Discover Rackham
Six Unbelievable Hacks to Survive Quals
Spoiler alert: just like in your average click-bait article, there is no real hack. One of the great joys about qualifying and preliminary exams is being done with them and being able to look back fondly on them after emerging from that dark, dark tunnel. Since I...
Student Spotlight: Jay Borchert
Jay was just awarded the prestigious Mellon American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Fellowship, an award given to graduate students in the humanities and related social sciences in the last year of Ph.D. dissertation writing. As a 5th year doctoral...
Student Spotlight: Devan Donaldson
“I’m an expert in my field. I have broken ground. I have made novel contributions. I’ve done it. I really have done it.” The news is still settling in for Devan Donaldson. While Devan doesn’t graduate until May, he’s leaving Ann Arbor now for Bloomington, Indiana...
Alumni Spotlight: Milton Morris
Milt is stuck in traffic, using his time efficiently to reminisce about his experience as a Rackham student. “The Midwest is and will always be my home,” he says, though his journey after graduate school has taken him into the worlds of academia and industry in...
Food for the Soul
There are things that you think you know and life has a way of shattering that illusion. One of the things that I thought I knew was how to move to a new country and negotiate the intricacies of getting up and running and most significantly, getting comfortable –...
Student Spotlight: Michael Bianco
“I’ve become an activist artist. My work has to do with issues in the environment, social and environmental justice.” Mike has previous a master’s degree in curatorial practice from the California College of the Arts and an undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary...
A Ph.D. Fireside Chat
The following is a transcript of a Gmail chat between Mike, a student blogger and Ph.D. Student in Kinesiology and Natalie Bartolacci, Academic Program Officer at Rackham Graduate School. For the record, the Gmail chat was not conducted fireside, but the warm imagery...
Being International in a Global Town
The first few times I was asked “How’re you doing,” I would stop in my tracks, feel pleased about how interested in my life this kind person was, take a few seconds to gather my thoughts, start a monologue about my health and happiness and promptly come to a halt when...
Student Spotlight: Logan Casey
“I’ve been into politics since I was 14. I always thought I’d run for office.” Logan, from St. Louis, received his undergraduate degree in political science from Truman State University, a small liberal arts college in Missouri. “In college I got really into the...
Alumni Spotlight: Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
For Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur, graduate education is part of a University of Michigan family legacy. She and her mother were both Barbour Scholars at Michigan, an almost century-old fellowship program for Asian women established by Levi Barbour, then a regent of the...