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Graduate Student Initiatives
Advocating for the well-being, rights, and representation of all graduate students
The Graduate Council engages in advocacy initiatives that are best addressed by or that affect multiple graduate programs, or those which have campus-wide effects. In other words, those that are important to more than a single graduate school or program. Because representatives from each of the school’s governing student organizations sit on the graduate council, a single initiative can quickly reach all of the graduate student government organizations. In the spring semester of 2021, the Graduate Council sponsored the Graduate Student Satisfaction Survey (available below) to determine which issues were important to graduate students. This survey will be redistributed in the fall semester of 2025. In 2020-22, advocacy efforts focused on improving DEI efforts within each school; the effort included presenting relevant student satisfaction survey results to the deans of the graduate schools, and advocating for appointment of DEI officers and student representatives. Also in the fall semester of 2025, a resource for graduate students, with information about activities and such will be available. See the side bar and below for details.
The advocacy role of the Graduate Council is principally to facilitate campus-wide efforts by communicating with the individual student government organizations, evaluate when new initiatives are desired, evaluate the needs of new initiative, identify people within each graduate program to join teams, and work issues and communicating results. Initiatives from graduate students at large are also welcome. The Graduate Council provides a forum for connecting you with like-minded individuals across the campus to work campus-wide (or even just multi-grad-program) initiatives.