How many graduate students from your university do you know? Do you only know the names of those in your department? My goal is to push you to desire to know more people who are in the same program as you. Stanford University, as well as many other universities, accomplishes this by maintaining what they call the Graduate Life Office. Visit their site so that you can understand their goals and values. Look for a similar program at your own university. These programs were created for you to network and get to know graduate students in other departments of your university.

I am also including an article by the Association of College Unions International to help me describe the importance of a graduate student community. The article is aimed towards faculty, staff, and administrators who must remain purposeful in attracting graduate students’ attention; however, it is still a good read for those of you who feel they don’t have a voice to express. The writers of the article, Jodie Kern-Bowen and Rick Gardner, mention how important it is for the authorities of the university to understand you as a graduate student. The specific tips include:

• researching your opinions about the goings-on of the university through surveys,
• observing other universities’ activities that you may like to adopt for your own university, and
• noting what undergraduate programs you participated in and enjoyed.

Kern-Bowen and Gardner discuss a few more tips that authorities of your university can organize. Whereas your university would actually organize the three listed items above, you can still help out by providing your opinion. For instance, don’t ignore surveys that come your way. The more you inform your university, the more ideas they have to create an exciting and healthy graduate student community for you.

Besides interacting with the leaders and staff members of your graduate school and department, it’s also a good idea to make friends with your fellow graduate students around you. Usually, graduate schools do a great job of creating opportunities for graduate students to socialize and network with each other. For instance, many schools choose to have a mixer for graduate students. If your school or department offers these as a chance to meet fellow students and socialize with them, take advantage of them. Not only should you try to attend each mixer or social gathering the school hosts, but you should also be proactive in making relationships with the other students.

Another way you can create better relationships is to participate in group projects, whether a professor requires group collaboration or not. If the professor gives you individual work, suggest to some classmates that you get a group together to help each other with the assignment(s).