The Graduate Students Network (GSN) at UW is all about helping graduate students build relationships, gain knowledge and socialize with fellow graduate students going through similar situations.
GSN was a brainchild of Rachel Edie, the current president and graduate student in atmospheric science, and a former professor a couple years ago when they saw a need for an organization that offered resources to graduate students. GSN has since grown into a successful, wide-ranging network of graduate students across the university campus.
“I got involved through a professor,” Edie said. “We were trying to do more graduate centered events and teaching and learning activities and there just isn’t a graduate student college on campus anymore, I think they got rid of it in 2009.”
GSN started out small with only four or five students interested in joining, so Edie went to some of her graduate classes seeking members, which is when current Secretary Lisa Barrett joined.
“One day in our teaching class, Rachel (Edie) said, ‘Does anyone like organizing events? Because I need people to help me with this organization,’” Barrett, a graduate student in zoology, said. “I was like, ‘Yes, I do like to plan things.’”
The GSN was formed to fill a missing section on the UW campus. Most schools have some sort of formal resource offered to graduate students that provides useful services for said students, however, UW does not.
“I think that most schools have this, like they have a graduate college or a graduate school that designs these events already,” Edie said. “Academic affairs is trying to kind of do graduate students among like a million other things and then we kind of got sucked into the non-traditional student pool as well.”
This lack of a clear resource for graduate students to access leads to a lack of collaboration between graduate students, where collaboration is sometimes key to completing research.
“You can get really, feel isolated in your own field, or even your research topic,” Barrett said. “It’s easy to feel disconnected from the university, so we thought this was important to connect other grad students with one another, and so you don’t feel quite alone.”
GSN operates to provide graduate students with the opportunity to get together, drink some beer or coffee, work on their theses, discuss their research with one another and, most of all, socialize.
“I think it’s, first and foremost, more of like a social club and that includes not only casual events like coffee hours and going down to the Union Gardens,” Edie said. “But also kind of a way to collaborate and learn about research in other departments.”
Edie and Barrett, both being in the sciences for graduate school, know the importance of getting research that applies to a variety of subjects and not having the ability to collaborate with fellow graduate students can hinder their abilities to do their necessary research.
“You know, in science nowadays if you’re not thinking with a broader approach and trying to bring in different disciplines, and how your research can be impactful over like a broad swath of science or whatever you’re studying, it can hurt you,” Edie said. “So the more interaction you have with your peers, the better.”
The members of GSN look to the future and expects to host events that are beneficial for graduate students, for instance, they will be hosting coffee hours each month, another write-in day where students can come and set specific goals for their research and then try to reach them, and an event where students can present their research to peers.
The events they seek to promote and host are beneficial for students in both their personal and professional lives.
“We also like having professional development, job panelists for different careers and work-life balance stuff with the university counseling and wellness center,” Edie said. “So, when people are really overwhelmed they know that there are resources
for grad students that are free.”
An additional hope of theirs when hosting an event, is to provide resources on writing. Barrett said writing is a big part of being a graduate student.
“We’re doing a lot of writing events,” Barrett said. “We know people need help kind of carving out time, sometimes to get their writing done, so we’re having weekly writing sessions this semester with the writing center.”
GSN will be cohosting an event with the Nontraditional Student Center in order to welcome back graduate students from 4-6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2.
