The Graduate College is accepting applications for the Career Exploration Fellowship, which connects doctoral students with campus units for meaningful, mentored work experience. In Spring 2025, 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 October 17. Learn more at https://grad.illinois.edu/career-exploration-fellowship.

October 18 is the last day to drop a full semester course online via Self-Service; and the last day to submit a Late Registration Change request via the Graduate College Student Portal to add or drop a Part of Term A course with approval (a "W" is recorded). Have questions about registration deadlines or submitting a Late Registration form? Click here for an advising appointment!

If you are planning to deposit your thesis this semester, here are a few tips to get a head start! 1) Review our Deposit Checklist, which outlines the steps you need to take in order to deposit. 2) Doctoral students: complete your required surveys! 3) Make sure to add your name to the degree list through Self-Service (the deadline to do this is November 3!).

You are invited to subscribe to Career Connections, The Career Center's bi-monthly e-newsletter featuring student-focused career services, programs, and workshops, including career education, pre-health, international students career development events, and our inclusion initiatives. To subscribe, visit: https://go.illinois.edu/CareerConnections.

You know that a strong network can help you advance in your career, but actually building that network can feel uncertain and awkward at times. This workshop aims to demystify every step of your networking efforts, by giving you practical tools for identifying people and making first contact to maintaining those connections over time. We will discuss various strategies and resources to help, including how to use LinkedIn, events, and academic conferences to make professional connections. This session will be broadcast online at the link below. 

The University Academic Alliance of Taiwan invites applications for its new International Young Visiting Scholar Program. Open to young (under age 45) faculty & postdoctoral researchers, the program funds 1-3 months of research, teaching, and/or entrepreneurial activities intended to build collaborations with Taiwanese universities & industries. $10K is available for airfare, living expenses, & operational expenses.The Office of the Vice President for Economic Development & Innovation is available to assist applicants with their plans and applications.

Throughout your life you will, almost certainly, give presentations. We have all sat through presentations that were boring, confusing, and drab. How do you communicate your message most succinctly? What visuals will captivate and inform your audience the best? Is it only about your slide design or are there other techniques that leave a lasting impression? In this session we distill the magic that just might take your next presentation from bland to grand. 

Are you overwhelmed by organizing your sources? Zotero is a free, open-source citation manager that helps you store and organize your files and insert formatted citations into papers. You will leave this hands-on workshop with a Zotero library set up and ready to use!

Web of Science is a large multidisciplinary platform of abstract databases for articles, book chapters, 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 and grant information.

You've heard about fake telephone calls and AI-generated propaganda videos. But how are deepfakes created? How can you identify deepfakes? What can you do to protect your image, voice, and work? This workshop will provide an overview of how artificial intelligent tools interpret pictures and sound to generate new images, video, and voices. We'll discuss how these techniques are being used for research, in film, and across campus to support new scholarship and creative works. We'll also identify strategies for recognizing deepfakes and tools you can use to protect your image and voice.

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 use EndNote, a citation management software program, to keep track and organize citations and cite while you write your papers. Heavily used by researchers across campus, EndNote is available for Macs and PCs and a limited one-year subscription can be purchased from the U of I Webstore (Endnote on Webstore for $55). We often hear graduate students say that they wish they had implemented a citation management strategy at the beginning of their academic careers - don't let this happen to you! Please note that this introductory session is geared towards those who are new to EndNote.

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, and what to do when things go wrong. This session fulfills part of the training requirement for the Graduate College Mentoring Certificate. You can join in person (Graduate College, 507 E. Green St., Champaign) or on Zoom (https://go.grad.illinois.edu/eventspace).

Join us weekly to work on your projects! 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! 

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 10/21 and you'll receive a reminder email the morning of the event.

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.

Are you an international student or scholar navigating the U.S. healthcare system? We want to hear from you! Join our focus group to share your thoughts and experiences. Your feedback will help us understand challenges, improve services, and enhance support for our international community. Please register in advance here by October 21: https://go.illinois.edu/ImprovingHealthcareFocusGroup

Help by donating new hygiene items to create essential kits for those who could use a little extra support. We’re accepting toothpaste, toothbrushes, body wash, bar soap, period products, and more! Drop off donations at the Student Turner Building (bin by the front desk). Your support makes a difference! 

The Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) recognizes outstanding scholarship at the master's level through its Distinguished Master's Thesis Award. This year's competition targets two areas: Social Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences & Engineering. The master's degree must have been conferred between July 1, 2022 & June 30, 2024, and the thesis must have made an unusually significant contribution to the discipline. Awardees receive $750 plus a trip to the MAGS annual meeting in Indianapolis. The Grad College welcomes departmental nominations, which are due by October 25.

Your input is critical to creating a new vision for IT at Illinois. On October 16 at 5:30 p.m. in Armory 147, we will conduct a one-hour focus group with topics related to your experience at Illinois and your interaction with IT. The Office of the Provost and the Office of the CIO are creating a Boldly Illinois IT strategic plan to develop a campuswide technology vision with unified strategies for students, faculty and staff. Learn more on the IT Strategic Planning webpage. Free pizza and beverages will be provided. RSVP at https://cio.illinois.edu/graduate-student-focus-group-signup/.

This training series is designed for students, staff, and faculty 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. Find out more information and register here: go.illinois.edu/RJAA 

Learn more about the culture of Kazakhstan through the perspectives of three Kazakhstani scholars who will present an overview of key elements of their culture and share their experiences on growing up and life in Kazakhstan, transitioning to life in the US, and more. Feel free to bring lunch and eat in the classroom. Please register in advance here: https://go.illinois.edu/SpotlightKazakhstan2024

What are some of the latest slang expressions and idioms in English? Have a hard time understanding conversations because of slang? Come to this interactive workshop and learn more about American idiomatic expressions. Share experiences and learn new phrases from experienced instructors of the Intensive English Institute to make your conversational English more native-speaker like!   

The Counseling Center and Illinois Theatre's Inner Voices Social Issues Theatre will present, "The Importance of Names" at the Beckman Institute. The performers will address critical social issues that impact the college experience and society at large. Registration required. Food will be provided.

Check out the 13th annual Travel Around the World cultural fair on Tuesday, November 19 from 11am-2pm at the Illini Union! Explore booths representing countries from around the globe, and enjoy music, food, crafts, live performances, activities and more. Interested in hosting a table and sharing your culture? Sign up to present by November 5, 2024 at 11:59pm at go.illinois.edu/TATW2024.

Join us for the first AI + Genomics seminar of the semester, where we will be discussing AlphaFold, a leading AI system in protein structure prediction. This is also a great opportunity to connect with fellow students interested in AI for science. AI + Genomics seminars take place biweekly, beginning Thursday October 17 from 12-1pm in Everitt 1103

What do we know about age-related hearing loss? Older adults often experience ear and hearing-related issues such as ringing in the ears and difficulty hearing daily sounds like alarms and conversations in quiet or noisy backgrounds. These issues can eventually lead to social isolation, cognitive problems, and a decline in overall quality of life. Learn about age-related hearing loss and what we can do about it. Presenters: Rohit M. Ananthanarayana and Vahid Delaram

Gryphon Lecture: Rethinking the Influence of Religion and Religious Identity in Contemporary US Children's Literature. A lecture by Professor Anastasia Ulanowicz. This talk centers on middle-grade novels produced during the oft-neglected Second Golden Age of children's literature (1950-1980), which demonstrate complex engagements with religious identity and practice. 

The Women's Resources Center in collaboration with other cultural and resource center on campus will be hosting the Ecojustice Series! This series will explore the intersections of social justice and environmental justice. Save the dates today and register for the field trip! For the full calendar of events please visit go.illinois.edu/EcoJustice2024  

Hobson is the host, creator and executive producer of The Middle with Jeremy Hobson, a weekly radio show and podcast that airs on more than 400 public radio stations and is distributed by Illinois Public Media. Prior to this, he spent 10 years hosting numerous shows and special coverage on major news events, both domestically and overseas. He has interviewed presidential candidates, world leaders, business titans, artists, authors and journalists. He started in public radio at age 9, working on a show called Treehouse Radio in his hometown of Urbana.

What do humanists need to know about current and developing trends? Robert Townsend, program director for Humanities, Arts, and Culture at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, will discuss the latest from the Humanities Indicators project. Learn what their data means for our work inside and outside the academy in 2024 and beyond. Register for your Zoom link

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.