Emissaries for Graduate Student Diversity serving as mentors to newcomers
Nikole Miller, a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics.
Starting graduate school can be an unsettling experience, combining long hours of often solitary work with the challenge of finding one’s place on a new campus and in a new city.
That’s why the Indiana University Graduate School in Bloomington created the Emissaries for Graduate Student Diversity program, in which veteran graduate students provide advice, encouragement and mentoring to newcomers.
Started as a pilot project in 2007, the program expanded last year to science, mathematics and technology, and has now grown to include all graduate-level disciplines, with a focus on doctoral students. Emissaries answer questions from prospective students by E-mail, serve on discussion panels and offer tips and information.
“We wanted to create a program that is run by graduate students, for graduate students—to talk about what life is like for graduate students at Indiana University Bloomington,” said Yolanda Treviño, assistant dean of the University Graduate School and an originator of the idea.
The program grew out of IU’s participation in the Midwest Crossroads Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, a National Science Foundation-funded initiative to increase the number of underrepresented minority graduate students and faculty in the STEM disciplines, science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
It’s also a way for the campus to personalize the process of reaching out to new students. While colleges and universities devote extensive resources to new undergraduates, the recruitment and orientation of graduate students is often left to academic departments, which can use help from groups such as the Emissaries.
“We see this group, and the dedication of these people, as really central to the recruiting process,” said Maxine Watson, associate dean of the University Graduate School.
The IU web page for the program (click on address at end of story) includes profiles of eight emissaries, each with an “ask me a question” E-mail link; a student-written blog titled Graduate Student Life at IU; and a half dozen self-guided walking tours of campus, designed by graduate students, with themes such as “Family Fun” and “Campus Treasures.”
Nikole Miller, a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics, was an emissary in 2007–08 and 2008–09. Having grown up in Georgia and earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama, she said her biggest challenge at IU was adjusting to the Midwestern winters.
