Our graduate students have so much to be proud of. During the fall semester, our first and second-year students were busy digging into their coursework, our third-year students were working hard on their Third Year Papers, our fourth-year students were working on their prospectuses, and our fifth- and sixth-year students were finishing their dissertations, applying for jobs, and submitting articles for review.
Our students received significant recognition for their work last semester. To highlight just a few examples: Annie Jarman was a finalist for the Dean’s Award for Graduate Research Excellence, Rex Deng won a Provost’s Graduate Student Research Excellence Award, and Alex Avery was selected to participate in the New Era Workshop through Bridging the Gap. We are very proud of our graduate students and all of the recognition they are receiving for their top-notch research.
Several of our students also won grants to support their work. To name a few, Rex Deng was awarded an APSA Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Irene Barrios received a Rapoport Doctoral Dissertation Grant from the Rapoport Family Foundation, and several students had surveys fielded as part of the Graduate Weidenbaum Center Survey (GWCS). We are grateful to our partners across campus who help support students in securing funding for their research, particularly Research Development Associate Kristin Foringer, who has helped students apply for competitive grants and fellowships, such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Many of our students presented research at major academic conferences last semester, including the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Vancouver in September, and the Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans in January. Several students also had the opportunity to participate in smaller, focused conferences, such as the Women in Legislative Studies Conference at UIUC, and the Comparative Politics and Formal Theory Conference at Stanford, among many others. We also participated in WISE, our annual exchange program with UIUC, where we hosted four of their students and they hosted four of our students to present their research. We are fortunate to be able to connect our students with so many opportunities to share their work.
While our graduate students were hard at work producing excellent scholarship, the faculty spent time thinking about curriculum reforms and preparing for graduate admissions season. We are actively pursuing creative strategies to help accelerate our students’ research trajectories. We also formed the Global Futures Committee, which works on broadening our professional network to have a global reach. We are grateful to the Office of Graduate Studies and the Dean’s Office for supporting our program and we are eager to welcome the next cohort of students to WashU!
Please check out our News page for more details on our students’ accomplishments this semester!
