Sara Petrosillo

A robust professional and personal support system is essential to the success of any graduate student, and Sara Petrosillo finds her strength in two home bases: UC Davis’ English Department and Solano Park, one of the university’s best-known student family housing complexes.

Petrosillo lauds her department and particularly her dissertation committee members, professors Seeta Chaganti, Claire Waters, and Noah Guynn, for the time and care they have invested in shaping students’ careers and the steps to pursue those goals. “They have been so helpful at each stage of my graduate degree,” she says. “Not only have they supported me and inspired my research, they have demonstrated how to be excellent teachers and innovators in humanistic studies.” Her department has helped her find and apply for fellowships, travel grants, and research, conference and teaching opportunities; connect with faculty in other departments with critically relevant knowledge and expertise; and take advantage of professional development opportunities, such as workshops in prospectus and article writing, and gaining interviewing experience.

This cumulative support is evident in the accolades Petrosillo has received. She is currently a grateful recipient of the 2015–16 Bilinski Fellowship, which supports students in the advanced stages of doctoral study. The fellowship allows her to focus exclusively on writing; supports travel engagements, such as a recent trip to Duke University and two upcoming conferences in Europe to present research and do archival research; and gave her the opportunity to attend a falconry apprentice seminar in the Sierra foothills.

Another triumph is the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award in 2015 for an English course she taught in fall of 2014—an award granted to less than 0.5% of the graduate teaching assistants. “This is probably the achievement that I am most proud of,” she says. Not only did her students learn to navigate reading, reciting, and writing about difficult medieval poetry, but their class discussions challenged Petrosillo to think more deeply about her own research.

Other awards that have helped ease the financial burden of heavy conference travel include the Graduate Studies Spring Travel Award in 2014, when she traveled to Iceland to present at the New Chaucer Society conference, and Graduate Student Association spring travel awards for conferences in 2012, 2013, and 2015.  

Travel has taken Petrosillo from an undergrad degree in Maine to a few years in Southern Italy. When considering relocation, California seemed to offer the best climate and culture, and UC Davis’ Medieval Studies faculty was the top academic draw. But it was her visit to Solano Park with her partner and three-week-old child that cemented her decision.

Solano Park has, for the past six years, has been the backbone of her family. Housing in this spacious, park-like complex is available primarily to full-time students with children, and the demographics perfectly suit Petrosillo’s family, now four members strong. Supporting a family on a graduate student salary, combined with the arduous hours, is challenging at best, presenting demands that often keep students from finishing their degrees. But Petrosillo and her neighbors bolster and lean on each other for nearly everything, from personal to professional support: “For compassion, laughter, food, child care, maternity clothes and hand-me-downs—and for conference paper rehearsing, fellowship application editing, mock interviews, qualifying exam preparation, or social program and financial support applications that can take hours to understand and complete!”

Hands down, Petrosillo says, UC Davis’ family housing has been the most important factor in her happiness and success during grad school. “I couldn’t imagine a healthier atmosphere than Davis. The family housing hasn’t just balanced work and life—it has shaped my family’s life and made it possible to intertwine work and life with the best possible outcome. I cannot wait to bring everything that I’ve learned to a new community where I can be a passionate and compassionate scholar, teacher, mentor, and neighbor.”