While you may be steadfastly working hard towards achieving your career goals, here’s a program that offers a new perspective on career development that you may want to know: it is called Intellectual Entrepreneurship, a university-wide program in the Graduate School at UT at Austin. The philosophy of this program deviates from the traditional ladder-like progression of a graduate school education. Instead of being restricted by the rigid sequence of obtaining a graduate education and then obtaining more skills to add on top of that, Intellectual Entrepreneurship follows the philosophy of innovation and collaboration. While the program at UT is geared towards restructuring professional development in the realm of graduate education, we can think about the ideas of Intellectual Entrepreneurship at a more general level and apply them to other disciplines.

[view more]

First, Intellectual Entrepreneurship emphasizes innovation in that one should always be learning no matter where they are in the professional ladder. Through continual learning, one can accomplish several things: developing a more open mindset, finding what matters most, and understanding what possibilities are available. By rediscovering oneself and even creating new professional identities, one can open many doors. For instance, in Richard A Cherwitz and Charlotte A. Sullivan’s Intellectual Entrepreneurship: A Vision for Graduate Education, there was a PhD in English who now works for the World Bank Institute. While the field of English and the field of banking and finance appear radically different and unbridgeable, the English PhD was able to understand his skillsets and connect them to another field that he was passionate about. His skillsets are his expertise in literacy and technology, and he was able to use those skills to assist teachers and facilitate the implementation of new instructional technology in the schools of developing countries. Therefore, by understanding the importance of transferable skills, one can bridge multiple fields and open up more job opportunities.

Second, Intellectual Entrepreneurship highlights the importance of collaboration where people should share ideas and learn to work with people of other fields. According to Cherwitz and Sullivan, the conventional idea of separate academic disciplines and lone scholars is outdated; instead, Cherwitz and Sullivan suggests that scholars should form synergy groups where people from various disciplines can come to work together because the reality of complex issues are not restricted to one discipline but span across several. Therefore, collaboration can not only improve problem solving, but also allow for a new breed of jobs and projects—those that reflect an integration of perspectives.

As a sophomore at Stony Brook University pursuing a Nursing degree to become a Registered Nurse, I am also very passionate about tutoring students. Outside of class time, I work as a Writing Center Tutor and as a Chemistry Teaching Assistant; both experiences have opened new fields—tutoring, teaching, and customer service—that presents vast opportunities to me. Currently, my ultimate goal is to become a Nurse Practitioner, but perhaps, one day I may also combine my passions for nursing and teaching for some career. My growing experience in both fields provides me with many transferrable skills that are invaluable and will expand my reach to different job markets. The main point here is to explore how innovation and collaboration—two ideas discussed before—can be implemented to maximize our professional development.

We live in a global society connected by technology, and it is important for aspiring and seasoned professionals to adapt and, most importantly, take advantage of it.