gain a basic introduction to design thinking which you can apply in other areas.
- Join a community of peers to share your ideas and hear how others are thinking about these important issues and questions.
- Draft a vision for your professional life following Stanford.
Summary
What is it you really want out of the life that your Stanford education is making available to you? Have more questions than answers? Have too many ideas for your career - or not enough? Wondering how to weave together what really fits you, is doable, and will be satisfying and meaningful? Then join us for Designing the Professional. All graduate students from all disciplines are welcome, no design thinking experience or engineering background is needed!
We apply the principles of design thinking to the "wicked problem" of designing your life and career. Design thinking, innovated at Stanford over the last 50 years, anchors the framework of the course, allowing students to gain awareness and empathy, define areas of life and work they want to work on, ideate about ways to move forward, try small prototypes and test their assumptions. The course is highly interactive, and will conclude with the creation of 3 versions of the next 5 years, and learning ways to generate prototypes that make those futures a reality.
The course will include brief readings, writing and reflections, and in-class exercises. The condensed SGSI format gives participants an intensive experience to thoroughly grasp the concepts while having plenty of time to reflect and talk with others on how to apply it.
The course is taught by members of the Life Design Lab.
Additional Course Expectations
The course is heavily discussion and activity based. In each session, there are short lectures by members of the teaching team, collaborative activities, individual reflections, and small group discussions. Course requires 1-3 hours of homework per day in the form of reading and reflective exercises. Full attendance is expected.
SUNet ID required to log in; all SGSI correspondence sent to your Stanford email account.