Stanford
Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education

SGSI 2025: Designing the Professional

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COURSE CLOSED

  • Full attendance is expected.
  • Course requires 1-3 hours of homework per day in the form of reading and reflective exercises.

Brief Course Overview

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.

Course Format

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.

Intensity Level 🔥🔥

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. Postdoctoral scholars will be invited to apply during the rolling application period starting July 7th.

*MSx Class of 2026 and first year MBA students are ineligible to participate due to mandatory program requirements.

Detailed Course Description

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.

Objectives

By participating fully in this course, you will:

  • A framework for orienting your goals, actions, and philosophy regarding career and professional life, and for locating career within life overall.
  • An approach to plotting a pathway to meaning-making and success as a professionalIdeas for evaluating different life and career paths and multiple careers.
  • Practical skills and exercises for investigating alternatives and life and career "prototypes".
  • A basic introduction to design thinking which you can apply in other areas.
  • A community of your peers in which to share your ideas and hear how others are thinking about these important issues and questions.
  • A draft vision for the first season of your professional life following Stanford.

Instructors