The Graduate College is accepting applications for its new Career Exploration Fellowship, which connects doctoral students with campus units for meaningful, mentored work experience. In Fall 2023, each Career Exploration Fellow will receive a paid hourly position at a host unit and a $5,000 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 March 29. Learn more at https://grad.illinois.edu/career-exploration-fellowship.

March 31 is the last day to change your curriculum for the current term. This includes adding or dropping a campus approved minor or concentration. Please check your student program information in Self-Service to verify your program information is listed correctly. Information on how to change your curriculum is available online.

Learn to calm your mind. Can you make a commitment to listen to daily mindfulness audios? Click link above to read class description and to register. Classes are also open to individuals who are not affiliated with the U of I. 20-hours of classroom instruction Thursdays 5 - 7 pm online beginning April 13 to June 1, 2023 with one 4-hour Saturday online session on June 3, 2023. Classes wil also be offered this summer. If interested in individual or couples training sessions, contact Dr. Menard.

Do you want to ensure that your spending is ethical and making a positive impact on the world? Is being mindful about where your money goes important to you? This webinar provides the tools you need to think critically about your own consumption. Learn how you can align your financial behaviors with your personal values and goals.

Are you a student who demonstrates financial need yet does not otherwise qualify for financial aid? Consider applying for the HOPE Scholarship! To learn more, please visit this link. Know any peers who might be eligible? Consider sharing the opportunity!

Taking care of yourself is an important part of working on your thesis. There are several campus resources that offer support both online and in-person. The McKinley Health Center website has tips for stress management, nutrition, and wellness, and you can set up an individual appointment to speak with someone. The Counseling Center also offers individual appointments as well as group counseling and workshops.

Illinois graduates interested in public service and public policy careers are encouraged to apply for a 12-month paid appointment as an Illini Science Policy Scholar with U of I Extension. Positions are available with state agencies and legislative offices. Applicants must complete an advanced degree (Masters, Doctoral, J.D, professional.) from UIUC between 5/01/22 and 8/31/23. View full details in the Request for Applications.

Are you preparing for an upcoming conference? Need to design a poster for your class? This workshop will give you tools for communicating your research for academic conferences and professional meetings in a concise and visually effective poster presentation. This event is co-sponsored by the University Library, the Writers Workshop, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.  

Much of scholarly communication happens as peer-to-peer communication through emails, memos, technical briefs, lab reports and other unpublished communications. These communications represent your professional reputation and are often the only way that other scholars meet you. This workshop will cover creating tidy Word documents, basic of creating professional emails and general tips for creating professional online interpersonal communications.

Join us for a speed networking event hosted by The Career Center to explore resources and opportunities for international students to find a job or internship in the United States! This event is open to all international students from various backgrounds and majors. Whether you're a freshman or a senior, an undecided major, or a master's student, this event is a great way to connect with like-minded individuals and gain insights on how to jumpstart your career. We'll provide light refreshments to keep you energized throughout the event.

The Doctoral Research Support Program and the Writers Workshop will again be hosting Writing in the Disciplines, an online series that connects University of Illinois doctoral students with scholars, journal editors, and publishers. The goal of the series is to help doctoral students learn more about scholarly writing; it complements existing services offered by the Writers Workshop as well as programs and services at the departmental level. The upcoming installment of this series will focus on Writing in the Life Sciences.

Story Maps are a user-friendly, code-free way to combine data with narrative text, images, and multimedia content to create web apps. Present research and data, especially with geospatial elements, in a visually engaging way. Learn GIS basics, explore Story Map examples, and learn about unique Story Map tools with step-by-step instructions. Prior to attending this workshop, attendees will need to sign up for an ArcGIS Online account at the WebStore.

Mediaspace (mediaspace.illinois.edu) is a YouTube-like service that allows U of I people to post and share videos, and you can use it to promote your research, for teaching, or outreach.  Now, Zoom meetings you record to the cloud go directly into Kaltura! You can publish your media broadly or selectively.  You can upload videos you've already made, or record directly online,  edit your videos, and add captions, too.  We will cover what you need to know to get started publishing with Kaltura, and follow up with consultation for your specific projects.

This hands-on workshop will teach you how to make common word processing documents accessible for screen readers, and how to make presentations accessible for a wide range of users. We’ll cover MS Word and PowerPoint, Google Docs, and PDFs, as well as general best practices for accessibility that you can incorporate across formats. You’ll leave this workshop with readily implementable strategies and checklists you can start using immediately to ensure your research, teaching, and presentations are more accessible to diverse audiences.

In this workshop, you will learn the basics of Illinois REDCap and how it can be used for the collection of research data, including how to create projects, instruments, and surveys and how to start collecting research data. It is recommended (but not required) that you have a REDCap account prior to attending the workshop. Information about accessing Illinois REDCap is available here. No prior REDCap experience is necessary.

The final version of the Fall 2022 List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students is now available at go.illinois.edu/lotrae.

NCSA and Research IT will offer the Illinois Campus Cluster: Basics of Access and Usage workshop. The content is suitable for researchers and students who already have experience with clusters and want to know more about ICC and those who have no experience working with clusters and want to learn how to use one. Register by March 29 and find more information with this link.

Please join us for the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) speaker series episode 6: Copyright. Sara Benson, copyright librarian of the University Library, will speak on the topic of copyright. Please bring your questions!

Want to become a master at using Box? Learn tips for better collaboration, efficiency and maintaining control of your documents during the live Intro to Box training course via Zoom. Box is hosting the course on two separate days, March 28 from 2 pm to 3 pm and March 30 from 2 pm to 3 pm. Training is free, but registration is required. Click the dates to sign up. 

Dustin and TL will share reflections and learnings from campaigns and organizations set up to abolish policing, prisons and institutions with a specific focus on how ableism is a central feature. They’ll share thoughts on the co-optation of disability justice and offer interventions to strengthen applications of disability justice that adhere to anti-imperialist and abolitionist principles. 

This training series is designed for students, faculty, and staff at the University of Illinois seeking to understand race and racism in deeper ways, promote racial justice, and dismantle systems of oppression through intensive 3-hour trainings. Sessions are held in person and virtually via Zoom. Register for one of these sessions at https://go.illinois.edu/RJAA

An ad-hoc group that consists of faculty, librarians, and students is looking for moderators to help us with town hall discussions on the future of area/transnational and discipline studies at the University of Illinois. Each town hall meeting will have two moderators. Additional information will be provided to lead these discussions. Please sign up here.

The Center for Writing Studies invites Graduate Students from English, Communications, Linguistics, Education and other fields to present on topics of interest within writing, literacy, discourse, rhetoric, composition, education, media, and communication at this year’s Gesa E. Kirsch’s Graduate Student Symposium! The Kirsch Symposium is a forum where graduate students can present their work to interested peers and faculty in their preferred presentation format. Proposals are due Friday, April 7. For more details contact finolam2@illinois.edu and ank4@illinois.edu.

Attention Grad Students, we need your help! We have a record number of presenters for the 2023 Undergraduate Research Symposium and need more judges urgently. The symposium is on April 27 in the Illini Union. As a judge, you'll be assigned a 1.5 hr slot (based on your availability) to evaluate a subset of presentations. Your evaluations are crucial to award outstanding presentations. Sign up at: https://go.illinois.edu/URSJudge.

Ian Shepherd & Friends was birthed from the concept of forming the best house band in town and having the greatest musicians and friends sit in and give Chambana a world class show. As time has gone on, the concept has concretized and the band has become a staple on the scene, producing the best funk, blues, and improvised music in the region. Recent successes include a standing room only crowd at Rose Bowl Tavern for an evening with Led Zeppelin, and a performance at the world premiere of the documentary Incident At Kickapoo Creek at The Virginia Theater.

Dance at Illinois Downtown features a contemporary African dance work, an exploration inspired by the formal structures and behaviors of the botanical world, a solo inspired by background research on queer, Black vernacular dance, excerpts from Danse Soirée de Bonbonswith, and the premiere of a group work exploring intersections between Contemporary Ballet and the Cunningham Technique.

Ben Folds is widely regarded as one of the major music influencers of our generation. He’s created an enormous body of genre-bending music that includes pop albums with Ben Folds Five, multiple solo albums, and numerous collaborative records. He tours as a pop artist, while also performing with some of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras, and is currently serving as the first ever Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.

For the first time ever, Dance at Illinois heads to the historic Virginia Theatre for Dance at Illinois Downtown, featuring the work of faculty members; Alexandra Barbier, Paige Cunningham-Caldarella, Dr. C. Kemal Nance, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, 2nd year MFA candidate, Anna Peretz Rogovoy, and the late Dr. Kariamu Welsh, dance pioneer and founder of the Umfundalai technique.

Food plays a vital role in shaping the culture of many regions and groups. Among the Indian population, food is especially important in connecting people to their culture. This presentation will explore a short history behind Indian food and focus on people's personal relationships with Indian food. You will learn how you can make Indian food at home and hear personal stories behind the food. Dinner is provided! Funded by SCPF.

For 20 years, through war, occupation, and the return of the Taliban, The Garden of Flowers Montessori Preschool has supported children’s resilience, learning and recovery, while also strengthening and inspiring adults. Allison Lide looks at the essential principles of Montessori education and how they served the needs of children in Afghanistan during challenging times. She will address how to adapt and implement a Montessori program in resource-poor but culturally and socially rich environments.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine gave rise to a refugee crisis that is unprecedented in history. This talk will explore the findings of a study on the experiences of post-February 24th, 2022, Ukrainian refugees in Poland and the Polish and Ukrainian immigrant populations’ response to the refugee crisis. In particular, the talk will examine how the Ukrainian refugees adapt to life in Poland and how the local volunteer networks were established in Poland in the days, weeks, and months following the beginning of the refugee crisis. 

Dr Sarangi and Dr Mishra examine the multiple domains where language and politics interact in the case of India after independence. The constitutional provisions entailed in the PART XVII of the Indian Constitution show how the language question in the Constituent Assembly Debates resulted in the constitutional provisions for the protection and language rights especially for the linguistic minorities.

Americans are some of the world’s biggest consumers of black teas; in Japan, green tea, especially sencha, is preferred. This talk will explain how these national partialities are deeply entwined. Tracing the trans-Pacific tea trade from the early 19th century onward, it will examine how interconnections between Japan and the US have influenced the daily tea habits of people in both countries.

Join Professor Shakira Nasir as she discusses “Digital Literacy Among Children from B40 Family Living at the Pusat Perumahan Rakyat (PPR).” Dr. Nasir is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, International Islamic University in Malaysia.

Community Conversation with Dr. Gabriele Magni: Friday, March 31, Gender & Sexuality Resource Center, Illini Union. Come for an opportunity to chat with Dr. Magni about pursuing a career in academia, research, or advocacy. This opportunity centers our queer, trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming undergraduate and graduate students. Light refreshments provided.

Conversation Cafe + Friday Forum presentation: In Pursuit of Intersectional Equity Beyond the Walls of Academia: Learning from the Marginalized Sunni-Baluch Women Needleworkers in Peri-Urban Iran with Atyeh Ashtari, Urban Planning, PhD Candidate at UIUC. Conversation Cafe is part of the Student Affairs Lunch on Us series and is paid for, in part, by the Student Cultural Programming Fee (SCPF). A free lunch is provided.

Transatlantic Challenges to Social Justice Spring 2023, Dr. Gabriele Magni presents:  LGBT Rights and Representation: What's the matter on the right? What explains diverging attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights among right-wing parties in Europe? Light refreshments provided.

Attend this upcoming lecture by Macarena Gómez-Barris (Modern Culture and Media, Brown University). Gómez-Barris is a writer and scholar with a focus on the decolonial environmental humanities, authoritarianism and extractivism, queer Latine epistemes, media environments, cultural theory and artistic practice. This talk is part of the Interseminars event series. 

Access Illinois is a hybrid event celebrating accessibility and inclusion at the University of Illinois. The event will take place April 6 at the Beckman Institute, with the option to attend virtually.  Lunch will be provided to in-person attendees. Registration ends Friday, March 31, 2023. For details, including registration and event schedule information, click the link https://go.illinois.edu/accessillinois2023. This free hybrid campus event is sponsored by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (OVCDEI) and the Technology Accessibility Review Committee (TARC).

Join NCSA Postdoctoral Research Associate Avik Roy for an online training session March 29 at 3 p.m. to help users to get started with deep learning projects on HAL, the hardware accelerated learning cluster at NCSA. DNNs are often treated as black boxes. This talk will focus on some of the modern methods of explainability for DNNs and discuss their implementation, usage and limitations. Sign up!

Saturday Engineering for Everyone is an open and free lecture series for anyone – students, faculty, staff and the local community – interested in learning more about engineering. On April 1 Professor John Dallesasse presents the history of microelectronics in "From Bardeen, Brattain, and the Point Contact Transistor to Light Emitting Transistor Structures: A View of the Past and Future Possibilities."

Love books? Love food? Plan on attending (or register an entry for) the Library's 16th Annual Edible Book Festival. Edible entries should have a connection to books as shapes or content. Prizes will be awarded for the best culinary creations, which will be displayed, judged, and consumed at the festival on April 1 at Martinelli's Market. Viewing begins at 5pm. For more info, visit the link above. 

Welcome all who are navigating the worlds of parenting and graduate school! This workshop will connect graduate student parents through presentations and conversations. With the aim of creating a supportive network, we invite participants to share their experiences, offer guidance from parent professors, and provide links to resources for student parents.

Using energy emits harmful greenhouse gases (GHG) into the environment. Being mindful of your everyday energy consumption for lighting, electronics, or laundry can trim harmful GHGs and your utility bills! During the month of April we are challenging our community to take small steps that together can help avert GHGs and climate change. Sign up here for our Earth Month Energy Conservation Challenge to get weekly tips to save energy and track your progress!

iSEE is please to host the second annual Green Globes (previously Sustainability Grammys), at which active student organizations and Greek chapters will be recognized for sustainable actions during the past year. RSVP by Saturday, April 1, to attend — and to nominate a student group! Light refreshments will be served at the April 20 event. Questions? Email us!

Not all heroes wear capes, but some edit Wikidata. Join us on March 30th and 31st to enrich digital records about BIPOC comic book characters and BIPOC creators. Drop-ins welcome! No prior Wikidata experience required. Hosted by the Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop at MSU and co-sponsored by the Comic Book Reading Group and the HRI Research Cluster on the Social Lives of Digitized Culture at the University of Illinois.

While we may associate microbes in our food with harmful outbreaks of foodborne illness, microbes can play a positive role in our diet and even be a source of food themselves. Learn about the common microbes we encounter in our food, and how we can harness the power of microbes to end world hunger!