Announcements for Current Students

Student Resource Guide – Spring 2022

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There are folks across the university ready to provide support and guidance, but you need to reach out for help. Listed below are offices you may reach out to for assistance. Reaching out early is key as there are more options to explore earlier in a semester.

ACADEMIC RESOURCES

Academic or Faculty Advisor:  A student’s major advisor is a resource in navigating academic challenges. Some academic departments also have program staff that can help you determine next steps academically and connect you to resources.  If you are a graduate student, make sure you discuss all possible options with your major advisor. If you aren’t sure who your advisor is, you can find this information in StudentAdmin.

Advising Centers: Each school or college as well as each regional campus has an office or center with oversight over undergraduate advising. These centers/offices serve as a resource to students, faculty and staff on a wide range of advising matters, including:

  • Permission to register for excess credit or add or drop a course
  • Requesting a late withdrawal from a course
  • Academic probation, dismissal, and appeals of academic dismissal
  • Requesting a general education substitution

To learn more about Advising resources, visit the University Advising website.

Academic Support Services: Graduate and undergraduate students can seek academic support from the Writing Center and the Academic Achievement Center.  The Writing Center provides online writing assistance to both undergraduate and graduate students.  An overview of support for graduate students is available at this link; undergraduates can view this link to learn about available services. The Academic Achievement Center (AAC) offers an array of academic support services, including coaching, mentoring, and student success workshops. Although many of the offerings are geared toward undergraduate students, graduate students can contact the AAC directly to discuss specific support needs and will be referred to available resources. Undergraduate students may seek support from the Q-Center for classes that have a quantitative component. Specifically, the Q-Center provides direct assistance to students via peer tutoring, review sessions, and the creation of innovative learning tools.

Course Instructors:  Students can speak with their course instructor to discuss options within the course, such as opportunities to make up work or extra time on an assignment, as well as the possibility of an Incomplete grade.  The Graduate and Undergraduate Catalogs provide more information on Incomplete grades for students considering this option.

Tutoring: Students in need of tutoring may find help within specific academic programs. Below is a list of tutoring resources students may want to access for potential help.

 

The UConn Library is available to help students with research assistance.

STORRS UNDERGRADUATE RESOURCE

Dean of Students: Staff in the Dean of Students Office are available to support undergraduate students with academic, personal, and other concerns that impact their student experience. Staff in this office provide support without judgement and can help students as they consider completing current courses, rescheduling final exams, or processing a withdrawal or cancellation for those considering taking a break. To schedule a meeting please call 860-486-3426 or use the chat feature on our website to request a meeting with an Assistant Dean. The Dean of Students Office also offers drop-in support, Monday through Friday from 1:00pm-3:30pm with no appointment needed at that time.

 

REGIONAL UNDERGRADUATE RESOURCE

Regional Student Services Staff: Undergraduates at the regional campuses needing support of an academic or personal nature should connect with the Student Services staff on their home campus. Regional campus Student Services staff can help students as they consider completing current courses, rescheduling final exams, and processing a withdrawal or cancellation if you are considering taking a break. Visit this website to schedule an appointment with a Regional Student Services staff member.

GRADUATE STUDENT RESOURCE

Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Affairs, The Graduate School:  The Graduate School staff can answer questions about both academic and non-academic resources that are available to graduate students and advise on strategies for navigating challenges.  If you are struggling to determine what academic resources are available, you can email gradschool@uconn.edu and a staff member can help you. Graduate students who feel the need to step away from their academic studies temporarily or to withdraw from their program can find more information about taking a leave of absence or voluntary separation at The Graduate School website or by emailing gradseparation@uconn.edu.

HEALTH AND ACCESS SERVICES

Center for Students with Disabilities:  Students may want to explore the possibility of accessing accommodations with the Center for Students with Disabilities (CSD). To begin the process of requesting accommodations, visit csd.uconn.edu and click on the MyAccess button to get registered. You will then be assigned to work with a Disability Services Provider who will engage with you to discuss your concerns and appropriate accommodations. Students requesting accommodations will need to provide supporting documentation. Please share the guidelines with your provider to obtain the appropriate documentation. Contact Timothy Smagacz, Program Assistant, at (860) 486-2020 or myaccess-csd@uconn.edu with questions regarding documentation.

Student Behavioral Health Services (SBHS) – The Student Behavioral Health Service (SBHS) provides evaluation and treatment to medical, dental and graduate students at UConn Health. To learn more about the resources available visit the SBHS website.

Student Health and Wellness – Mental Health: SHAW provides mental health services to promote the emotional, relational, and academic potential of all undergraduate and graduate students. SHAW-Mental Health offers:

  • Rapid access screening appointments
  • Emergency/Crisis assessment
  • Individual and group therapy
  • Medication management
  • Mindfulness/Meditation/Yoga workshops
  • Referral and off-campus support services

 

Storrs students (undergrad or graduate) may access SHAW-MH by calling 860-486-4705 or schedule a screening appointment online.

Regional campus students (undergrad or graduate) seeking mental health resources will find campus specific contact information at this link.

We are here to help. Please reach out to one of the many offices listed and the staff and faculty will try their best to provide support and identify solutions. Questions about this information should be directed to dos@uconn.edu or gradschool@uconn.edu.

 

Apply to Graduate

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Greetings Graduate Students,

Are you graduating this semester? Did you know you must apply for graduation online via your Student Administration account? Did you know the deadline is the end of the 4th week of the semester?

If you missed the deadline, please apply ASAP in order to not delay the conferral of your degree. Summer candidates are asked to apply no later than March 1st to ensure their information makes the Commencement publication.

Information regarding graduation can be found on the Commencement webpage.

UConn Health Graduate students can find commencement information at the following link: UConn Health Commencement. 

Additional important dates and deadlines can be viewed on the Academic Calendar page. Friday, April 22, 2022 is the last day to upload a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation in Submittable to qualify for a Spring 2022 conferral date. Visit the Master’s Degrees page or the Doctoral Degrees page for instructions and information about applying for graduation, submitting required paperwork, and uploading your thesis or dissertation.

All students are advised to review their transcript to ensure that it is in agreement with their plan of study. Any missing grades, documents, or discrepancies between a student’s plan of study and transcript can result in a delay of degree conferral or cancellation of degree candidacy.

*Important Note: Graduate students do NOT submit plans of study via Student Administration.  Plans of study are submitted via email to degreeaudit@uconn.edu, and can be found on the Master’s Degree page, the Doctoral Degrees page or the Forms Section of the Registrar’s Office webpage

Navigating Graduate School with Disabilities

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Join Us!

Learn from graduate students, faculty, and staff on their experiences navigating graduate school with disabilities.

Thursday, February 10, 2022

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

WebEx (Virtual – link will be emailed after registration)

For more details and to register for the event, click here.

Captioning and ASL interpreters will be provided at the event. If there are other access elements we can help with, please contact: cinnamon.adams@uconn.edu

More Information

The Graduate School recently polled UConn graduate students who identified as having a disability. The results of the poll revealed several things. First, many of our grad students do not “disclose” their disability to anyone at the university, including CSD (the Center for Students with Disabilities), for a variety of reasons. Even among those students who do receive accommodations through CSD, many do not disclose to their advisers, supervisors, or colleagues due to fears of stigma and othering. This tells us that there is a need at UConn to initiate a broader conversation that addresses the unique needs and experiences of graduate students with disabilities. 

Another thing we heard is a desire for community. For many disabled grad students, our only exposure to disability is through CSD, which, while absolutely crucial for our success, is by its very nature focused on disability as a problem to be solved or overcome. For many of us, our disability is much more than that; it is a central part of our identity and our lived experience. We hope to develop, over the coming years, a community where disabled members of the UConn community can joyfully connect with one another in a way that is not clinical or remedial. 

To this end, a group of UConn graduate students, faculty, and staff are organizing an event in spring 2022 to begin a conversation about navigating graduate school with a disability, and we hope it is the first event of many. We invite the graduate education community to join us in a virtual panel event in February. The panelists will be graduate students and graduate faculty who will share their experiences of navigating academia with a disability. We have also invited University staff from CSD and Human Resources who are familiar with the accommodations process for grad students and grad assistants to share information and answer questions. 

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Meet & Greet: First Gen Grad Students

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First-Gen Graduate Student Meet & Greet

Hosted by The Office for Diversity and Inclusion
November 17 || 4-5:30pm || An Online Event

Join us to meet other First-Generation Graduate Students and learn more about UConn resources.

A first generation graduate student is defined as someone whose parents did not attend a four-year institution and/or have not earned a graduate degree.

See flyer below for additional details.

Graduate Student Meet and Greet (3)

Graduate Student Life Fair

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The Graduate School invites you to attend our new Graduate Student Life Fair.

This is a virtual program that provides graduate students with the opportunity to meet graduate student organizations, campus resources, and many more. Graduate students are a critical part of UConn and we want to help you enhance your graduate school experience through getting involved, knowing where to find support, and acquiring important skills through professional development opportunities.

Virtual Event: Wednesday, October 13, 2021

3:00pm to 5:00pm (EDT)

Click here to access the event website: grad.uconn.edu/events/graduate-student-life-fair

To visit the Graduate Student Life Fair refer to your email for the password to access the website. You can peruse the various categories and during the event visit with vendors through a virtual booth. Each virtual booth is labeled with the campuses that the resource/organization serves. We encourage you to ask questions and gather information to help determine next steps to participate and get involved.

We look forward to seeing you at this new and exciting opportunity for graduate students! If you have any questions, please contact Stuart Duncan via email at stuart.duncan@uconn.edu. If you need any information on accommodations or would like to request accommodations, please visit csd.uconn.edu/request-accommodations/

U21 3MT® People’s Choice Competition – Voting Now Open

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Join colleagues and students across UConn in supporting Shipra Malik’s game-changing research “Switching from Sickle to Non-Sickle” by voting for her in this year’s three-minute thesis competition (3MT).

See this year’s competitors here: https://universitas21.com/U213MT2021 And vote for Shipra here: https://universitas21.com/form/u21-3mt-r-2021-competition

The Graduate School’s BIPOC Graduate Student Support Report

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Following the national incidents of racism and racial injustice in Summer 2020, The Graduate School began to reflect, study, and discuss how we can better serve Black, Indigenous, and/or Person of Color (BIPOC) graduate students at the University of Connecticut. This process involved many campus partners, including graduate faculty, staff, cultural centers and other University offices, graduate student organizations, and graduate students, and it produced the following report, which is also available on The Graduate School’s website.

The report outlines our process, our findings, and, most importantly, our priorities. We will use these priorities to guide our work in 2021-2022 and beyond with the goal of improving the experiences of BIPOC graduate students at UConn.

While the written report is final, our work to support BIPOC graduate students is never done, and our approaches will evolve as we learn more from our attempts to improve the experience of BIPOC graduate students. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions, and we look forward to making a UConn a welcoming and inclusive place for all of our students.

Kent

—

Kent E. Holsinger
Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor
Vice Provost for Graduate Education
and Dean of The Graduate School
University of Connecticut

The Graduate School’s Strategic Plan

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I write today to share the final version of The Graduate School’s strategic plan outlining our vision for the future of The Graduate School. An earlier draft of this plan was greatly improved by feedback from the Executive Committee of The Graduate School and from a variety of campus partners, faculty, and staff.

The final version of our strategic plan introduces the vision to which The Graduate School aspires, and it describes our mission as a set of activities grouped within three broad themes—innovation, community, and service—that will guide our work through 2026.

Kent

—

Kent E. Holsinger
Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor
Vice Provost for Graduate Education
and Dean of The Graduate School
University of Connecticut

UConn’s PostDoc Seed Award Winners 2021

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The Graduate School is delighted to announce this year’s Postdoc Seed Award Recipients.

Dr. Maria Rodgers, from Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has been funded for the following project:

“I am isolating and examining various immune cells from a small fish species called the threespine stickleback. While I recently completed a project that determined what types of cells are present in various tissues of this fish species, still lacking in the field is knowledge of how specific cells are different between populations. For example, a specific cell type in one population might highly express gene x, but those same cells in another population do not express gene x. The more that we understand these nuances, the more we can 1. Understand evolutionary processes, and 2. Use cells as treatments/therapies.”

Dr. Matthew Sasaki, from Marine Sciences, has been funded for the following project:

“Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. As we saw during the recent heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, these events can be fatal for animals, which in turn has detrimental effects on ecosystem health and human activities. To better understand how extreme heat events may affect recreational and commercial fisheries around Connecticut, I am proposing to measure lethal thermal limits (the highest temperature an individual can survive) for copepods. These are abundant crustaceans that are an important source of food for many fish species.”

Dr. Heather A Kittredge, from Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has been funded for the following project:

“Evolution is often a slow process, but it can happen incredibly fast. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is one mechanism of evolution that is increasingly thought to drive rapid adaptation. HGT allows microbes to steal DNA from neighboring cells, making it a powerful evolutionary force. However, acquiring foreign DNA can also be lethal if it disrupts finely tuned cellular processes. Despite potential risks, computational models indicate that high rates of HGT facilitate microbial invasion. Here, I apply experimental evolution and genetics to understand if HGT helps microbes invade extreme environments, revolutionizing the contemporary idea that evolution is too slow to alter ecological processes like invasion success.”

UConn’s 3MT Winners 2021

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The Graduate School is delighted to announce this year’s 3MT winners.

In 1st place, Shipra Malik (Pharmaceutical Sciences) with her presentation “Precise and Safe Genome Engineering.” View her winning presentation here:


In 2nd place, Tommy Lee (Psychological Sciences) with his presentation “How the Brain Turns New Experiences into Memories.” View his presentation here:

In 3rd place, Corrin Laposki (Anthropology) with her presentation “Burning Questions: Oxygen Isotopes as Biomarkers of Air Pollution in Archaeological Bone.” View her presentation here: