Greetings and warm wishes!

The winter break has gone by quickly and graduate students at UVM are already deep into the Spring semester (and trying to battle through the weather!). The Fall semester finished strong for graduate students on campus, highlighted by an extremely successful Graduate Student December Hooding Ceremony organized by the Graduate Student Senate (GSS) in conjunction with the Graduate College at the University.

This event was put together as a way to celebrate those graduate students completing their Master’s and Ph.D. degrees who would be unable to come to Vermont in May for the formal commencement ceremony. While there might be only a modest number of students fitting this criteria, we felt not only was it important to celebrate the accomplishments of our graduate students but also to provide a venue for the families of those students to join in this culmination of hard work and perseverance. We were lucky enough to work with Presidential Events to coordinate our Hooding Ceremony with President Sullivan’s reception for December graduates, so the friends and family of students were able to simply walk over from our ceremony to the Grand Maple Ballroom in the Davis center for some cozy music and food on a blustery and snowy day.

I am happy to say our event (while modest) was a smashing success, with a total of 4 Ph.D. students and 19 Master’s students able to attend, with a cohort of 10 Master of Science in Nursing students all finishing together. And while this may not seem terribly large, we were amazed to see over 100 family members and friends in attendance, having come to visit in what could be described as near blizzard conditions! Needless to say, photo opportunities were aplenty, and I can confidently say that the some families enjoyed the ceremony even more than the students did. With such good reviews from the students, and their friends and family, we are hoping to begin having the Graduate Student Senate host this event every year, aligning it in conjunction with the President’s reception in order to have a celebratory event for those graduate students unable to return in May.

As an update on our Graduate Students Senate meetings, we have already had the pleasure of several guests this Spring semester, as well as a Professional Development series to help students prepare for a job search in the near future. GSS had the pleasure of having the Provost of the University, David Rosowsky at a January meeting where graduate education and research at UVM were discussed. Graduate students were so interested in this topic that it actually inspired an invitation to the VP for Research, Richard Galbraith, to attend a Senate meeting in March in order to talk about research at UVM, how graduate students will be integrally involved, and how UVM is reaching out into the Burlington and Vermont communities in order to strengthen relationships and create unique opportunities for not just graduate students, but all students here at UVM.

Finally, a great discussion was sparked regarding graduate students and the future growth of graduation education at the University during at the most recent Board of Trustees meeting in February. As mentioned in my articles here previously, the Graduate Student Senate and the Graduate College are trying to get everyone on the same page regarding the cost of graduate students in the context of the new budget model and the possible change in how tuition is paid for students on research assistantships. After a healthy conversation, the Chair of the Board of Trustees summed everything up by announcing to the entire room that “graduate students are mission critical to this University,” which is as ringing an endorsement as I ever could have hoped for the future of graduate education here at UVM moving forward.

The Graduate Student Senate has many more professional and social events planned for the Spring 2015 semester, so we hope to see you out at one soon! As always, please feel free to check out our website at: www.uvm.edu/~gss/ or you can contact us as at GSS@uvm.edu or in our office on the 3^rd floor of the Davis Center in room 311T.