Graduate Student Associations (GSAs) have been established in every engineering department at UCI to improve the doctoral educational experience for graduate students. In general, we provide panels to help students succeed (funding panels and review, preliminary and qualifying exam preparation, etc), social activities to create a sense of community within departments, and provide a space for students to express ideas for what can be done better. As a young and dynamic university we all value and appreciate the growth and ability of change that is unique to UCI. As such, all GSA members commit time to these activities without measurable incentive, solely to assist in the mission of making UCI even better.
In the past year, the presidents of the engineering GSAs have discussed common room for improvement. One thing that we have identified is that students want to have more opportunities to present their research. While at UCI we have many great resources to develop our public speaking and presentation skills, there are few on-campus opportunities to practice them. Additionally, we have found that even within departments there is little communication between labs about the current state of research projects.
To address this, we have assembled a team of representative graduate students from all engineering disciplines. We would like to propose the following plan of action; an annual Engineering Research Conference. This symposium would be held on an annual basis in the spring quarter and align with recruitment events. All engineering graduate students and faculty would be invited to participate. The goals, schedule, budget, and details for the symposium are detailed below.
Goals:
1. Increase opportunities for communicating research within the engineering community.
- Forging collaborations and keeping up to date with the work of other labs.
- Provide a space for disseminating research and getting feedback outside of individual lab meetings, which would greatly benefit research projects.
- A more equitable experience (many students do not have the funding or other opportunities to present work at conferences off campus until their 4th or 5th year of study).
2. Provide a celebration of the accomplishments of the UCI engineering community and drive continued hard work and innovation.
3. Create a deeper sense of community within engineering at UCI, leading to greater retention and a better graduate student experience.
4. Showcase research to industry providing collaboration, networking, and future employment opportunities.
5. Provide a compelling example of the excellence in research at UCI for incoming recruits, to help recruit the best and the brightest graduate students.