The Academic Committee reviews the requests for the Student Professional Development Support Fund. This committee also oversees actions, advocacy measures, and events to further the scholastic livelihood of graduate students (such as the 3-Minute Thesis Competition). If you have any ideas or concerns, please email us.
Upcoming Academic Committee Events
Student Professional Development Support Fund
The GSC Student Professional Development Support Fund is an initiative that aims to support graduate students in their participation in conferences, professional and leadership development, and service.
The GSC Supporting Fellow Grad Students
Emma Templeton’s Convention Experience, Supported by the GSC Professional Development Support Fund
I recently attended the annual convention for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Francisco, CA. I was delighted to give a data blitz talk on my work titled, "Fast response times signal social connection during conversation" as part of the Shared Reality and Authenticity Preconference.
In my PhD research, I've been exploring how different aspects of conversation behavior relate to feelings of connection between conversation partners. At this conference, I discussed recent findings demonstrating that people respond faster to each other in conversations rated as more connected.
I got a lot of great questions and feedback after my presentation and had the opportunity to learn about new and exciting work that others were doing as well. This was also my first in-person conference since March of 2020. It was so refreshing and energizing to reconnect with old friends!
I'm so grateful for the financial support provided by the Graduate Student Council Student Professional Development Support Fund. Thank you!
Chris Welker’s Convention Experience, Supported by the GSC Professional Development Support Fund
Thanks to the generous support of the Graduate Student Council’s Student Professional Development Support Fund, I attended the annual meeting for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Francisco. At the conference, I presented a poster titled “The benefits of diversified social interaction.” My presentation covered a series of studies which demonstrate that, when people feel better, they also tend to talk to a greater variety of conversation partners.
Presenting at the conference has helped me push my research forward. For example, feedback from other attendees helped me figure out what other people find interesting about my work. I’m currently writing up these results, so this feedback has been critical for figuring out how to frame the paper in a way that’s interesting to readers.
In addition, presenting my work helped me spark new collaborations with other interested researchers. One of the main benefits of attending a conference in-person is the ability to strike up casual conversations with other researchers. Thanks to these chats, I met people who are interested in the same questions and would like to collaborate.
I’m very grateful for the GSC’s financial support! Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to attend this conference and benefit from meeting other researchers in-person. Thank you so much for your help!
Saifur Rahman’s Presentation Experience, Supported by the GSC Professional Development Support Fund
Last December (the year 2021), I was lucky to present my research work in the biggest venue for material scientists and engineers called the Material Research Society. There, I did a presentation on an important class of 3D material which is multifunctional in nature with enhanced sensitivity to a multitude of stimuli. The presentation showed a series of data on different kinds of sensing stemming from a single type of architected material platform. Presenting at this conference was a great opportunity to directly get feedback from the academic giants in this field. This is a faster way of getting peer review than the traditional journal reviewing process. Thanks to this feedback, we did reframe and rewrote the papers and ultimately got accepted the work in a high impact factor (9.43) journal named, CellReports. In addition to this, I got to meet young researchers from reputed universities from all over the world by simply striking a casual conversation about their research. Thanks to these conversations, I could enlarge my academic connections both in LinkedIn and Google Scholar, which will help me thrive later in my academic/industry career. I am very grateful to the Graduate Student Council’s support for my registration and visit to the conference. It would not have been possible to meet these many researchers in my area and widen the horizon of my knowledge without their help.