Flying back to one’s home country to attend a parent’s funeral, dental emergencies, paying for unexpected prescription medication—these are examples of real issues graduate students experienced this academic year that Graduate Studies was able to help address because of The Graduate Studies Emergency Grant Program.
Advancing greater diversity in graduate education is an important topic in academia and one that UC Davis Graduate Studies is consistently pursuing, which is why Grad Studies recently hosted a virtual event, “Centering Equity in Graduate Education,” featuring newly appointed Education Commissioner for the State of California, Michal Kurlaender.
It’s often been said that the journey is more important than the destination—which is why for the 2023 UC Grad Slam season, UC Davis Graduate Studies is offering a more robust training schedule to help graduate students make the most out of this UC-wide competition.
When doctoral student Mahya Saffarpour accepted the invitation to speak on a UC Davis panel about the current uprising in Iran, she knew it was one more step in her activism that would prevent her from returning to her home country of Iran for the foreseeable future. However, it was something she and other members of the panel were motivated to do to help bring light to the uprising in the country.
It’s not often that administrators are described as guardian angels.
But that’s how students in the integrative pathobiology graduate group view the program’s popular coordinator, Erin Kent ’05, Ph.D.’10.
Their effusive nomination letters earned Kent the 2022 Outstanding Graduate Program Coordinator Award for her work during the past four years. Kent is the graduate program coordinator of the integrative pathobiology graduate group, as well as the veterinary scientist training program at UC Davis.
UC Davis postdoctoral scholar Marina LaForgia, Ph.D. '19 was recently (Nov. 3) named a 2022 For Women in Science (FWIS) Fellowship from L'Oréal USA, making her one of only five postdoctoral scholars in the United States to receive this grant.
LaForgia's research focuses on seed dispersal of plants to help determine which species will be most vulnerable to environmental change.
Climate anxiety is a valid, natural response to a changing, warming world. In 2020, more than half of Americans reported feeling anxious about climate change’s impact on their mental health, and most of us (67%) are anxious about its impact on the planet.
So what do you do when it’s your job to witness and document climate change?
Sentiments of gratitude for commitment and personalized attention to graduate students were among the testimonials spoken about this year’s winners of Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award winners.
“[This professor]’s passion for research really shines through with their hands-on involvement in student projects,” said one nomination letter.
“[This professor] has an impeccable ability to identify students’ strengths and set them up to succeed,” said another.
UC Davis wasn’t even on Daniel Castaneda’s radar when he was an undergraduate at UC Riverside; but it is where he ended up. And, because of the Envision UC Davis program, he discovered it was exactly where he was meant to be.
“The Envision program was the first time that I thought, I’m actually qualified to be in a program like this and people want me to come to their university,” Castaneda said. “It was nice to feel like I have a future opportunity here and there are people at UC Davis who want to help me do it.”
