Weekend things or the one with lots of elevator spiels

This was an interesting weekend. I am taking a class on Gender and Public Policy, and it is one of the most interesting classes I have taken in grad school. On Saturday, I had the chance to attend the Elect Her training, organized by the UMN Women's Center in collaboration with American Association for University Women. It seems to be primarily targeted at undergraduates, to encourage women-identified people to run for student government and hopefully in the long run for political office. There were icebreakers, student panels, quick elevator pitches and issue based discussions. They had a quite a lot of resources spread across tables.

Unpeeling

Being involved with different student groups, both at my school and at the university, has helped me unpeel the complexity of the university's structure somewhat and understand why things happen the way they do. I am well into my second year at the university and a lot of my engagement has been around the graduate student experience, sometimes intersecting with internationalization and sometimes with other aspects.

I have so many thoughts on the subject and someday I hope to be able to reflect on this much more thoughtfully. But for now, here is, in no order, a list of things I have realized by choosing not to just be a recipient of the graduate student experience, but to shape it in some way:

International Collaborative Research Forum

On Friday, I was able to attend a conference on campus and I am very glad I did! It isn't very often that I walk out of a conference thinking that all of it was useful for me but I definitely had that feeling after this one. It was called International Collaborative Research Forum and was held the renovated and fabulous and majestic looking Northrop Auditorium. After the opening session, there were parallel sessions for everything and I attended the ones on grant writing, ethics in international collaboration and internationalization in graduate education. I enjoyed all of these, especially the last one, where in addition to the Dean of Graduate Education at U of M, there were people from Council of Graduate Schools and the National Science Foundation.

Homecoming 2014

Among other things, this week involved a tailgate before the Homecoming 2014 event. This was organized by the College of Education and Human Development, and they very graciously allowed Council of International Graduate Students (of which I am a board member), to invite students as well. The week has been lovely, full of Fall sun and leaves but Friday was a little chilly. The turnout was still fabulous as was the food, the hot cider and brownies and of course, the photo booth. I hadn't intended to walk in the Homecoming parade (I wasn't sure what it would involve), but I eventually I did do that and it was quite the experience. More in pictures: 

Toys and fun stuff at tables inside the tent

Goldy the Gopher

Notes from the Judd Fellowship Ceremony

This is my favorite picture :-).
A friend pointed out I have only one
 'funny pose'. Jazz hands.

The impetus to start this blog came when I was awarded the Judd Fellowship - it was one of the suggestions in an email sent out, and I am glad I followed through on the impulse. I am also glad for being able to keep the blog alive (mostly in spurts) after completing my summer field experience. My relative silence implies lots is going on: classes, assignments, tests, some confusing and annoying project selection processes, attending fitness classes at the gym and more.Yesterday was the Judd Fellowship ceremony, where university staff, winners, donors and friends of the fellowship came together at the McNamara Alumni Center (you know when an event is at McNamara, it is a little bit fancy!)

What I Wish I Had Known When I Started Grad School

I had two reactions when invited to be on a panel about what I wish I had known when I started graduate school - one of the sessions at the Welcome Week for new graduate students. First, why would anyone ask me and I probably shouldn’t go and next, I have enough material to write a book. Luckily (for everyone involved) I did not follow through on either impulse. On a more serious note, there are a lot of things I wish I had know when I started grad school. They would have made my personal life easier, my professional development process faster and my academic career more fulfilling at the very least. While answering questions on the panel, it seemed to me that it wasn’t very fair to the students who were on a waitlist for the orientation or couldn’t make it for a host of other reasons, to not have access to this information. I also thought having this online would allow more people to share their tips and tricks and more people to access these. Elise Madden who was also on the panel helped put this together. It is deliberately brief and concise, to make it useful and not overwhelming. I would love to add to this list - feel free to comment here or shoot me an email.

Glimpses from here and there

My favorite picture this week: napping in front of my school.

 

Look carefully. This is the shoe tree. When folks graduate, they throw
 their shoes up here. It creeps me out loads.

The one where I ask a lot of questions!

This is a post full of questions. Serious questions. So everybody who is reading and has something to share, please do answer (here, email, social media, whatever is your preferred mode of communication :))

1. I am looking for resources about Community Forestry Enterprises, Non Timber Forest Products, sustainable harvesting and livelihoods and to talk to folks. If you know people who have worked in this area, especially South East Asia, and can help me connect, that would be great!
2. I am looking for Indo-German collaborations (organizations/initiatives/non-profit/private/government) that work in the area of education (higher education, internationalization of education), community and youth development, gender focused work. Any names spring to mind?
3. Ideas and suggestions on how a one month period in the winter (mid December to January) can be used best - I mean ideas on volunteer work, one-month internships etc. I don't want to be in Minnesota during winter break this year and am not sure I can do a month-long vacation. So it would be nice to be working or being useful in some way. Any ideas?
4. Project ideas: The Humphrey School has sent out a Request for Proposal for capstone projects for Spring 2015: essentially they are seeking proposals from organizations that want students to work on a sort of consulting project for a specific area around development, social or policy areas. Essentially this is a free project for the organization and a chance for students to gain some experience. More details of the project and timelines are at the following link: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/gpa/globalnotes/2014/04/humphrey-school-global-policy.php. Any ideas on interesting organizations and projects I could connect with?

Preparing for our field work next week

Working breakfast during our meeting 
to finalize the survey

Most of this week and today has been spent preparing for our field visits next week. As of now the idea is to meet with officials from three departments that work in the area of forestry and meet with 12 groups in different villages. How much of this will convert into reality will only be known next week. The planning for this trip has been fairly fluid, in terms of dates, people going with us, the groups we are meeting etc etc. We have prepared our questionnaires and surveys and have gone through three rounds of reviews.

Judd Fellowship newsletter

Oh look, the blog got featured in the Judd newsletter :-) (which is one of the fellowships I got for doing the project)! Also, go visit the link and read about what other people, including MDP students in Ecuador, Jamaica and Kenya are working on over the summer!

http://global.umn.edu/funding/judd/newsletters/2014_june.html

Day 1 @ Work

Our day started with running to get some delicious cold filter coffee, miming (this was all Meagan) and successfully getting either butter or condensed milk with bread, meeting at the hotel lobby and heading out to work. We met with our faculty adviser Dean Current, who just got in this morning. We are working with Consultative and Research Center on Natural Resource Management (CORENARM) and Dung Ngo, who is one of the Founders, has been our main contact. He introduced us to other staff in the organization and gave us an introduction of the three main tracks they work on: natural resource management, sustainable forestry, and disaster management and climate change. He was telling how a group of graduate students got together and had the idea and passion to found CORENARM.