Information for Graduate Students
As a graduate student, you are likely facing new academic challenges. The ideas about which you are reading, thinking, and writing are becoming increasingly complex, yet you need to find clear, concise, and engaging ways to express them. You are shifting from a focus on consuming information to a focus on producing and disseminating new knowledge and insights. You are expected to be fluent in the conventions of your discipline and to produce work that is free of grammatical and spelling errors.
Academic Skills works closely with graduate students to help them develop as scholars and writers as well as teaching assistants. We hope that you will take advantage of the many services that we can offer you.
Learn more:
Services for Graduate Students
Individual Appointments
Graduate students are welcome to book a free, confidential one-on-one appointment with an Academic Skills instructor.
Winter 2021: All appointments are currently offered remotely via phone, video, or email. Book an appointment in the Student Experience Portal.
(Log in with your Trent student credentials. Navigate the left menu and Select Peterborough Campus Appointment Bookings. Next, select Academic Skills and Book by Appointment Type. Select a synchronous phone or video appointment or an asynchronous email feedback appointment to book an available appointment in the next 14 days.)
Writing Conferences
You can book a free and confidential appointment to discuss any aspect of your writing. Academic Skills instructors can help you organize your ideas, outline, or upgrade your grammar skills. They can also look at partial drafts and comment on grammar, organization, and clarity.
Time Management for Graduate Students
Graduate work often involves long-term research and writing projects that have few check points along the way. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what you need to accomplish and, as a result, to procrastinate your work. You can book an appointment with an Academic Skills Instructor to discuss time management problems and to create a project plan that will work for you.
Grant Applications and Personal Statements
Academic Skills provides several resources to help you as you write graduate school or grant applications. Academic Skills is not an editing or proofreading service, but our instructors can comment on the strength and clarity of your writing and organization.
We also work with the Career Centre to offer "Apply Yourself: Writing the Graduate School Personal Statement," a workshop that provides advice on what to include in personal statements as well as how to write them.
Workshops - Winter 2021
Grammar for Grad Students
Thursday, January 28 from 3:00 to 4:30 pm
Registration required: Trent Student Experience Portal
Have you ever received feedback and you are not even sure what it means? What is a comma splice anyway? Then this workshop is for you! We will delve into the mysteries of English grammar to help you edit and improve your writing. We will consider topics such as: sentence structure, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, modifiers, active and passive voice, and parallel structure.
Presenting and Writing about Data (Quantitative) for Grad Students
Thursday, February 11 from 3:00 to 4:30 pm
Registration required: Trent Student Experience Portal
Are you planning on including quantitative data in your research project? Then this workshop was created for you! We will discuss general thesis organization principles that will save you time and energy, how to write about statistics, the best methods to visually present your data, and how to refer to figures in your writing. We will conclude with a discussion of how to explain your findings in both the results and discussion sections of your thesis or dissertation.
Presenting your Research for Grad Students
Thursday, March 18 from 3:00 to 4:30 pm
Registration required: Trent Student Experience Portal
You have been working on your research for what seems like ages and now you are ready to present your findings to others. We will discuss the main principles for presenting conference papers from all disciplines, how to present your research in the form of a poster presentation for a conference, and how to discuss your project in a short ‘elevator talk’ or Three-Minute Thesis format. We will focus on how to communicate difficult subjects to wider audiences by paying attention to audience, clarity and concision, and overall communication skills. As well, we will focus on presentation skills in an online environment.
Fall Workshop Titles
- Time Management for Graduate Students
- This workshop will help graduate students balance competing pressures and commitments for their time from a variety of sources, such as research or course work, teaching commitments, university obligations, and personal life. This is particularly important with remote learning. Through the establishment of long- and short-term goals the process of conquering the workload will become more manageable.
- Managing the Graduate Reading Load
- This workshop will help graduate students understand the goals of graduate reading, the key challenges of reading large volumes of text, the process of reading, and methods to deal with the graduate reading load effectively and efficiently. Note-taking strategies and some of the common pitfalls of graduate reading will also be discussed.
- Strong Writing for Grad Students
- This workshop will explore principles of strong writing to achieve progress on many written assignments from course-based writing to research proposals and thesis writing. We will explore the writing process as an aid in clarifying the thought process. The needs of the reader will be considered to help with style and flow in writing. Some common grammar issues will also be discussed.
Traill Writing Tuesdays for Graduate Students
Drop-in appointments are available for grad students to discuss any aspect of your writing or academic skills with an Academic Skills Instructor.
Dr. Sue Beckwith will be available via Zoom to chat on a one-to one basis about your writing every Tuesday all winter, starting on January19, from 1 to 3 pm. The Zoom link is available via Traill Newsletter, Traill College via phone or email, or by contacting Sue Beckwith at Academic Skills: sbeckwith@trentu.ca
Graduate Writers’ Group
The purpose of this group is to support writing and productivity, to encourage effective goal setting, and to establish accountability for grad students writing on course work, a master’s thesis, or a doctoral dissertation.
This writers’ group will meet virtually every two weeks during the winter to offer a point of connection for graduate students during the writing stages of their studies, while addressing common academic and emotional challenges and offering strategies for coping with these challenges. All students will engage in peer review of writing, submitting work and providing feedback to other group members. Peer review will be modelled by the facilitator with particular focus on clarity, organization, integration of evidence, and style, not interpretation or argument.
In addition to bi-weekly meetings, all participants will have access to Blackboard for sharing files, accessing resources, and communicating with group members. Students may choose to participate via Blackboard only or to attend the Zoom meetings.
The meetings will be held synchronously via Zoom. The first meeting will be held on Monday, January 25 from 10:30 am to noon.
Registration will be on-going, as you may join at any time to receive the Zoom link and access to the Blackboard site. Register through: Student Experience Portal
Meeting Schedule
- Jan. 25: Goal Setting and Good Writing
- Feb. 8: Motivation, Procrastination and Organization
- Feb. 22: Literature Reviews, Introductions and Conclusions
- March 8: Building and Maintaining Momentum
- March 22: Revision and Writing
- April 5: Unfinished Business and Moving Forward
The Graduate Writers' Group is facilitated by Academic Skills. For further information please contact Sue Beckwith, Academic Skills Instructor: sbeckwith@trentu.ca.
Three Minute Thesis
The Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT®) presents Masters and Ph.D. students with the ultimate challenge: to explain their complex and highly specialized research and ideas to a general audience in just three minutes, using only one Power Point slide.
Three Minute Thesis 2020 postponed - check back for details.
Services for Teaching Assistants
Referring Students
As a teaching assistant, you can refer students to Academic Skills for help with their math, reading, listening, writing, and grammar skills. Referrals can be made either by emailing acdskills@trentu.ca (please cc the student on the email) or by providing students with information about our services. Students can book appointments directly at www.trentu.ca/sep