Symposium on Graduate Education
2003 Symposium
On Wednesday, March 19th, 2003, the Graduate College hosted a symposium on "Graduate Study: Promises, Purposes, Potentials," attended by more than 200 Illinois graduate students, faculty, and staff. The symposium featured a keynote address from Robert Weisbuch, president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and former graduate dean at the University of Michigan. Other guests included Malaina Brown, a graduate counselor at the University of Chicago and Denise Roth Allen, an Anthropology doctoral alumna. The symposium also offered insights from current graduate students, interactive discussion groups for faculty and graduate students, and plenty of opportunity for general discussion.
The Graduate College Career Advisory Committee, appointed in the fall of 2002, has gathered graduate students, faculty, and campus placement and counseling professionals to determine the challenges and opportunities that degree holders face as they seek employment, and to define best practices of preparing graduate students for these challenges and opportunities. The committee has conducted focus group sessions with graduate students and with graduate program directors, investigated models at peer institutions, and gathered nationwide data on employment trends. This symposium allowed the committee to share with graduate students, graduate faculty and advisors, and the campus community at large the information it gathered.
Further information about this symposium, including the program and speaker bios, are available on this Web site. Feel free to also explore the Graduate College's Career Advising Web site and read about many of the issues that were discussed in the symposium.
