This workshop offers valuable insights into the professional aspects of graduate life and strategies to assist incoming graduate students with their transition to the new academic environment and the challenges that lay ahead. Graduate level work is considerably different from the work completed during the undergraduate years. The expectations and overall responsibilities of a graduate student are greater and more challenging than those of an undergraduate student. These responsibilities expand even further as one inches toward the PhD. In an effort to familiarize new students with the multiple missions and expectations of graduate school, the proposed workshop will examine the following:
As a sequel to Graduate Life 1, this workshop explores the campus environment, the city of Binghamton, and basic strategies for residing in the local community. Participants will learn about housing options, their legal rights as tenants, transportation, budgeting, and their representation on campus by the Graduate Student Organization (GSO). Binghamton University is one of the unique institutions where an independent social and political body represents graduate students. GSO strives toward the development of a cohesive graduate community on campus by supporting social organizations, reimbursement for conference and research travels, and assisting with conflict resolution between students and faculty. This workshop will address such matters as the following questions:
Both workshops will offer valuable strategies and mechanisms for strengthening academic writing skills and communication in Graduate School including the location of writing resources at Binghamton University in general, and the libraries in particular. The session will be divided into two parts. The first part will explore how best to contact your subject librarian, how to use citing tools that are available for graduate students, how to request a study carrel, how to use Iliad, and how to request documents from the archives.
The second part of the workshop will examine what constitutes a well organized, good paper including what is a conference paper, what is a publishable paper, or what a final paper should look like.
Although both workshops focus on library research and writing, the underlying themes and examples would be drawn from different fields: one drawn from the social sciences and humanities and one for the STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) sciences since their format and research methods differ.
Specific questions to be answered in this workshop are:
This interactive session will formally launch the peer mentoring program by matching new graduate students with more advanced graduate students. Once the program is launched, the core goals of this ongoing series will be two-fold: i) to help new graduate students make a smooth transition to graduate life at Binghamton University by pairing them with advanced students who have successfully made the transition; ii) to offer academic leadership opportunities to the advanced scholars, particularly those who have not had the opportunity to teach or lead other students during their course of graduate study.
The partnerships will be based on similarities in disciplines and related interests. Prior to the session, new students and leadership volunteers will complete a personal/academic profile, and this information will be used to create the partners. New mentors will undergo training and this will followed by regular mentor- mentee meetings throughout the semester. We will have continual feedback from both mentors and mentee.
Navigating graduate school can be very stressful, anxiety-ridden, with potentially adverse impacts on the emotional, social and physical wellbeing of students. The purpose of this workshop is to raise awareness of these issues and to offer valuable strategies for coping with these challenges including specific mechanisms to relieve the anxieties that characterize graduate life. Students will learn how best to implement healthier life styles to channel through their course of graduate study and beyond. Various wellness programs offered on campus including nutritional programs, physical exercise and counseling programs will also be discussed.
