What can the council do for you?

Are you having roadblocks or struggles in your graduate experience? Do you think this is emblematic of a systemic issue or something that can be solved through better organization or communication? Please reach out to us at pbsegradcouncil-group@ucsc.edu to let us know what your issue is and your idea for a solution. You don’t need to have a fully-fledged idea, we’re here to help figure these things out.

Examples of experiences/issues we can help with:

• Quals process is confusing or doesn’t feel like it’s serving your academic journey
  • Possible solutions we can help with:
    • Design a seminar walking people through the process
    • Create a pdf or website walking people through the process
    • Create a library of past quals presentations for each department
    • Advocate for a redesign of a portion of the quals process
• Rotation system is not working for you or feels biased
  • Possible solutions we can help with:
    • Advocate for more thoughtful rotation design with faculty
    • Advocate for obligate pairing of rotation student with seasoned graduate student or postdoc for better mentorship
    • Advocate for more structure within the rotation
    • Create a library of past rotation presentations/posters for folks to work off of
• You don’t feel like you get enough structured mentoring, or your relationship with your PI feels fraught
  • Possible solutions we can help with:
    • Design better yearly IDP (Individual Development Plan) systems and implementation of those systems and advocate for them in all departments
    • Advocate for better systems of secondary PI mentorship across all departments
    • Work on designing a better system for mediation between students and PIs and advocate for implementation

Remember that systemic change takes time and the solutions we work on may not resolve your immediate experience but will instead hopefully make it so no one else has to have the same experience in the future. If any of the possible problems/solutions above strike a chord with you or if you have a different one of your own, please reach out so that we know what is most important and impactful for our community. See the contact us page if you want to talk to someone specifically in your department instead of the whole council.