Learn About Beyond the Professoriate

 

BUSINESS STRUCTURE

Beyond the Professoriate (“Beyond Prof”) is part of the Center for Graduate Career Success, incorporated in Colorado. Beyond Prof’s mission is to empower PhDs to build impactful careers and engaged lives, wherever smart people are needed.

We provide career education and professional development to individual graduate students and PhDs, and partner with educational institutions, to prepare the next generation of scholars for careers in academia and beyond.

Beyond Prof maintains offices in Canada to deliver services and programs for Canadian institutions.

OWNER OF BEYOND THE PROFESSORIATE

Beyond the Professoriate is owned and operated by L. Maren Wood, PhD (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Beyond Prof’s team of PhDs know first-hand how difficult it is for graduate students and PhDs to access the resources and mentorship they need to launch careers inside and beyond academia. In building Beyond Prof, they leverage their research, expertise, and personal experience to help graduate students and PhDs launch their next great careers.

HOW BEYOND PROF EARNS AND SPENDS MONEY

Beyond Prof is funded by subscriptions to programs and platforms, ticket sales to annual online conferences, and coaching services tailored to serve its mission. There are no outside investors, shareholders, or funding.

Over 90% of Beyond Prof’s revenue provides income for individual employees, contractors, and contributors. The balance sustains marketing and business development; developing, hosting, and maintaining platforms; and delivering effective programming.

PRIVACY AND USER DATA

Beyond Prof takes great care to only collect essential information about its users and audiences to reach them, deliver services and programming, and efficiently operate its platforms.

PhD Career Training Platform, e-learning by Beyond the Professoriate

PhD Career Training is an e-learning platform available by individual or institutional subscription. Users are limited to the individual students, postdocs, faculty, and staff of subscribing institution, or individuals who purchase their own subscription. Beyond Prof’s team and contractors create and maintain the platform. There are no third-party users on the platform.
  

User are presented with the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy the first time they access the platform. If any user wishes to have their user history deleted, they can contact Beyond the Professoriate at help@beyondprof.com

Beyond Prof has designed the platform to maximize the privacy of users.

What users can do on this platform

Users can access programs that include on-demand videos to explore career options and learn job search strategies, complete worksheets and exercises in a private note widget, and take quizzes to earn a certificate of completion.

Over time, Beyond Prof will add additional modules and tools to the Platform to further its mission of providing career education and professional development to graduate students and postdocs.

Beyond Prof provides a safe learning environment to users. There are no opportunities for users of the Platform to interact with each other or see other users who are active on the platform; no user can see the activity of, or interact with, other users on the platform.  

What Beyond Prof sees

Beyond Prof is integrated with, and accessed through, an institution’s Single Sign-On portal. The institution authenticates a user, allowing them to access the e-learning platform. The first time a user accesses Platform, a user account is generated using the user’s name and institutional email address.

For individuals who purchase their own subscription, an account is automatically created for you when you pay your tuition. You’ll be sent information on how to login through our portal for individual users.

Through their user account, an individual can track their progress through the programs of study, takes private notes, and completes quizzes.

To understand utilization and detect problems in performance, Beyond Prof uses Google Analytics and a tracking plugin. These tools show which users are logging in and when, pages users visit, how long users spend on a specific page, devices used to access the platform (phone, laptop, tablet), and which browsers users choose (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc).

When a user completes a quiz or marks a unit as “complete,” it is recorded in the admin panel of the Platform and accessible by a Beyond Prof administrator. Completing a quiz or marking a unit as “complete” is optional.   

What Beyond Prof does not see

No personal information other than a user’s name and email address, is released by subscribing institutions to Platform. Beyond Prof does not receive demographic information, visa or employment status, or the home department, of a user.

For individual users who purchase their own subscription, your name and email address is passed to the Platform, and you will be required to set up a password when you first login.

In terms of user activity on the platform, Beyond Prof does not see which videos a user watched or any notes created in the private note taking widget.

How Beyond Prof uses information from the PhD Platform

The Beyond Prof team generates aggregate reports about an institution’s users for designated program administrators. The reports show how many users from an institution accessed the platform, which programs and pages were viewed, and the number of certificates earned. Beyond Prof does not share information about individual users without user consent.

Quiz grades are used by Beyond Prof to verify a user’s completion of the programs of study in the Platform and to issue certifications.

Beyond Prof analyzes aggregate data to understand the efficacy of its programs,  improve the functions and content of the platform, and to develop additional programming.

Beyond Prof only sends emails to users of the Platform to provide information about updates and changes to the platform, to help on-board a user, and to collect substantive feedback to improve the platform and develop additional programming.

Beyond Prof will never sell any information about users to third-parties.

How data from the Platform is stored

The PhD Career Training platform is hosted on a Virtual Private Server and platform data are located and secured with consideration of applicable international standards.  (Learn more about VPS here.)

When data is analyzed by Beyond Prof team, user information is anonymized; email addresses and names are removed and replaced with an unidentifying ID number.

Third Party Providers

Beyond Prof uses the following third parties to deliver programming, products and services.

Vimeo

All videos embedded in Beyond Prof platforms and website are hosted on Vimeo. When a viewer watches a video, they are watching that video on vimeo. Learn more about Vimeo’s privacy.

What Beyond Prof see and don’t see

Vimeo provides Beyond Prof aggregate data via a statistics dashboard. Information Vimeo shares with Beyond Prof includes: the url of the website or platform the embedded video was accessed from, number of plays a video received, how long viewers watched a video, devices used to access the video (phone, laptop, tablet), and browsers viewers choose (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc).

Vimeo never shares individual user data with Beyond Prof. If a viewer rents a Beyond Prof video through Vimeo On Demand, Vimeo handles payment processing and manages refunds. Vimeo does not share personal information with Beyond Prof about who rents videos.

How Beyond Prof uses information from Vimeo

Beyond Prof analyzes aggregate data provided by Vimeo to refine programming and services to meet the needs of Beyond Prof’s audience, in service of its mission.

Beyond Prof never sell personal information to any third party.

Zoom

Beyond Prof hosts live webinars via Zoom webinar. Read Zoom’s privacy policy.

What Beyond Prof sees and doesn’t see

Attendee’s share their name and email address when they registers for a webinar or meeting.  

Beyond Prof may ask additional questions when attendees register for a webinar, such as an attendee’s institution, academic rank (graduate student, faculty, postdoc), employment status, and academic area of specialization. Beyond Prof uses this information to refine programming and reach its targeted audience. We never share personal information with third parties, nor do we provide reporting to institutions.

Webinar attendees are in “attendee-only” mode, which means that the participant’s webcam and mic are disabled. Attendees only participate in the webinar via text-chat.

The Beyond Prof team member who hosts the webinar, and guest panelists or speakers, see the names of attendees. Comments or questions an attendee asks in the text chat or Q&A are visible to webinar hosts, panelists, and other attendees. Beyond Prof keeps a record of questions and comments shared during the webinar to inform future programming and research.

All webinars are recorded (video and audio); names of attendees, questions, or comments from the chat are not included in the recording.

How Beyond Prof uses information from Zoom

Webinar attendees are added to Beyond Prof’s mailing list and begin receiving weekly newsletters. Webinar attendees can opt out from receiving the newsletter by clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of any email campaign.

Beyond Prof team members analyze questions and comments asked by attendees to understand the needs of graduate students and PhDs, to refine programming, and to create additional content and services to meet the needs of the academic community.

Beyond Prof never sell personal information to any third party. We may provide aggregate reports to institutions (the number of people who attend our events), but will never report on an individual’s participation.

Stripe

Stripe is a secure payment processing software that Beyond Prof uses to manage individual subscriptions to the platform. Read Stripe’s privacy policy.

What Beyond Prof does and doesn’t see

Stripe shares with Beyond Prof a member’s name, email address, the last four digits of a member’s credit card, and the expiration date on that card.

Stripe does not share with Beyond Prof a member’s address or full credit card information.

How Beyond Prof uses this information

Beyond Prof uses information provided by Stripe to assist members with billing issues and to verify a member’s subscription to the platform.

Beyond Prof never sell personal information to any third party.

Active Campaign

Beyond Prof send weekly newsletters through Active Campaign to subscribers of its email list.  Learn more about Active Campaign and read its privacy policy.

Subscribers to Beyond Prof’s mailing lists can cancel anytime; simply click the “unsubscribe link” at the bottom of any email campaign.

What Beyond Prof does see and doesn’t see

Active Campaign provides Beyond Prof with analytics about each email campaign, including which subscriber opened an email, and if the subscriber clicked on links included in the email. 

How Beyond Prof use this information

Beyond Prof use this information to curate events and resources shared with newsletter subscribers.

Beyond Prof never sell personal information to any third party.ƒ