blog posts

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  Meet Our Fellows: Matt Haugen, Fulbright Fellow studying Chinese Sport Industry

  Jun 5, 2018 8:00 am

  Last April, after nearly a yearlong process and an arduous wait, Matthew Haugen was notified that he had been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, which would allow him the opportunity to complete his dissertation research project studying sport education in China. His fellowship experience ultimately encouraged him to pivot his dissertation research project to better represent and inform the future he sees for himself as a scholar.

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  Meet Our Fellows: Lauren Hagler, Illinois Sloan Scholar

  Mar 9, 2016 9:15 am

  Lauren Hagler fell in love with Chemistry during her first general chemistry class at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. 

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  Meet Our Fellows: Ford Fellows on Campus

  Jul 26, 2017 10:00 am

  To increase diversity in higher education, the Ford Foundation offers predoctoral, dissertation, and postdoctoral fellowships. The goal is three-fold – increasing university’s ethnic and racial diversity, maximizing the educational benefits of diversity, and increasing the number of professors who use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.

  We talked to three University of Illinois graduate students from across campus who received a Ford Fellowship to learn more about the program.

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  Meet Our Fellows: Destiny Williams-Dobosz, NSF Graduate Research Fellow

  Jun 9, 2021 4:45 pm

  “Why is science so hard for students?” This question has intrigued Destiny Williams-Dobosz, a Ph.D. student in Educational Psychology and NSF Graduate Research Fellow.  

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  Meet Our Fellows: Daniel Raudabaugh, Schmidt Science Fellow

  Sep 9, 2019 8:00 pm

  It’s not every day you get to name a new species of fungi, but Daniel Raudabaugh (PhD Plant Biology, 2019) named two during his time as a graduate student at Illinois. Hongkongmyces snookiorum, named to honor his grandparents who let him collect on their land for his pilot study, and Coniella lustricola, Latin for “bog-loving.”

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  Meet Our Fellows: Busra Karagobek, Visiting Fulbright Fellow from Ankara, Turkey

  Feb 4, 2019 1:15 pm

  In this special "Meet Our Fellows" post, SAGE member Meera interviews Busra Karagobek, a PhD student from Turkey, who is currently studying at the University of Illinois under a Fulbright Scholarship. Let's meet Busra!

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  Meet Our Fellows: Biniyam Melesse, Fulbright-Hays DDRA Awardee

  Nov 1, 2021 4:30 am

  For Biniyam Melisse, winning a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowship was “a match made in heaven.” 

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  Meet Ana Martin: Fulbright Research Fellow in Barcelona, Spain

  Oct 21, 2015 4:00 pm

  Hola! My name is Ana Martin, I am a 6th year PhD student in Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Illinois. This month has been pretty exciting for me as it marks the beginning of my Fulbright Research Fellowship in Spain. Although it was a long process getting here, I’m excited to embark on the adventure of living abroad while I complete my PhD research at the University of Barcelona. For anyone interested in teaching English or conducting research abroad, I highly recommend applying for a Fulbright Fellowship. Hopefully through this post you will gain some insight into the application process and some aspects of moving abroad.

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  Maximize Your Sleep, Rest, and Work

  Oct 22, 2019 10:30 pm

  In our first post on sustainability and productivity, Daniel Wong outlined three principles for a sustainable and productive life and introduced how they can apply to each of three key areas of your life. In this post, we’ll explore some actionable ways that you can implement these principles in the areas of sleep, rest, and work.

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  Marrying Math and Art through Outreach

  Apr 7, 2016 10:15 am

  When Michelle Delcourt was presented with the choice between math or art summer programs in high school, she knew that by choosing mathematics, she’d never leave art far behind. “For me, math is a very creative process,” she said. “Math and art are very similar, the process of doing research in doing mathematics is similar to the way that I approach making a painting or seeing a piece of artwork.”

  Now, the 5th year PhD candidate and winner of this year’s Graduate Student Leadership Award uses her love of math and art to engage young girls and underrepresented minority students in math through community outreach programs. She hopes that her approach could help attract students who might not otherwise choose mathematics.

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  Managing Stress in a Job Search

  Oct 3, 2023 11:00 am

  You came to grad school seeking knowledge and skills that would prepare you for a meaningful career. Through hard work you’ve developed expertise in your field. While you can’t avoid the stress of a job search, you can make a plan to deal with it.

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  Making Your Skills Make Sense Outside Academia

  Mar 25, 2016 3:45 pm

  I’ll start with the good news: as a graduate student, you have a ton of fascinating, impressive skills. You know how to do lots of different things, and you know how to learn even more of them. The bad news really isn’t so bad, just initially frustrating: many of those amazing skills you have aren’t always going to make a ton of sense to people outside your field, let alone outside of academia entirely. At least not at first.

  Does that mean those skills aren’t valuable outside academia? Absolutely not. It just means you have to be creative and translate them. By shifting how you think and talk about your skills, you can help potential employers see the links between what you've done and what they need—and make it easier for them to hire you. And you’ll also make it easier for yourself to discover and explore broad, interesting career options.

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  Making the Most of Summer: Developing Skills Employers Want

  May 9, 2019 11:45 am

  As you move into your first summer as a graduate student at Illinois, now is a perfect milestone to take time to reflect on your progress as a student and scholar.

  Over the past year, you’ve gained new skills and knowledge in your field, but success beyond graduate school requires taking a comprehensive approach to your professional development. It requires more than technical skills and field-specific knowledge.

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  Making AI Legible with Clara Belitz and Ali Zaidi

  Mar 5, 2024 1:00 pm

  Bri Lafond (Writing Studies doctoral candidate and Graduate College Career Exploration Fellow) sits down with Clara Belitz (School of Information Sciences) and Ali Zaidi (Computer Science) for a dynamic conversation about how generative AI has the potential to affect a lot of different aspects of our day-to-day lives.

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  Looking for a mentoring opportunity? Why You Should Be A URAP Grad Mentor.

  Jun 21, 2016 4:30 pm

  Are you looking for a mentoring opportunity? Whether you are interested in a career in academia or industry, you should be.

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  Life and Research in the Time of COVID

  Apr 19, 2020 10:15 am

  On Thursday, April 9, PhD candidate Caitlin Brooks successfully defended her dissertation proposal on narratives of home at Burning Man, the global arts and culture festival held annually in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. The next day, Burning Man was cancelled for the first time in its 30+ year history. In this piece, she talks about what it looks like to pivot her research for the current times while honoring the loss caused by this disruption. 

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  Letters of Reference for Fellowship Applications

  Sep 14, 2017 11:45 am

  “Applications must include three letters of reference…”

  If you’re applying for graduate research fellowships and grants, you will likely find something along these lines in the application instructions. These letters are absolutely critical to the success of your application, yet you have no control over them — or do you?

  There is no “one-size-fits-all” set of guidelines on this topic. Letters of reference are by their very nature highly personal. Ways of building relationships will also vary according to discipline, the nature of the research, and the applicant’s career goal. That’s why it’s essential to get advice from your advisor and talk with other students in your program about their own successful strategies. However, there are a few overarching points to consider.

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  Let's Finish Strong!

  Apr 18, 2024 11:15 am

  Emily Wuchner shares tips and resources for decreasing stress and making the most out of the end of the semester. 

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  Lessons Learned from a PhD Student who Studies PhD Students’ Stress and Coping

  Dec 7, 2023 12:00 pm

  Joe Mirabelli has spent years studying graduate students' experiences with stress. Now he's sharing tips for managing the feelings and stressors of graduate school.

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  Lessons From a Grad Student Job Search Support Group

  Jun 4, 2019 1:45 pm

  This Spring, Mike Firmand started the first-ever job search support group for graduate students at the University of Illinois. Here's what Mike learned from listening to them and leading the group. Read the original post on Inside Higher Education.

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  Learn a New Skill (or a New Language!) for Free this Summer

  Jun 6, 2016 4:30 pm

  Summer “Break” can be a definite misnomer when you are a grad student. You may not be sitting in class or teaching section, but experiments, research, and writing don’t stop just because the academic year has come to a close. Even though you’re still busy, the change of schedule for summer can make it a great time to develop skills you need to be successful in graduate school. Whether you’re trying to master an old skill or need to pick up programming/conversational French/business-plan-writing or any of hundreds of other skills you can think of – the university has free and/or low-cost tools to help you get the job done. Read on for some of the services you should take advantage of before school’s back in session.

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  Leadership Award Winners Share What Inspires Their Service

  Feb 18, 2021 3:45 pm

  We caught up with the recipient and honorees of the 2020 Graduate Student Leadership Award to ask what inspired them to pursue leadership roles and what is most rewarding about their experience. Their responses are compassionate and inspiring.

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  Illinois Graduate Students Share Experiences from the Global Young Scientists Summit

  May 19, 2023 2:00 pm

  Ten graduate students from the University of Illinois traveled to Singapore for the Global Young Scientists Summit. We chatted with them about their experiences—and why others should consider attending. 

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  HRI Interseminars Spotlight: Toyosi Tejumade-Morgan

  Nov 9, 2022 8:00 am

  Toyosi Tejumade-Morgan (Theatre) shares her experiences as a member of the 2022–2023 graduate cohort for “Imagining Otherwise: Speculation in the Americas,” the inaugural Interseminars initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation. 

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  How to Keep Track of Your Stuff or Four Horror Stories in Two Parts

  Feb 10, 2021 10:00 am

  PART II: My file management horror stories and how they taught me to manage my data like a pro. 

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  How to Keep Track of Your Stuff or Four Horror Stories in Two Parts

  Feb 10, 2021 10:30 am

  PART I: My file management horror stories and how they taught me to manage my data like a pro. 

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  How to Find Fellowships That Are Right for You

  Sep 6, 2016 2:15 pm

  Let’s talk funding.

  Maybe you've heard someone say, “There’s a lot of money out there, you just have to look for it,” and thought to yourself, "Great, but where do I look?" Don't worry - we've got you. Our brand new Fellowship Finder database is now live. It showcases over 1,100 fellowship and grant opportunities that help students fund their graduate studies, and it features a new search process, with lots of options to make your search quicker and more precise.

  Fellowship Finder specializes in awards offered by external funders: government agencies, private foundations, corporations, and other entities outside of the university. We also include a handful of campus opportunities such as those offered by the Graduate College. Best of all, Fellowship Finder is a curated database, meaning that real people (we here in the Office of External Fellowships) make sure that the listings we include are truly useful to graduate students.

  How does the database work? Let’s take a look.

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  How to Enhance Your Personal Brand Online this Summer

  Jun 2, 2020 2:15 pm

  Remember in the early 2000s when we used to create online pseudonym usernames like “plantlover101” or “sillys0pran0” for internet safety? Fast-forward to 2020, where personal branding is now one of the best tools to market yourself. Long gone are the days where you’ll be advised to hide social media accounts from employers - and why should you? They paint a picture of who you are as a scholar and as a person, too. But personal branding is a scary term. How do you embody a form of corporate personhood without hiding your authentic and multi-faceted self? The answer sounds too good to be true: You don’t have to!

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  How to Defend Your Dissertation, Virtually: Tips on Preparing, Presenting, and Celebrating from a New PhD

  Apr 18, 2020 3:15 pm

  On March 24, one day after in-person meetings and instruction at the university were halted and moved online due to the coronavirus pandemic, Nitasha Mathayas earned a new title: PhD. She delivered her dissertation defense—on students’ sensemaking using gesture-augmented simulations—via Zoom to her committee of Curriculum & Instruction faculty, her family, and friends. Over the next several weeks, many doctoral students will face the same situation. Here, Nitasha shares her experience and advice for holding a successful virtual dissertation defense.

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  How to be Ambitious Without Getting Trapped by Perfectionism

  Mar 17, 2023 1:00 pm

  "Giving up perfectionism does not mean giving up ambitious goals. It means reframing our approach to ambitious goals so that we meet them without experiencing burnout."

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  How Good Writing Habits Lead to Short- & Long-term Payoffs

  Apr 28, 2021 1:15 pm

  The Illinois Writers Workshop's Carolyn Wisniewski answers 5 questions about the Workshop and shares why writing is an essential part of the research process. 

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  Grading is the Worst & Why Being a URAP Graduate Mentor Is Valuable

  Jul 6, 2020 3:45 pm

  The Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program connects undergraduates who are new to research with experienced graduate students who mentor them through the research process. 

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  Going on the Market? Time to Get Started on those Applications

  Jul 30, 2015 2:15 pm

  Back to school is almost back. Soon, it’ll be time to put away the sunscreen and dust off your research. Time to fold up that beach umbrella and pull out those freshly sharpened pencils. With the start of a new semester, you may find yourself busy to bursting with things to do—new classes to prep and new deadlines to meet—but now is also a great time to get ready for the academic job market.

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  Giving Names to the Dead: Building the Philippines' First Skeletal Reference Collection

  Feb 28, 2017 8:30 am

  Matthew Go, PhD student in Anthropology, spots it tucked into the foundation of a building on the grounds of a cemetery in Manila. An old rice sack, bulging in place and covered in dirt and grime, partially decomposing. Inside, a jumbled collection of bones showing their age and exposure to the elements.

  Matt and fellow Illinois Anthropology PhD student, Amanda Lee, spent last summer in Manila creating the world’s first reference collection comprised exclusively of contemporary Filipino skeletons. Their salvage archaeology work and the new collection, housed at the University of the Philippines Diliman, may potentially help identify victims of criminal cases, mass disasters, mass fatality events, and mass graves throughout Southeast Asia.

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  Get to Know the Scholarly Commons

  Nov 3, 2017 11:00 am

  During open hours, the Scholarly Commons provides the technology and digital scholarship expertise you need to succeed in your research. We’re also a quiet comfortable study space where you can sip your coffee and use software like STATA, Photoshop, and SAS. Come to our workshops during the school year and go from Regular Boring Researcher to Savvy Researcher.

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  Get to Know Recreation, Sport & Tourism Online Master’s Student, Jay Lopez

  Sep 10, 2021 5:00 pm

  Meet Jay Lopez, an online master’s student in Recreation, Sport & Tourism. Jay lives and works in Long Beach, California, with his wife, Emily, and their two young children.

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  Getting Ready for Your First Conference Presentation

  Apr 30, 2018 12:30 pm

  Conference presentations are a curious genre. While they can draw from seminar papers, lab reports, and/or research proposals, moving from a written text to a spoken one—and delivering your work—can present a range of unique challenges. 

  Below are some tips and tricks that can help you get in the mindset of giving a conference talk, especially if you’re new to sharing your work in this way.

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  Get in the Groove with our Spring '24 Finals Playlist

  Apr 16, 2024 11:00 am

  Every semester the Graduate College assembles a Finals Study Playlist to keep you rocking during your study sessions. For this installment, we're featuring a guest contributor: John Moist, Communications Specialist at the University of Illinois Graduate College.

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  Get an Early Start on this Year's Fellowship Applications

  Jul 11, 2017 11:30 am

  Are you thinking of applying for an external fellowship or grant this fall? If so, summer is a great time to strengthen your application’s foundation. There are many things you can do over the summer to give yourself an all-important competitive edge.   

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  Funding Graduate School

  Feb 20, 2019 6:30 pm

  Graduate school is one of the most important investments in your future you can make, To ensure that you invest wisely, it's essential thatyou identify your main expenses, as well as develop a funding plan and a budget. Think of this as planting the seeds for a successful financial future in graduate school. It’s important to start thinking about these financial questions early and to seek out University resources that can help answer your questions.  

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  Fred: How a Cartoon Mouse Became a Grad Student’s Mascot

  Oct 5, 2020 1:30 pm

  Graduate school looks different for each graduate student, but all graduate careers come with ups, downs, and all that happens in between. In this post, recent Bioengineering doctoral graduate, Parinaz Fathi, introduces us to an unexpected aspect of her PhD experience, an illustrated mouse named Fred.

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  Four Ways to Make Your Research Presentation Stand Out

  Nov 3, 2015 4:15 pm

  It’s after midnight, you’re taking a quick look at the slides for your research presentation the next morning, and you have this distressing thought: “I think my research is interesting, but will anyone else?” No one wants years of hard work to be met with blank stares or a fascinating discovery to be dismissed by wandering minds. Your research is interesting, but how do you get people to realize that?

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  Five Questions for a Successful First Year

  Sep 14, 2020 3:00 pm

  As you settle in, it’s a good idea to start learning more about your program and thinking about what goals you want to accomplish while at Illinois. One of the best ways to understand departmental and professional expectations is to connect with your academic support network.

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  Finding Funding Opportunities: Insights from a Current PhD Student

  Mar 20, 2019 6:30 pm

  Funding is one of the biggest factors in determining what kind of financial decisions you make as a graduate student. Taking on federal student loans, using your employment to fund your degree, using your savings, getting help from family members, etc. We all want to make decisions that will benefit us most - and while the above are all good options depending on your individual situation, nothing beats “free money” like fellowships, assistantships, grants and scholarships. As a former fourth time Foreign Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) Fellowship recipient, current Illinois Distinguished Fellow, and Graduate Assistant, I have searched and applied for many funding opportunities during my college career. It is a long but worthy process. Below are six tips on how to find and secure funding.

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  Fellowship Tips: Crafting a Good Research Question

  Jan 29, 2020 3:30 pm

  A typical fellowship application contains many components of varying lengths, yet it’s the shortest component — the research question — that’s the most important. Without a strong and explicitly-stated research question, a funding proposal never gets off the ground. So, what constitutes a good research question?

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  Fellowship Creates Space for Community-Centered Work

  Feb 13, 2023 2:00 pm

  Career exploration is time-consuming. For Heather Ennis, this period of discernment has been a slow, necessary evolution—one that has provided an opportunity for self-reflection about her graduate education in the humanities.

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  Feel Like You're Drowning? The Counseling Center Can Help

  Jan 21, 2019 3:15 pm

  I’ve tried to start this blog post a dozen times, but every time, I get bogged down in the introduction. The thing is, for a lot of reasons and for a lot of people, it can be hard to talk about mental health. And that’s a problem because mental health is vital to our overall health and well-being as graduate students and people. But not talking about mental health can be incredibly isolating. This is especially the case when you are a graduate student experiencing severe anxiety, depression, or suicide ideation. It’s easy to feel like you are alone and no one is going to be able to understand what you are going through or be able to help you through to the other side.

  Let me start by saying, unequivocally, you are not alone. I know this because I’ve been there. With a lot of support and encouragement in the last year, I found helpful, supportive faces at the Counseling Center and at McKinley Health Center. These are just two of the resources available to you as a graduate student at Illinois, and for a lot of students, they are a good first step in the path to addressing and managing mental health problems and coping with the stress of life.

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  Exploring Multispecies Relationships by Walking 'with' the Forest in Sri Lanka

  Dec 8, 2023 3:45 pm

  Emma Lundin, a U. of I. doctoral student in tourism, spent two months in a rainforest reserve in Sri Lanka shadowing forest guides. Lundin sought to understand how the guides interact with other-than-humans to create tourism experiences.

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  Exploring Career Pathways while in Graduate School

  Oct 27, 2023 2:00 pm

  Exploring your career options can be intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. Hear from recipients of the Graduate College's Career Exploration Fellowship about their time as fellows.

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  Ethnography: Anthropological Research on Queer Pentecostalism in Brazil

  Jan 26, 2022 4:30 am

  "I think of anthropological method as the art of being in relation with others, and ethnographic description as the art of writing those relations. It’s a difficult art, stepping into other people’s lives and describing the relations you think you see."