Since their inception in Fall 2020, GradSWE at the University of Utah has strived to provide an inclusive, transparent, and beneficial resource to the underserved graduate engineering community on their campus, even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Integrity and trust have been guiding forces for us as they grow and develop their presence on campus via public messaging, open discussion, and transparent bookkeeping. They have successfully created a community of graduate students of diverse ethnicities, genders, technical specialties, professional goals, and more through this process. They value the unique perspectives that all GradSWE members bring to their weekly virtual committee meetings. Inclusivity is a key focus as they plan our regular social and mentorship events: not only do they carefully cultivate panelists and discussion topics to represent different aspects of the engineering experience, but they also ensure that intersectional swaths of the graduate community can be served and supported with each event. These events embody their approach to mutual support by providing invaluable opportunities for graduate students to connect, communicate, and collaborate in ways that were previously sparse or inaccessible on our campus. Developing such a strong GradSWE group at the University of Utah from the ground up, particularly during the pandemic, has required exceptional professional excellence in their leadership. They have collectively exercised and grown our abilities in digital communications, budgeting, teamwork, and more as they have navigated the unprecedented challenges posed to us in the founding of our section. The blending of these core values in their GradSWE group has laid a solid foundation for them to continue to grow and flourish and provide much-needed resources for our fellow graduate students, both now, during this tumultuous year, and in the future.
The University of Utah GradSWE group was founded to bridge the wide gap between their highly successful undergraduate SWE section and the underserved graduate community. This was an especially vital move for their section as the pandemic forced all student interaction off campus and into a new virtual format, leaving many new and current graduate students feeling isolated, disoriented, and unsure about their goals and studies. They hosted regular virtual socials open to all graduate and interested undergraduate students to facilitate connection during this challenging time. These socials provided a venue for graduate students to play online games, share their favorite recipes, talk about GradSWE’s trajectory, watch inspiring movies, listen to podcasts, do yoga, and more. These socials introduced new members to our group and served to strengthen existing bonds in their community, both of which enrich GradSWE as we continue to grow. Alongside our socials, we established a professional development and mentorship panel series to meet the vital need for guidance and advice in our community. Their core leadership members spent the fall semester gathering input and feedback from students, faculty, and postdocs regarding mentoring needs of the community and distilling down all feedback into actionable items that we address currently in our spring talk series. Topics include coping with COVID, effective communication, transitioning to industry, funding in graduate school, and technical reading, writing, and publishing. Thus far, our panelists have included psychologists, career counselors, professors, and industry engineers, among others. We send a biweekly GradSWE newsletter to communicate information about our events and relevant outside resources to our community and provide support to each other with virtual care packages during finals week. To ensure that GradSWE at the University of Utah builds a robust and lasting presence, we designed stickers and T-shirts and have distributed these at no cost to encourage participation and engagement.
The University of Utah GradSWE group was founded to bridge the wide gap between their highly successful undergraduate SWE section and the underserved graduate community. This was an especially vital move for their section as the pandemic forced all student interaction off campus and into a new virtual format, leaving many new and current graduate students feeling isolated, disoriented, and unsure about their goals and studies. They hosted regular virtual socials open to all graduate and interested undergraduate students to facilitate connection during this challenging time. These socials provided a venue for graduate students to play online games, share their favorite recipes, talk about GradSWE’s trajectory, watch inspiring movies, listen to podcasts, do yoga, and more. These socials introduced new members to our group and served to strengthen existing bonds in their community, both of which enrich GradSWE as we continue to grow. Alongside our socials, we established a professional development and mentorship panel series to meet the vital need for guidance and advice in our community. Their core leadership members spent the fall semester gathering input and feedback from students, faculty, and postdocs regarding mentoring needs of the community and distilling down all feedback into actionable items that we address currently in our spring talk series. Topics include coping with COVID, effective communication, transitioning to industry, funding in graduate school, and technical reading, writing, and publishing. Thus far, our panelists have included psychologists, career counselors, professors, and industry engineers, among others. We send a biweekly GradSWE newsletter to communicate information about our events and relevant outside resources to our community and provide support to each other with virtual care packages during finals week. To ensure that GradSWE at the University of Utah builds a robust and lasting presence, we designed stickers and T-shirts and have distributed these at no cost to encourage participation and engagement.
