Welcome to summer! The different cadence of this part of the year can offer space to recharge. While campus is definitely quieter in the summer, there are still many opportunities to build connections, pursue academic goals, explore new activities, and of course, find moments of fun and relaxation. 

Students Advising on Graduate Education (SAGE) is the Graduate College's student advisory board. In our introductory meeting with this year's SAGE members, we asked them to share a few of their hidden gems on campus; here are some of their favorites!   

SAGE is a graduate student advisory board and leadership opportunity fostering active engagement with Illinois Graduate College programs and initiatives. 

The Graduate College hosted a Welcome Reception for incoming and returning graduate students at Illinois. Go behind the scenes with us!

The winners of this year's Research Live! stunned us with their brilliant presentations and creative projects. We caught up with them a few weeks "post-victory" to hear about their experiences. 

Doctoral hooding is the end of one journey and the beginning of another. We've got a behind-the-scenes view of this semester's celebrations.

Originally from Kenya, Byron has travelled the world in the pursuit of higher education. 

Doctoral Hooding is the culmination of an academic and personal journey. These are some of our favorite moments from the December 2023 Hooding Ceremony. 

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.

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.

SAGE is a graduate student advisory board and leadership opportunity fostering active engagement with Illinois Graduate College programs and initiatives.

We asked Illinois graduate students for their favorite podcasts. Here are some of their favorites! 

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.

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. 

"A baseball scout once told me, 'Development is a dance.' He was talking about how young baseball players don’t improve on a linear path. Some take steps forward and then back, or laterally, before figuring it out."

Meet Katie Frye a Ph.D. student in Microbiology and a COVID-19 SHIELD: Target, Test, Tell team member.

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.

Theatre doctoral student Vincent Carlson performs "You and Your Work," a poem he wrote inspired by boundary setting and conflicting ideas about work ethic. 

Abby shares some techniques to lower stress in elementary school students, such as a 5-4-3-2-1 mapping exercise, that might also work for grad students. 

It has been a year of COVID. Grad student podcasters share their funniest Zoom stories and Burning Man expert Caitlin Brooks shares insights on the power of community in times of isolation.

Starting grad school in the middle of a pandemic has not been easy, but the ISE Department has been incredibly supportive! 

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.

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.

LLM student Marie Joe Noon won first prize at the inaugural Illinois Global Talent Show for her vocal performance of "I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston. Annie caught up with Marie after the show to learn about her singing inspiration (definitely Cher), her hometown, and how singing translates to confidence in the courtroom.

The University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign is home to a highly diverse student body and their respective student associations, which aim to cultivate and share with each other their music, food, art and traditions.

In this piece, we feature an event organized by the Iranian Cultural Association (ICA) on our campus during the Spring 2019 semester. ICE hosted Kayhan Kalhor, a globally recognized musician from Iran known for his transcendental music and for his ensemble collaborations with other musicians across the globe. Kalhor is known to play several instruments in particular the Kamancheh and the Setar. This event was made possible by the ICA along with support from Center for South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies and several other units on campus. 

The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is a hub for exquisite music, cultural performances, ballet performances, theater, opera and lively events. From performances by musical virtuosos, symphony orchestras, ensemble groups to events like PechaKucha Night and Noche de Baila- Krannert is bustling with performers and audience goers year-round! The Lyric Theater at Krannert brings colorful and vibrant pieces of opera from throughout the ages alive to the audience!

We caught up with some of the members of this year’s SAGE (Students Advising on Graduate Education) board to ask them just one question: If you could give your first-year-grad student self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Their responses were funny, honest, and totally on point.