A Structured Professional Development Curriculum for Postdoctoral Fellows Leads to Recognized Knowledge Growth

Postdoctoral training enables research independence and professional readiness. National reports have emphasized professional development as a critical component of this training period. In response, many institutions are establishing transferable skills training workshops for postdocs. Critical gaps, however, have been the lack of structured programs and an absence of methods to assess outcomes beyond satisfaction surveys. To address these shortcomings, we took the relatively new approach of structured programming and developed a method for controlled assessment of outcomes. Our program You3 (You, Your Team, Your Project), co-designed by postdoctoral fellows, focuses on a structured array of management and leadership skills agnostic of ultimate career path(s). It then measures outcomes in a controlled manner, by systematically comparing knowledge and growth of participants with non-participants as the control group. You3 participants achieve greater growth in competencies overall compared to the control group, as shown by multiple criteria including self-reporting and associative analysis. Correspondingly, You3 participants reported greater knowledge in 75% of the modules when compared to controls. These data indicate that structured learning, where postdocs commit to a curriculum via a cohort-structure, leads to positive outcomes and provides a framework for programs to assess outcomes in a rigorous manner.