Posted: January 4, 2024
Dear Students, Faculty, Administrators, and Staff,
As we wade our way into 2024 at the University of Florida, this little nugget of wisdom from author Vern McLellan comes to mind:
“What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”
How true! If we want the new year to be truly new, we must leave behind whatever baggage weighs us down, let go of anything that holds us back, and reach out to grab hold of everything that can propel us forward, enabling us to leap to new heights.
And new heights are what Team Grad School definitely aims for. Here are some that we recently accomplished and others that are in progress for the months ahead:
- We launched Semester Check-Ins as neighborly Zoom encounters that bring graduate coordinators, graduate staff, and the Graduate School face-to-face for regular updates, shared input, open exchanges, and answers to questions.
- We premiered Grad Talk! — a new podcast on Spotify that explores the UF graduate student experience through the perspectives of students, alumni, faculty, campus partners, and guest experts.
- We moved Postdoctoral Affairs into the Graduate School to create new opportunities for sustained support of our Postdoc Gator researchers and scholars.
- We’re finalizing special events to mark National Mentoring Month later in January to celebrate this key factor in the graduate student experience.
- We’re planning for our first Graduate School Advisory Council meeting, which will gather a cross section of campus partners drawn from administrators, faculty, and staff who’ll provide broad perspective and counsel on policy and best practices for graduate education at UF.
- We’re finishing up a Virtual Reality Tour of our home base in Grinter Hall — which will soon grace our website — to acquaint others with who we are, what we do, and where we do it, all in the cause of graduate education at UF.
As always, please remember: The Graduate School is here for you as you explore 2024’s opportunities and tackle its challenges, so keep in touch with us!
Best wishes for a healthy, happy year ahead, my fellow Grad Gators! Bring your best to 2024, so you can get the best out of it!
Go Gators!
Nicole L.P. Stedman, Ph.D.
Associate Provost and Dean
The Graduate School
University of Florida
Graduate School