GEOG Graduate Student Organization
Q&A With Co-Presidents of GEOG Graduate Student Organization
Balancing research, coursework, and life as a graduate student isn’t easy, but the GEOG Graduate Student Organization (GGSO) is here to help.
Ph.D. students Zhen Liu and Sheila Baber, both in their third year, are serving as the 2024-2025 co-presidents of GGSO. Liu, originally from Yingtan, Jiangxi in China, focuses his research on improving the quality of the cloud mask on Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 images, while Baber, from the U.S., studies Earth observation of agriculture in areas of data scarcity.
Together, they are committed to building community, advocating for student concerns, and ensuring that grad students have a voice in the Department of Geographical Sciences.
What motivated you to lead the grad student organization?
Liu and Baber: In our first two years as PhD students, we participated in several GGSO activities such as apple picking, GGSO bi-weekly meetings and GEOG happy hours. We found GGSO to be a crucial group to support graduate students and build a sense of community in the Department.
During our time as PhD students, we have witnessed our peers struggle with living costs, departmental power dynamics, and visa issues and additional fees for international graduate students.
Continuing the efforts of the previous iteration of GGSO, we wanted to make efforts on improving our graduate students’ experience and bridge the gap between the students and the Department Committee members so that our students' voices can be heard and problems addressed.
How does the GGSO support grad students?
Liu and Baber: First, we have bi-weekly GGSO meetings. All students are welcome to attend our meetings to discuss issues relevant to graduate students and be informed of the latest news from the Department. Students sometimes seek GGSO to share with us their worries and concerns. We aim to help them to find solutions and resources, or find someone who is better equipped to do so.
The secondary function of GGSO is community building through fun events for the students and the Department. We have regular events like the monthly happy hour, and special events like apple picking, Halloween, Lunar New Year and coffee with our Graduate Director and Department Chair. We hope those events can help students relax and provide more opportunities for students to connect with each other.
We want to take this opportunity to remind graduate students to not hesitate and reach out to us! We want to get to know you, and hear your concerns and suggestions on how GGSO can better serve you.
What challenges do grad students face, and how are you addressing them?
Liu and Baber: One of the challenges we are facing now is students’ participation. Currently, student attendance in both GGSO meetings and the Department Committee meetings are not high. We understand that the academic work could be a burden for them to attend. However, this also means that graduate students can get delayed updates of Department policies and potential opportunities.
What we do now is to advertise the events through not only emails but also chat groups. We also summarize the meeting key points and send them after every meeting to make sure the students who cannot make it can also obtain updates.
The low attendance can also happen in Department events. What we do is to send reminder emails several times to keep students informed with the event details and they can schedule their time for the participation.
Any highlights for this year? Any exciting plans for this semester?
Liu and Baber: One of the highlights we had was the Department Lunar New Year event we hosted in early February. During the event, we had many fun activities such as dumpling making, calligraphy, LNY-themed bingo, and even brought back the Department talent show (we have so many hidden talents in GEOG!). More than 50 students and faculty came to celebrate together.
For this semester, we will have more events like coffee hour with the Department Chair [on March 13], a picnic with GGSO and more happy hours. We may even have another specific event this semester.
If you have any ideas, please let us know! We are also aiming to increase our collaboration with the Graduate Labor Union to advocate for graduate students rights.
Image: GGSO Co-Presidents Zhen Liu and Sheila Baber, courtesy of Liu and Baber
