GPSO Announces Spring 2012 Travel Award Winners

The IU Graduate and Professional Student Organization (GPSO) proudly congratulates the following students as winners of the Spring 2012 Travel Award:

• Nicholas Best, History and Philosophy of Science
• Lisa Borrero, Health, Physical Education, and Recreation
• Kathryn Boucher, Psychology
• Quetzal Class, Psychology
• Anne Fiala, Fine Arts
• Candice Grant, Education
• Steve Green, Psychology
• Savannah Hall, English
• Joo Hyung Kim, Political Science
• Elizabeth Konwest, Anthropology
• Yilmaz Koylu, Second Language Studies
• Gloria Maleski, Geography
• Michael Miragliotta, Music
• David Riese, Geological Sciences
• Tiffany Roman, Education
• Laura Seger, History and Philosophy of Science
• Benjamin Taylor, Music
• Ashley Viager, Education

A total of 104 IU graduate students submitted complete, valid applications, which were reviewed by the GPSO Travel Awards Committee. The GPSO Travel Award is offered through a competitive process for graduate and professional students at Indiana University Bloomington. It is given to help support travel expenses to conferences at which the student's work will be presented (i.e., speeches, posters, or interactive design), or to help support travel to workshops, special trainings, competitions, and auditions that will benefit the student professionally. Funds may be used for registration fees, presentation materials, transportation, and lodging/food associated with the conference, workshop, training, competition, or audition.

This year, the GPSO was able to offer more Travel Awards than in previous years, with a total of 36 Travel Awards for the 2011-2012 academic year, each at $500.

To learn more about GPSO Travel awards, please visit http://www.indiana.edu/~gpso.


MEDIA CONTACT 
Indiana University Graduate and Professional Student Organization
http://www.indiana.edu/~gpso 
gpso@indiana.edu

Seven Doctoral Students Travel to South Korea for an IU AGEP Professional Development Tour

From the left: Leah Davis, Deidre Redmond, Dr. Yolanda Treviño, Nikole Miller, Dr. Maxine Watson, Nancy Ortiz.

This spring break, seven IU doctoral students along with University Graduate School  Dean Maxine Watson and Dean Yolanda Treviño, are headed to South Korea for a professional development tour.

Hosted by Sungkyunkwan University (http://www.skku.edu/eng/), the travelers will spend the week of March 8 to March 18, 2012, learning about the higher education system in South Korea and experiencing what it would be like to work abroad. Each student will be giving a presentation to SKKU colleagues in their discipline.

The visit is being sponsored by the IU AGEP program with the goal of increasing global literacy, gaining exposure to specialized training and practical experiences outside of the U.S., and increasing opportunities for international collaboration for a small group of advanced doctoral underrepresented minority students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

The travelers:

1. Jose Lugo Martinez
2. Lewis Jones
3. Leah Davis
4. Nikole Miller
5. Deidre Redmond
6. Nancy Ortiz
7. Alfonse, Pham

Note from the University Graduate School: We will be following along with the students as they learn about SKKU and South Korea. Look for an update and photos upon their return!

Thinking of attending IU? Chat with current IU graduate students.

The Bloomington campus for Indiana University.

A friendly reminder of the Emissaries for Graduate Student Diversity Adobe Connect Web Chat sessions.

These sessions are designed to allow prospective students to interact with current graduate student emissaries as they discuss issues that pertain to being a graduate student at IU, including:

• Why go to graduate school?
• Tips for applying to graduate school
• What being a graduate student entails
• Funding opportunities
• Community and campus resources for IU students
• Life in Bloomington 

This month’s topic is:
“Should I visit campus?”  
 

Two sessions have been scheduled for this month:

Tuesday, March 6, 2012, at 4:00pm:

• Ahmed, Political Science
• Amy, Curriculum and Instruction
• Jennifer, Criminal Justice

Saturday, March 24 at 2:00pm:

• Kuang, Biochemistry
• Claire, Anthropology
• J.T., Higher Education and Student Affairs

To participate in an online chat session, your prospective students will need follow these instructions:

1.    Go to http://breeze.iu.edu/gradchat at the scheduled time
2.    Login as a guest. Students will be able to see and hear the emissaries on their screens.
3.    Students may submit questions to the emissaries using the chat feature.

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Upcoming sessions:

Topic of the Month for April: Life in Bloomington

• Saturday, 4/14 at 1pm
• Thursday, 4/19 at 3pm

Call for Applications: Emissaries for Graduate Student Diversity, 2012-13

The 2011-12 Emissaries for Graduate Student Diversity.

The Indiana University Graduate School is now accepting applications for the 2012-13 Emissaries for Graduate Student Diversity program (http://www.indiana.edu/~gradlife/). This recruitment support program includes ten emissaries (Masters and PhD graduate students) who will serve as first contacts and initial resources for prospective graduate students, in addition to working and engaging in dialogue with graduate programs, departments, the University Graduate School and the GPSO.

The program promotes peer connections between individuals interested in IU graduate programs, especially science, technology, mathematics (STM) disciplines, and current IUB graduate students. Graduate student emissaries dedicate two semesters, and optional summer term, to serving as community-building liaisons between graduate studies and the graduate student body at IUB.

Applicants must be full-time graduate students in a Masters or Ph.D. program at IUB, be in good academic standing, and demonstrate involvement in program, departmental, university or community organizations.  Preference will be given to graduate students who are involved in diversity-building activities and programming. An in-person interview is required.

Students must submit the following by 5pm on March 30, 2012, in order to be considered:

1. data form  ( http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YSQRBSZ );
2. a curriculum vitae/resume; and,
3. a 1-page essay about past experience with similar initiatives, diversity-building efforts, cultural competency, community involvement or leadership skills.

Email the curriculum vitae/resume and 1-page essay to agep@indiana.edu.

If you have any questions regarding the Emissary for Graduate Student Diversity Program, please e-mail agep@indiana.edu.

Upcoming Fellowship Deadlines: March/April 2012

Deadline: Friday, March 2, 2012

Indiana University Credit Union Dissertation Fellowship
Provides $20,000 stipend support for graduate students in the final year of their dissertation. Please do not contact the IU Credit Union, but rather Yvonne Dwigans, Fellowships Coordinator, (812/855-8852, ylivings@indiana.edu) for more information.

Santosh Jain Endowed Memorial Scholarship
The scholarship offers financial support to a current international graduate student who has demonstrated commitment to service and education and plans to pursue a service-oriented career and demonstrates financial need. Preference will be given to graduate students from South Asia, in particular those hailing from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sikkim. 

Deadline: April 13, 2012

The Irving and Shirley Brand Graduate Fellowship
The fellowship is an annual fellowship for IUB incoming or current graduate students in the Humanities, with preference given to students of Philosophy.

SOTL: The Why, What, and How of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Simon Brassell, Craig Nelson, George Rehrey, Carol Hostetter, David Pace, Barry Rubin

Friday, March 2, 8:30 – 1:00 pm*

Georgian Room, IMU

Indiana University 

This workshop is for anyone interested in conducting a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project. A panel of SOTL scholars will discuss their own research approaches as participants engage in conversations on SOTL research questions and methods. Key resources for conducting SOTL work will be distributed. The workshop is open to all faculty and graduate students.

Please register by February 29th at https://webdb.iu.edu/tltc/schedule/index.cfm?sch=sotl

Sponsored by: FACET at Indiana University Bloomington and The Indiana University Bloomington Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program

*lunch will be provided

Qiuyuan Chen: Indiana University – Peking University Staff Exchange Program

Qiuyuan Chen, from the Graduate School at Peking University in Beijing, China,
visited the IU campus in the month of January. She was part of
a staff exchange program between IU and PKU.

This January, 2012, the Indiana University Graduate School hosted a Chinese colleague through a staff exchange program between IU and the Graduate School at Peking University (PKU) in Beijing, China. Qiuyuan Chen spent the month meeting with her counterparts at the IU Graduate School, Office of the Registrar and other academic and administrative units.

The lake and water tower in Peking University.
The stone fish in the foreground is a remnant from
the Old Summer Palace just north of the campus.

“I think the biggest difference [between IU and PKU Graduate Schools] is the administrative system. IU is highly decentralized and we [PKU] are very centralized. For us, it’s an office-oriented system, but here it is position-oriented. I think it is easier for us to do teamwork and here literally there is only one person in charge of one field of work and people here are more specialized for that reason. For us, it’s easier to transfer from one office [position] to another,” Chen said.

“Some of the ordinary processes are similar,” she said, "and there are many common elements between our universities.”

For example, PKU and IU have about the same number of students and both universities have a strong focus on the arts, languages and humanities as well as the natural and social sciences. To give a localized comparison, if PKU is like IU, then TsingHua University, next door to PKU in Beijing, is like Purdue.

The PKU Graduate School is located in Red Building No. 2.
The PKU campus was originally in a hutong area in downtown
Beijing, but in the 1950s it moved to an old palace grounds in the
northwest part of Beijing. The Graduate School is located in one
of the traditional style buildings from that palace.

“We also seem to have similar problems,” Chen said. “Students have a lot of pressure surrounding their dissertations both here and in China, especially the doctoral students. I spoke with an IU graduate student who attended PKU for her undergraduate degree, and she said it can be difficult to get the desired job after finishing a PhD because doctoral students want the invested time and money in their education to be returned. Students in China have the same career pressures.”

“These days graduate educators in China are paying more attention to quality rather than just quantity,” Chen said.

“I believe that PKU and IU will discover they have a lot they can learn from one other. The exchange program is a good way to help us to communicate, and itself is a good example of graduate education internationalization as well.”

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Media Contact: Erika Lee, ebigalee@indiana.edu