Graduate School

Graduate School Newsletter

February 22, 2022


Table of contents

Click on a category name to view that section, or click on a headline to read the full announcement.

Faculty and Staff

Admissions

Graduate Student Success

Opportunities for Graduate Students

Funding for Graduate Students

Upcoming Events and Deadlines

 

Faculty and Staff

Come cheer on 50 graduate students from 24 programs at the first round of the 3MT on February 23 from 10:15-3:45 in 206 and 207 Union! Visit the 3MT site to view a schedule of presentations. Don’t forget to save time on your calendar for the exciting final round of competition on March 1, 5:30pm in the Alumni Center.

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The February Brown Bag topic has been titled Using the Graduate Student Annual Review Process to Support Graduate Students. In this session, Dr. Megan Kennelly, Dr. Michael Veeman, and Dr. Jenny Bormann will talk about how strong of a tool the annual review is in building a positive grad student culture and to establishing a strong, positive, relationship between faculty and students. This brown bag will be held via zoom on February 22nd 11:30am - 1:00pm.

At this time all Graduate Council and subcommittee meetings are held in person with a Zoom option. There is an exception for the Assessment and Review Committee so that they can continue the use of collaborative software. Please continue to attend in person when possible.

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Elections for service on the Graduate Council are coming up! Here’s a timeline of events:

    • Thu, 24 FEB: Call for Nominations for Graduate Faculty to serve on Grad Council (3-year terms) goes out via listserv.
    • Thu, 17 MAR: Nomination deadline.
    • Thu, 24 MAR: Qualtrics ballots e-mailed to Graduate Faculty for voting.
    • Mon, 04 APR: Deadline for ballot to be completed.
    • Mon, 11 APR: New elected members informed and announced.
    • Tue, 03 MAY: New members installed at Graduate Council meeting.

Departments may have only one representative on Council. Academic Area representatives must be from at least two colleges. See the by-laws of the Graduate Council for complete election procedures in Chapter 6 of the Graduate Handbook.

 

College representative vacancies:

    • Technology and Aviation, 1
    • Health and Human Sciences, 1
    • Veterinary Medicine, 1

 

Academic Area representative vacancies:

    • Applied Natural Sciences, 1
    • Basic Natural Sciences, 2
    • Social Sciences, 2

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The Graduate School's Roundtable Discussions on Graduate Faculty Roles this semester will start with sessions on Friday, February 25 from 1:30-3:00 and Monday, February 28, from 1:00-2:30. We will discuss the roles of Graduate Faculty members in teaching, advising, and serving on dissertation committees, as well as in program development. Fill the survey here to sign up or express interest in future roundtables.

Discussions at the Graduate School's Recruiting Strategies Roundtables led to a list of Graduate Recruiting Ideas for departments.

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The milestones dashboard is a powerful tool for observing institutional, college, departmental, and program trends in graduate student progress. Additionally, graduate programs are finding the dashboard to be a useful tool for monitoring individual student progress. It’s important to keep in mind that the dashboard tables are generated from KSIS data, and there are limitations to what KSIS data can tell us about a student’s personal experiences. For example, in displaying total time in a program, the dashboard does not have the capability to subtract semesters when a student stops out of a program, and certainly does not tell us the reason for the stop out. However, the dashboard can serve as a starting point to identify such cases and then dig deeper to determine whether there are common threads among students who have a longer than average time to degree. Please contact Dr. Megan Miller (mmmiller@ksu.edu) for guidance on using the dashboard or if you have questions.

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In January, the Graduate School contacted over 125 graduate students who were on academic probation because their cumulative GPA was below a 3.0. Some students entered academic probation at the end of the fall semester, and others were continuing from a previous semester. We requested the students to meet with their faculty advisor or major professor (or graduate program director) to develop a student success action plan to facilitate their return to good academic standing. About a third of the students have submitted a success plan.

Lessons learned so far:

    • A number of students were on probation because they had an incomplete course grade in a previous semester that was never changed and rolled to an F. Angie Pfizenmaier (atk@ksu.edu) is leading a project to share incomplete grade reports with programs each semester. Use of these reports should help reduce the number of students on probation each semester.
    • Some students are more than a year into their program and do not have a major professor or program of study on file. Working with students to submit a program of study by the end of their first semester (if enrolled full-time) or after 9 credit hours (if enrolled part-time) provides them a clear path for completing program requirements.

 

Dr. Megan Miller (mmmiller@ksu.edu) is currently working with graduate programs to ensure each student has a student success plan to help them be successful this semester and return to good academic standing.

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The Graduate Student Council is calling for faculty, professional staff, and post-doc judge volunteers for the annual K-State Graduate Research, Arts, and Discovery (K-GRAD) Forum. The Forum begins with poster presentations on March 30, followed by oral presentations on March 31. All presentations will be held in the K-State Student Union. The time commitment for judges will be 1.5-3.5 hours. If interested in serving as a judge, please complete a brief online form to express your interest and provide your availability on March 30 and 31.

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Feb 22

Graduate School Brown Bag: Using the Graduate Student Annual

Review Process to Support Graduate Students

Zoom: 11:30am-1:00pm
Feb 28

DGF Speaker Barbara Valent: Leadership Studies Town Hall: 3:30pm-4:30pm
Mar 1

Three Minute Thesis competition final round
Mar 22

Graduate School Brown Bag: Commencement

Eisenhower 121/Zoom: 11:30am-1:00pm
Mar 23

Building GS Strategic Leadership Roles: A Town Hall Meeting

Leadership Studies Town Hall: 2:00pm-4:00pm
Apr 19

Graduate School Brown Bag: Graduate Milestones Dashboard Part III

Eisenhower 121/Zoom: 11:30am-1:00pm
May 3

Commerce Bank & WT Kemper Foundation DGF

Award Nominations Due
May 17

Graduate School Brown Bag: End of the Semester Social

Eisenhower 121/Zoom: 11:30am-1:00pm
Apr 4-8

Graduate Student Appreciation Week

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Admissions

Graduate admissions are currently experiencing a peak in applications submitted for processing. Thank you to you all for your efforts to recruit students!

One member of our admissions team is on leave, so the processing time takes a bit longer than during normal times when we have three processes going. We appreciate your patience as we are handling this good volume of applications!

During the month of January, the graduate school processed about 500 graduate applications. We have processed over 400 applications into mid-February. We have also processed receipt of more than 300 official transcripts this year. We are working hard to make sure admitted students are accepted as soon as possible.

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Graduate Student Success

Graduate students who are writing a thesis, dissertation, or report are encouraged to attend an ETDR templates training session February 28 at 1:00pm. Using a template early in the writing process makes it easy to correctly format a thesis, dissertation, or report.

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The Fall 2021 Incomplete grade reports for each academic program released the week of January 24th. Thank you for viewing the report. The Graduate School appreciates you and acknowledges you and our student success. Just as a reminder you can reach these files by logging in to Microsoft Teams.

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Opportunities for Graduate Students

  • Leadership Coaching: Opening up Possibilities

    To lead change requires us to see new possibilities. Coaching is a strategy for continual learning and courageous action. Participants of this session will develop a coach-like stance, and learn how to ask powerful questions to support their own and others’ learning and development, and make progress on personal and professional challenges. This session will be held March 1, 3:00-4:30pm, via Zoom and is part of the Graduate Student Leading Change workshop series.

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  • Leading with Your Strengths

    The Graduate Student Leading Change workshop series kicks off February 23 with “Leading with Your Strengths” from noon-1:30pm via Zoom. In this session, participants will learn a strengths-based approach that supports personal well-being, building positive relationships, improving engagement and fostering a positive workplace culture. Completion of this session will count towards the GSC Professional Development certificate.

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  • Money Hour Series

    The GSC and Powercat Financial are hosting a new virtual workshop series for graduate students to support their financial literacy. The series will be hosted by Jackie Cummings Koski, a K-State masters student in personal financial planning and a peer counselor for Powercat Financial. Jackie has been featured in multiple media channels (CNBC, Forbes, MarketWatch, Business Insider) sharing her financial expertise and her story of becoming financially independent. The first workshop will be March 7 at 5pm and will address credit and student loans. Students should register for Zoom information and may submit questions in advance.

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Interview season is upon us! Whether applying for graduate school, professional school, or a job, K-State’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) has several ways to help students prepare for interviews to maximize chances of receiving an offer. Check out “Rocking Your Interviews,” a resource video from Dr. Don Saucier’s YouTube channel, Engage the Sage.

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  • Visual Thinking Strategies Communicating Complexity Across Disciplines

    Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a well-researched facilitation protocol that uses the inherent ambiguity of deliberately chosen art images to foster development of observation, critical thinking, and communication skills. It has been used in medical and engineering education and other domains where students benefit from attention to these skill areas. Linda Duke, Director, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, will lead a participatory demonstration for graduate students to experience VTS, consider how it might be applied to their work, and ask questions. This session will be held March 8, 2:00-3:00pm, via Zoom. Students may register for Zoom access from the GSC Professional Development page.

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Funding for Graduate Students

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  • Office of Science Graduate Student Research Awards

    The SCGSR program supports awards to outstanding U.S. PhD students in qualified programs to conduct part of their graduate thesis research at a Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory. This opportunity is expected to advance the students’ overall theses while providing access to the expertise, resources, and capabilities available at the host DOE laboratories. Application deadline: May 5, 5pm EST

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Upcoming Events and Deadlines

Feb 23

Three Minute Thesis competition first round

Leading Change Workshop
Feb 28

ETDR Template Session

Understanding Academic Publishing
Mar 1

Three Minute Thesis competition final round

Leading Change Workshop
Mar 2

Sarachek Predoctoral Honors Fellowship and Travel Awards in Molecular Biology application due
Mar 7

Grad Money Hour
Mar 8

GSC Professional Development Visual Thinking Strategies
Mar 11

International Student Scholarships application deadline

Leading Change Workshop
Apr 4-8

Graduate Student Appreciation Week
May 3

University Distinguished Professors Excellence in Doctoral Studies Award applications due

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