Discover Rackham
Dear Santa?
Dear Santa 3rd Reviewer, On the whole, I have been a good student this year. Please accept all my papers this new year! Naughty List Printing out way more papers than I read Finding empty seminar rooms to take an afternoon nap in Thinking some seriously mean things...
I Changed Research Groups and the World Didn’t End – Part 2: Limbo
During my first week as a graduate student, I was inundated with resources from about a week of orientation sessions. Among the stacks of papers that I accumulated that week was a hardcopy of this mentoring guide published by Rackham. I remember thinking it looked...
Student Spotlight: Ryan Wade
Ryan already went to grad school. He earned his Master’s in Interpersonal Practice and Mental Health from the School of Social Work and became a clinical social worker. He loved it and found work helping individuals to be rewarding. But he needed more. He says, “It...
Alumni Spotlight: Vivian Sangunett
You want Vivian in your corner. Spend a little time with her and you’ll understand just how deeply her passions run and how strongly she serves as an outspoken advocate for those issues. She’s integrated this dedication into all of her life as her career and family...
Is There No Hope for Student Evaluations?
Studies paint a pretty bleak picture for student evaluations, as I noted in my previous blog post. An instructor’s race and gender have well-documented effects on evaluation scores, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the ways that sexuality and gender...
Student Evaluations (Huh, Good God, Ya’ll!), What Are They Good For?
Now, before anyone breaks into their best Edwin Starr impression, let me preface this by saying that I don’t think the answer is “absolutely nothing.” But, I do think we need to consider what student evaluations are really measuring, because evidence suggests that it...
Student Spotlight: Sara Meerow
As an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, Sara wrote an honors thesis on the ‘natural resource curse’ in Africa that shifted her perspective. “I examined countries whose economies were dependent on oil and minerals and how that dependence correlated...
Alumni Spotlight: Antonio R. Flores
After more than 20 years as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), Antonio R. Flores offers his reflections on his graduate education at U-M and how that experience helped shape his career and the...
Note to my first-year grad student self
Dear first-year grad student me, I think of you wistfully every now and then, remembering your boundless enthusiasm for genetics and optimism about the world. You naive young thing, you. I’m so glad you don’t know what lies ahead. Ignorance IS bliss, but don’t tell...
Graduation After Incarceration: a Rackham Student Earns His Ph.D.
People slowly fill up the seats in a green and gold room before Jay Borchert even arrives. It’s the day of his dissertation defense, a day that is perhaps the most important milestone in a doctoral student’s career, a culmination of five or more years of intensive...