The Illinois Student Government, in collaboration with the Immigration Law Clinic in the College of Law and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, has funding available to support Illinois students’ DACA Renewal Fee. Open to all Illinois undergraduate, graduate, or professional students. Deadline: April 20, 2022. For more information, please email undocumented@illinois.edu.

Friday, April 22 at 5 p.m. is the last day to complete a dissertation deposit for May 2022 graduation. Because all corrections and all required deposit materials must be received by the Graduate College no later than 5 p.m. on the day of the deposit deadline, the Thesis Office strongly encourages students to submit the thesis for review several days before the deadline. For further information about the deposit process, visit the Thesis Office website. 

April 15 is the last day to drop a Part of Term B course online through Self-Service.

April 15 is the last day to drop a semester course or withdraw from ALL semester courses without a grade of W. To drop a course, students must submit a Late Registration Form to the Graduate College. To withdraw from the term, students need to complete a Withdrawal Form and obtain their department's signature International students must obtain a signature from ISSS. Students are encouraged to discuss these decisions with their adviser and/or program. Students enrolled in non-standard part of term courses should refer to their graduate program for deadline information.

April 15 is the last day to change a course to the credit/no-credit grading option for a Spring semester course or to change from the credit/no-credit grading option to a regular grade. Adviser approval is required. Please consult with your program if you are considering this grading option for any course because course and department restrictions may apply. Students need to submit a Credit/No Credit Form to the Graduate College to complete the process. Students enrolled in non-standard part of term courses should refer to their graduate program for deadline information.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides grants for fieldwork, laboratory research, arts training, & English teaching in over 140 countries. Applicants must be U.S. citizens, may be at any stage of graduate study, & may come from any discipline. To learn more, join us for an overview of the program’s history and mission, eligibility criteria, stipend and benefits, required application components, evaluation criteria, and selection process. We’ll also explain the protocol for campus interviews and the one-on-one advising services we offer applicants. Please register in advance. 

Considering a Fulbright U.S. Student Award? Join us for a crash course in proposal writing tailored specifically for the Fulbright Statement of Grant Purpose. In this workshop we will show students how best to approach this statement; how to present their project in the most direct, concrete, and convincing way possible; and how to strategize their narrative in light of Fulbright’s mission and aims. We’ll also review sample statements. Please register in advance for either the Tuesday workshop (geared toward academic applicants) or the Friday workshop (geared toward arts applicants).  

The European Union Center is pleased to host Finn S. Willems (Program Officer, Fulbright Foreign Programs) on Tuesday, April 19 at 1 P.M. CDT for an information session for U.S. and EU citizens on applying for research grants through the Fulbright Schuman program. The grants are for researchers with interest in EU affairs or the U.S.-EU transatlantic agenda. Register here.

Fulbright English Teaching Assistants help teach English language abroad while serving as cultural ambassadors for the U.S. Graduate students interested in pusuing an English Teaching Assistantship are invited to join undergraduates in a workshop hosted by the Office of National & International Scholarships. The session will consider commonalities of winning ETA applications and approaches to drafting the statement of grant purpose. The session will be held twice, once online and once in-person. Advance registration is required for the online session only. 

The Illinois Cyber Security Scholars Program (ICSSP) is accepting applications for Fall 2022. The applications deadline is April 18, 2022. Eligible applicant must be an US citizen, and a College of Engineering undergraduate or graduate student or a School of Information Sciences graduate student admitted to the MSIM or PhD program. If you are interested in applying, please join the information session, free pizza will be provided!

Are you planning to deposit your thesis this semester? We have videos that can guide you through the thesis submission and deposit process. Check out our Submitting Your Thesis for Graduate College Approval video for an overview of the thesis submission system. If the Graduate College requests corrections to your thesis, our Reviewing & Submitting Your Thesis Corrections video will help you navigate the resubmission process. 

The Writers Workshop will review genre expectations for research statements and provide examples from a range of disciplines. We will share strategies for drafting and tailoring your own research statements. This event will be held  through Zoom; please visit our calendar to register by 11:59 p.m. CT on April 13.

The Writers Workshop will provide tips for writing concise and professional cover letters. You’ll review common structures, audience expectations, and strategies for using the cover letter to complement the resume. We encourage you to bring a current job ad and questions about your cover-letters-in-progress! This event will be held through Zoom; please visit our calendar to register by 11:59 p.m. on April 12.

Applications for the Career Exploration Fellowship are due April 17. This new program connects doctoral students with campus units for meaningful, mentored work experience. Each Career Exploration Fellow will receive a paid hourly position at a host unit and a $6,000 Career Exploration Fellowship. This program aims to enable doctoral students to gain experience and build skills that align with a wide range of career aspirations. Applications are due April 17. 

This interactive session shares best practices for beginning and sustaining a mentoring relationship in a research context. It will address topics like assessing mentee goals, setting expectations, choosing and assigning work, providing constructive feedback, combating implicit bias, what to do when things go wrong. This session fulfills part of the workshop requirement for the Graduate College Mentoring Certificate. No registration required.

Feeling overwhelmed by the feedback you're receiving from your professors, advisers, and/or reviewers, or just not sure where to get started? This Writers Workshop presentation will help graduate writers assess feedback and create a revision plan. It will also offer tips for responding to critical feedback, including strategies for writing the resubmission letter for revised journal manuscripts. This event will be held through Zoom. Please register by 11:59 p.m. CT on April 11.

Data is integral to research, and data management is at the core of best practices in research methodology. Good data management, however, is often overlooked, resulting in wasted time and resources. University Library's Sandi Caldrone and IHSI's Fatima Ahmed will discuss the life cycle of a dataset, best data management tips, and examples of data management pitfalls and how to avoid them. A Q&A will follow.

Accomplish your writing goals by joining the Writers Workshop for sustained writing in the company of your colleagues from across the disciplines! Our writing group aims to provide community and accountability. Each session begins with a short conversation about goals and ends with a wrap-up of accomplishments. Our Spring semester writing groups are held every Monday from 9 a.m. - noon CT (online) and every Friday from 1 - 4 p.m. CT (hybrid). Please visit our calendar to register in advance.

Join us on April 26 for a FREE workshop on using GPUs with Python. An expert from the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute will introduce Python GPU tools for porting and writing code that runs on GPUs. The instructor will present lecture slides, and students will use Jupyter notebooks for hands-on exercises. Registration required.

Mark you calendars and register for this week's batch of Savvy Researcher Workshops: REDCap II: Advanced Abilities of Illinois REDCap, Dissertation to Book: Basics of the Revision & Publishing Process, Poster Presentation and Design, and ArcGIS Online: GIS for Everyone. See our full calendar of workshops here. Workshops are also available by request.

The Illinois Leadership Center is excited to host the first annual Donaldson Leadership Retreat at the Allerton Park Retreat Center in Monticello, Illinois on Friday, September 23 to Sunday, September 25. To learn more about the Donaldson Leadership Retreat please sign up for one of our upcoming information sessions by completing this form or visit the website.

The Beckman Institute's Biologically Informed AI working group is sponsoring a research competition for undergraduate and grad students. The contest is meant to to stimulate research that draws on work both from the cognitive/biological sciences and from engineering/AI. Two faculty sponsors are required, one from the cognitive/biological side and one from an engineering discipline. One must be a Beckman faculty member. The winning team will receive $1,000. Learn more and submit your proposal by May 15.

Join us for the final session of the Spring 2022 Poverty Seminar Series. This session aims to bridge the gap between research and policy, and features Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) Senior Policy Advisor Dana Kelly, State’s liaison to the Illinois Commission on Poverty Elimination and Economic Security. Register & submit questions for Q&A following the presentation.

What happens when pop culture meets social justice in the US? Can your favorite music, tv, and movies create change? Join International Education and Diversity & Social Justice Education for a discussion on social justice through the lens of pop culture! This event is part of the Global Engagement Lounge (GEL) program, paid for by the Student Cultural Programming Fee (SCPF). 

You're invited to a special evening with Richie Hofmann, Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University, hosted by the University Library and the Department of English at Illinois. A book signing will follow the poetry reading and discussion. Hofmann’s new book of poems, A Hundred Lovers, will be available for purchase. Registration required.

Don't miss Sinfonia da Camera's 38th season finale. This concert has been crafted to showcase Sinfonia's skill and agility. The program will include Weber’s Overture to Oberon, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, and Bartók’s masterpiece, Concerto for Orchestra, the ingenious composition expertly features each section of the orchestra throughout the five-movements, treating each, as Bartók noted, “in a soloistic and virtuosic way.” For tickets, click here. 

Prof. Zhi Chen’s pilot research was conducted on the basis of early Chinese idioms and formulaic expressions concurrently seen in the Book of Songs and contemporaneous excavated manuscripts. Evidently, the tetra-syllabic form, the earliest genre of Chinese poetry, was shaped in mid-Western Zbou times and was derived from liturgical prayers of sacrificial activities among Zhou nobles.

Iraqi-American Amir ElSaffar masters disparate musical styles, blending Middle Eastern music with American jazz, extending the boundaries of each tradition. He carries on the centuries old Iraqi maqam tradition as a vocalist and santur player. Rivers of Sound unites 17 musicians from diverse traditions, creating a new musical vocabulary that transcends established notions of style. Tickets $10–50.

Sweat tells the story of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets, & laughs working on the factory floor. When layoffs and picket lines chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in a fight to stay afloat. Sweat “traces the roots of a tragedy with both forensic psychological detail and embracing compassion” (New York Times). Tickets $10–50.

With his show Carnival: The Sound of a People, Charles brings the street energy of Trinidad's magical ritual to the stage. At the root of each composition is a fascinating story and a pulsating groove. A firm believer in music and performance as a tool for provoking thought and dialogue, Charles’ themes speak to the status quo while drawing parallels to history. Tickets $10–50.

Addressing issues around family and transnationalism, citizenship and empire, and history and memory across East and Southeast Asia, this documentary film traces forgotten and disappeared Japanese communities in the Philippines and former Manchuria by shedding light on the perspectives of migrants’ children now approaching the end of their lives. Testimonies in the film illuminate the afterlives of communities and families grappling with the legal, economic, and emotional questions of the historically fraught diaspora.

Anthony Ray Hinton survived for 30 years on Alabama's death row. His story is a decades-long journey to exoneration and freedom. With the assistance of the Equal Justice Initiative, led by attorney Bryan Stevenson, Mr. Hinton was freed in 2015. Join us for an evening with the best-selling author, activist and exoneree.

Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs over Cambodia. What started as a secret infiltration of Laos, in which a few CIA officers would train and arm local Hmong villagers to fight the Communist forces, eventually enveloped Cambodia and escalated into a nine-year war over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, fought primarily with bombs. 

Join faculty/staff and graduate students from UIUC and partners across the Illinois Innovation Network in a virtual workshop on Social Innovation. Hear an introduction to social innovation and choose from a variety of 15-min breakout sessions to gain insights into best practices, new tools, tested techniques, and model programs. Explore opportunities for inter-institutional collaborations across the State. Register.

Celebrate and support students, alumni, and community members who are making a social and environmental impact through entrepreneurship. The event includes a venture showcase with networking, followed by a pitch competition for cash prizes. Join us for food, connections, door prizes, and inspiration from Illinois changemakers. Learn more about entrepreneurship and find new opportunities and new teammates to make an impact! Open to the public. Register.

The talk presents present the results of a recent collaborative study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe descendant community at Síi Túupentak, an ancestral heritage Native American Ohlone village and associated cemetery in the southeast San Francisco Bay area. The study documents the lifeways of the inhabitants of this substantial sedentary settlement for four centuries prior to their forced relocation by Spanish colonizers in 1805, exploring economic adaptations, health, and social-political organization

Posters, laboratory tours, and videos on quantum information science topics will be presented by student researchers within IQUIST. This quantum celebration is open to the public. Come learn more about the amazing technology behind the QIS experiments on campus. Also, LabEscape returns with new quantum-related challenges for World Quantum Day. Book your mission time today!

Gabriel Popescu, William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will lecture on “Phase imaging with computational specificity (PICS) for biomedical applications.” The lecture is free and open to the public courtesy of the Miniature Brain Machinery Program.

Join us for the University of Illinois Archives’ monthly Women in Science Lecture. Dr. Cecilia Leal, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, will discuss her research on lipid-based systems and their uses in medicine and other biotechnological applications. Please register to receive the zoom link.

Are you interested in learning how technology is transforming the agricultural industry? Are you looking for an internship where you will solve real world problems and work on production-level solutions? Join us for this lunch and learn event where you will have a chance to learn about the work AGCO interns producing at the AGCO Acceleration Center. Get a tour of the newly renovated office and spend some time with current interns. Please RSVP in advance.

The Senate Committee on the Library and the University Library will host a campus-wide Town Hall via Zoom. Representatives from the Library will provide a status update on the Archives and Special Collections Building project and speak about the transition of Undergraduate Library services. There will also be an opportunity for Q and A. 

The Illinois Astrofest is an annual showcase for research in astronomy, astrophysics, and related fields at the University of Illinois. Both oral and poster presentations will be featured. For more information, and to register to attend, visit the link above. Please register by April 13.