Have you seen this year's Graduate Image of Research Semifinalists? Check out the online exhibition and vote for your top three entries by April 10. Your votes will determine the People's Choice winner. Join us at the reception on Wednesday, April 10, from 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. in room 220 of the Main Library when we announce the winners. This event is open to the public. 

Congratulations to our 12 finalists in the Research Live! communication competition! Our finalists come from across campus and have fascinating work that they are excited to share with the campus and community. You can view the full list of finalists on the Graduate College website. Mark your calendars for the final event on Tuesday, April 2, at 5:00 pm at the Campus Instructional Facility and online.

The Graduate College invites graduate students enrolled in on-campus or online programs to apply to serve on SAGE (Students Advising on Graduate Education) in 2024-2025. SAGE members build leadership skills and provide varied perspectives that enhance the academic, professional, and social experiences of graduate students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Meetings are hybrid or virtual. 

The draft Fall 2023 list is now available at go.illinois.edu/lotrae. If your course is missing, check your instructor report against the criteria in the draft list. At least five students must have completed the relevant item(s) and you must have released your sections for inclusion on the list. For questions or corrections, email ices@illinois.edu or call 217-244-3846. 

Are you graduating this May? Join us for the Graduate College Doctoral Hooding Ceremony on Friday, May 10. The focus of this ceremony will be the formal hooding of doctoral graduates by their faculty mentors. Make sure to review the requirements for graduation. More details and the link to register can be found on the doctoral hooding event website.

We have seen an increase in reports of scammers posing as representatives from foreign governments, customs, banks, and tech companies. Review this information from ISSS for essential information about scam safety. Reach out to police@illinois.edu if you are unsure if a message, text, or call is a scam. UIPD will review the information and give advice on how to proceed. Email isss@illinois.edu if you are unsure about anything related to your immigration status. Threats to immigration status are a common tactic used by scammers.

April 6 is the last day for doctoral students to take their final exam (thesis defense) if intending to graduate in Spring 2024. Have questions about a final doctoral exam? Click here for an advising appointment!

March 29 is the last day to apply for May 2024 graduation via Self-Service. Students who intend to graduate must add themselves to the Degree List. Adding oneself to the Degree List is separate from registration for a convocation or commencement ceremony. Have questions about adding yourself to the degree list? Click here for an advising appointment!

March 29 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. Have questions about curriculum changes? Click here for an advising appointment!

Grad Students, come cheer on the Illinois baseball team against Northern Illinois University! Join us if you're a baseball fan or if this is your first Big10 sporting event! Tickets are free for all. We'll have a grad student seating section. The game starts at 6 pm. Come early to say hello at the Grad College table and pick up a sticker. Sign up here to let us know you’re coming!

Music is a powerful tool. It has the power to bring people together, to bridge cultural divides, and has the ability to transcend language barriers. It connects people from different backgrounds and cultures through the universal language of sound. The Counseling Center staff invites you to a musical evening to discuss the impact music has in bringing cultures together, in turn, impacting your mental health. Dinner is provided. 

This is a great resource for biomedical researchers and others! Burnout, often experienced as exhaustion, detachment, and ineffectiveness, can have significant impacts on work, mental health, and overall well-being. This lecture and conversation will discuss risk factors that can lead to burnout especially in biomedical researchers, protective factors associated with prevention, and ways to manage symptoms of burnout. This webinar is open to all NIHers and folks outside the NIH. The talk will be recorded and will be accessible within 24-48 hours. Register here. 

The GEO is organizing an income tax-help seminar on March 28 from 5.30-7.30 pm in Latzer Hall, University YMCA. Prof. Mandi Alt, an instructor of Accountancy in the Gies College of Business will share some general information and answer questions about filing U.S. income tax returns. This is a great opportunity for international students, first time filers, or anyone else who is struggling. This event is free and open to all grad students, regardless if you are a GEO member. Dinner will be provided. For more information follow GEO on Instagram @geo_uiuc.

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 mission, eligibility criteria, benefits, 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. The info session with be held twice via Zoom; please register in advance. 

Correctly formatting the title page of your thesis can be a challenge. Let us help! If you plan to graduate in December, submit your title page to the Thesis Office for review. We will check the formatting and your degree information to make sure you are on track! Just upload a copy of your title page on our website.

Do you have questions about formatting your thesis? Do you want to know more about the deposit process? Do you have questions about preliminary and final exam committees? The Thesis Office is here to help! We're offering extended office hours this week. Sign up here for an online 15-minute appointment with Emily.

Are you preparing to go on the academic job market? The Writers Workshop will review genre expectations for statements of teaching philosophy and provide examples from a range of disciplines. We will share strategies for brainstorming and drafting your own statement. This event is open to current University of Illinois affiliates (students, faculty, and staff). Please register with your University of Illinois email account by 11:59pm CT on March 27, and we will send a reminder email with the Zoom meeting invitation on the morning of the event.

Opportunities await at the Illini Career and Internship Fair! Explore and connect with 90+ employers, eager to engage with talent like you. Open to all majors and class levels. This is the last career fair of the school year, so don't miss it. Registration is encouraged but not required. Visit Handshake to view the list of employers and to register.

How can you highlight your service experience in your resume? Through service work, you get to make a positive impact in your community, but you are also gaining valuable skills and experience that will stay with you long after your project ends. Join We CU and The Career Center in Creating Your Powerful Resume. In this workshop you will learn to draft an effective resume that describes the qualifications and skills you have gained from your service experience. Dinner will be served, but space is limited. Register today!

The Writers Workshop will review different English tenses to achieve different rhetorical effects and discuss how different voices are considered to be appropriate in different disciplinary writings and forms of expression. We'll include time to review the concept and apply it to your own work. Sign up for one or all in this series to hone your English grammar skills!

Web of Science is the widest-scoping, multidisciplinary platform of abstract databases for full-text articles, books, and conference proceedings. This session provides insight and strategies for getting the most use out of the platform. We will highlight how to search for literature and authors, as well as where to find citation tracking data and grant information. Additional features and strategies covered include: the advanced search builder, refining and managing search results, analyzing citations, and unpacking item records. 

Join us to make progress on your writing! Our hybrid writing group provides grad students with dedicated time to make progress on any writing project in a supportive atmosphere. Each meeting consists of a short goal-setting conversation, quiet writing time, and a concluding reflection and wrap-up. You only need to register once with your U of I email to receive weekly email reminders all semester! 

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 Teaching, Learning, and Academic Support, the Writers Workshop, and the Office of Undergraduate Research. 

This session will give you insight and strategies for getting the most out of Scopus; the largest interdisciplinary database of peer-reviewed literature including journals, books, and conference proceedings, particularly in the sciences. This session will highlight how to find literature about a particular topic, reviewing author details, using article citations to discover more information, and evaluating sources. Attendees will have time to ask individuals questions at the end. Audience: Undergraduate or graduate students in any field.

Learn how to conduct an effective literature search using the database PubMed, a free database home to millions of citations for biomedical literature. Practice some basic search skills, like using boolean operators and applying filters, and learn some new techniques and tips for navigating PubMed and finding and saving relevant publications. We invite students, faculty, staff, and anyone else interested in learning more about PubMed to join us for this informative workshop.

Citations are an essential part of research, but there are lots of ways citations can go wrong. We will discuss inaccurate citation, citation cartels, fake citations, citation of retracted papers, as well as current developments from two ongoing research projects: the ORI-funded project "Natural Language Processing to Assess and Improve Citation Integrity in Biomedical Publications" and the Alfred P. Sloan-funded RISRS project, "Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science."

A manuscript should be evaluated by reviewers based on its quality and scientific merit. However, peer review has been pointed out in literature as a biased system comprised of biased people. This workshop will discuss types of bias in the peer review process such as gender, race, nationality, prestige, and reputation of authors, and share some recommendations to deal with reviewers and their biases.

Join us for an invigorating introductory workshop on R programming! Kickstart your journey with the essentials in the first half, and elevate your skills with data visualization techniques in the second. It’s the perfect blend of foundational knowledge and practical application – don’t miss out!

Learn about techniques for extending your video productions beyond the physical studio! In this workshop, we will utilize the HTC Vive tracking system at SCIM to bring live cameras into Unreal Engine for real time green screen compositing with a 3D environment instead of the more traditional 2D image/video. Additionally, we will demonstrate the control of our color adaptive lighting system.

This Illinois REDCap workshop will focus on advanced ways Illinois REDCap can be used to collect research data, including how to build or edit projects with a Data Dictionary, collecting data with repeatable instruments, and collecting longitudinal data with defined events. It is recommended (but not required) that you have a REDCap account prior to attending the workshop. Attending the “Introduction to REDCap” or having a working knowledge of REDCap is recommended before attending this workshop.

NCSA and CIQ will offer the Intro to Apptainer workshop next March 29 at 10 AM CT. The content is suitable for researchers wanting to know more about containerization in HPC systems. Register by Mar. 28 and find more information with the link in the title.

Students who are undocumented, DACA, or TPS experience unique challenges in higher education. Join University staff, administration, and faculty to learn to better support undocumented students at the University of Illinois. This training is an opportunity to hear from undocumented students and join a network of campus allies. Light breakfast provided.  Register to attend at the link above.

This workshop introduces citation as a practice that interacts with wider systems of power, privilege, and prejudice, and considers possibilities for citational justice within those systems. This event will be hybrid on Zoom and in the Main Library, Room 106, and is open to all University of Illinois affiliates. Please register by 3/28 and you'll receive a reminder email the morning of the event.

On behalf of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, the National Center for Principled Leadership & Research Ethics will conduct our third campuswide research climate survey.  All postdocs, doctoral students, and research-active master's students will be invited to participate by email from ethicsctr@illinois.edu on April 1. (Faculty and staff will also be invited.) This survey is completely voluntary and should take about 20 minutes of your time. For more information, please see https://ncpre.csl.illinois.edu/institutional-integrity/assessing-research-climates.

The Intensive Language Instruction Program (ILIP) offers classes in 13 different languages. ILIP classes combine language and culture via engaging activities led by skilled instructors. No grade, just for fun! Students receive 30 hours of enjoyable language instruction which maximizes exposure to the target language to help them meet their own personal learning goals. Register for ILIP today!

Studiodance Extended 2024 features work by third year MFA candidate, Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde. The work focuses on Ayorinde’s time spent on deepening his understanding of the body while diving into the well of black diasporic dance and their related worldviews. [Re-Re] is the performative aspect of Ayorinde’s thesis that reflects on the journey of that research.

HYBRID EVENT: Join David Takacs (professor Harry & Lillian hasting Research Chair UC Law, San Francisco) for his lecture, "'We Are the River': Rights of Nature in a Climate Changed world" in Coble 306 & on Zoom. He will discuss recent rights for nature laws, including the recent granting of Whanganui River and the Te Urewera mountain ecosystem rights as legal persons, with a Māori governing board to speak for the nonhuman entities, by the New Zealand Parliament. Part of the CGS Event Series: Climate Change.

Learn about the concept of share tables, an innovation in school cafeterias focused on reducing milk waste. These tables offer a simple solution to prevent the unnecessary disposal of unopened milk cartons. Explore the potential of share tables in transforming school cafeteria programs and delve into ongoing research on the microbial spoilage potential of milk in these settings. Presenter: Gabby Pinto

The Institute of Communications Research will present a Distinguished Speaker Series this spring, showcasing some of the most renowned scholars in the fields of communication and media studies. Joseph Turow will present “Marketers’ Cultivation of Digital Resignation in an AI Media Era” on March 28 at 12:30 p.m. Turow is the Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Media Systems & Industries at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This talk is co-sponsored by the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising.

How are scholars of Black Britain addressing the erasure which Black people across the United Kingdom have faced? Join us for an evening with Caroline Bressey (Geography, University College London), Kennetta Hammond Perry (Black Studies, Northwestern University), and Rochelle Sennet (Music and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, College of Fine and Applied Arts) as they share their research on Black Britons in a variety of media.

Join us for an online lecture with Silvia Federici (Emerita Professor, Hofstra University) entitled "Feminist Insurgencies and the Reconstruction of the Commons." Federici is a feminist activist, teacher and writer. Advanced registration is required to attend this event. This event is part of the Interseminars series for "Improvise and Intervene," supported by the Mellon Foundation.

Dr. Kolia, an Illinois Alumna with a Ph.D. in the School of Social Work with a graduate minor in Gender Relations in International Development, will share information about Reaching Across Borders services to Syrian Refugees in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. She will discuss how war transforms society, and she will dispel biases and myths about Syrian refugee girls and women. Lunch provided with RSVP

Join us for a night of fun and flavor at the Board Game Night with Cup Noodles event for Asian international and Asian American grad students! Get ready to play games, and enjoy delicious cup noodles and Asian snacks while connecting with fellow grad students in a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. Don't miss out on this opportunity to foster community with other Asian grad students!

Join us for the Art History graduate student symposium "Perpetual Upkeep: Intersections of Art and Maintenance" on April 4-5, 2024. This symposium will explore the relationship of art and maintenance, including artworks and practices that make visible the upkeep of dominant power structures and the technologies on which they rely. View the full symposium schedule at this link and mark your calendar for the keynote speaker, Dr. Deanna Ledezma, on April 4 at 5:30pm in the Art & Design Building (Room 331).

The “Managing Digital Resources in Global and Area Studies” webinar will present valuable information and essential tools for students and scholars who need to manage and organize their personal digital archives, including photographs, primary sources, and online texts. Register here: https://illinois.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_H15Gn-rXQYqI_QkL0uKLNA#/registration

Join We CU Community Engaged Scholars and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on March 26 at noon for a workshop on addressing racism in service learning. This interactive training will feature breakout rooms and small group brainstorming to generate ideas across disciplines. Attendees will learn how to incorporate more equitable teaching practices in their service learning classrooms. This training is open to all Illinois instructors, including graduate teaching assistants. Register today!

This symposium aims to illuminate the ways sports at times facilitates public conversations on past and present societal conditions, whether it is how sports reveal broader issues about culture, identity, or history. View full symposium schedule and mark your calendars for keynote speaker David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, speaking at 7:30 p.m. on 3/28 at Alice Campbell Alumni Center.

McKinley Health Center serves on-campus students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

The University of Illinois Counseling Center provides mental health counseling and well-being education for students. 

If you or a student you know may need support with their basic needs or financial stressors, please reach out.