In a new workshop designed and implemented by GWIS, students learned how to better communicate between across different cultural divides. Our facilitator, Dr. Amer Ahmed, led the group through some activities/exercises as well as some more lecture-style teaching about intercultural communication and competency, with a mix of theoretical models and relatable examples. There was some […]
Writeup
UMass Grad Students Dive into Improv
Last Thursday at our Improve Your Communication with Improv! Workshop, six UMass graduate students from different areas of STEM came together to loosen up and practice some exercise that will help them become more effective communicators. We played games such as “Who Am I?” (pictured below) and “Presentation Karaoke”, and students were asked to explain […]
Teaching in All Types of Classrooms
We had a great time holding the Teaching in All Types of Classrooms Situation Room, and we hope you were there to participate! This event started with a brief introduction to teaching pedagogy and what are some of the most common mistakes made while teaching by the panel of experts. The panel for this situation […]
AAAS Fellows Panel- Bridging Policy and Careers
This event informed the graduate community about the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship, and connected event participants to past fellows that could serve as a resource for future applications. It was applicable to all STEM students as well as students from other disciplines, and clarified questions regarding the application process, life in Washington DC, and […]
Diversity in STEM: Best Practices in Faculty and Graduate Student Recruitment and Retention
At this event, we wanted to get an external perspective of Diversity in STEM fields in academia. We wanted to look at the faculty situation and had a great speaker from UDel who is currently a dean of engineering. Professor Pamela Cook is a applied mathematician and she shared her thoughts about the field overall in […]
Career Exploration Round Table with Jodie Lutkenhaus
For this event, we were able to learn more about the experience of successful women in academia. Professor Lutkenhaus’s research is currently blowing up and it was a great way to explore her journey. We purposely kept this small so that people could directly interact and have a candid discussion. The room location also helped […]
The Imposter Syndrome Luncheon hosted by GSCA and GWIS
This was a great event for anyone feeling overwhelmed by grad school. The Impostor Syndrome is a common phenomenon among graduate students, characterized by a feeling of personal inadequacy. It’s certainly something that I’ve struggled with throughout my three years at UMass, and unfortunately, the panelists confirmed that these feelings rarely go away completely, but […]
Last Week’s Summer Graduate Student/Faculty Luncheon
The GWIS Faculty Luncheon was a phenomenal success! We had an enormous quantity of sandwiches, salads, and cookies from Black Sheep and Panera. For the event, we had almost 45 graduate students and 8 faculty attend. Everyone enjoyed the conversations and learned a lot from talking with faculty and other graduate students. We were so […]
Eureka! Summer Workshops highlights!
July was a big month for outreach! This was the 3rd summer of the Eureka! program! Eureka is a collaboration between Girls, Inc. of Holyoke and UMass Amherst College of Natural Sciences. Middle school and high school aged girls from Holyoke and neighboring communities come to UMass all day through the month of July to participate […]
Mastering the Poster Session – Another Awesome Situation Room
We are very proud of last week’s Situation Room, which focused on the ever-present Poster Session. We know – they can be the bane of every graduate student’s conference, difficult to prepare for, full of anxiety. We had 4 volunteers present their posters to a panel consisting of a post-doc, faculty, and graduate student who […]