Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Diplomas – New Delivery Method

The Graduate School has joined with their vendor, The Michael Sutter Company, to have diplomas mailed from the company directly to our  graduates. 

Previously, the Graduate School ordered diplomas from the company, then had them shipped back to Blacksburg for packaging and mailing.  We are now able to provide faster service to our graduates.  Students will receive an email notifying them  that their diploma has been shipped, which will be within 2-3 business days from the time our order has been placed.  In addition to this new service, graduates will receive a larger diploma (11x 14).

Note:  BMES/BMVS diplomas are still ordered through the Office of the University Registrar and their normal time frame will remain at 4-6 weeks.

Posted on

Admissions

We would like to invite all graduate program directors and graduate program coordinators to our Admissions Summit to be held on Wednesday, November 4th at 3:00pm in Room F of the GLC.

The role of this meeting is for us to review the various admissions tools that are available through the Graduate School and to share information about the Online Application, transcript review, test scores, admissions recommendations through the Online Admissions Analysis tool, and decision deadlines.

Come join the conversation.

Graduate Admissions Summit
Sponsored by Graduate Admissions & Academic Progress
Room F, GLC
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
3:00-4:30 pm

  1. Overview of the online application via CollegeNet and available resources
  2. Transcript review, gpa calculations, and test scores
  3. Making recommendations for admission through the Online Admissions Analysis Tool
  4. Decision Deadlines
  5. Discussion of any questions, concerns, or suggestions related to the process
Posted on

Request for Information for CSVP program

In the interest of increasing the numbers of graduate students from underrepresented groups here at Virginia Tech, we have created the Coordinated School Visit Program (CSVP) which provides an opportunity for Virginia Tech faculty to: (1) network across disciplines, colleges, and universities; (2) unify various disjointed faculty or department efforts to connect to HBCUs, other minority-serving institutions, and high schools; (3) maximize the number of underrepresented student recruits to the university per year; (4) provide a pipeline of quality undergraduate and graduate students to assist faculty in research projects; (5) fulfill certain requirements outlined by external grantors and funding agencies in regard to research team composition and collaboration; and (6) foment a structured, multiyear program in which the administration can become invested, with possible external funding.

The purpose of the CSVP is four-fold: (1) to increase the overall number of applications from students who identify as members of underrepresented groups; (2) to specifically target promising students from underrepresented groups; (3) to implement effective retention strategies to integrate these students into the Virginia Tech community; and (4) to establish and maintain strong connections with other diverse universities and potentially, high schools.

Here is where you come in. In order for us to plan a more effective trip to universities for recruitment purposes, we would like to collect information about existing collaborations between VT and other institutions in the region.

Please complete the survey available at online, feel free to pass the link of this survey to someone else and feel free to fill out more than one if you feel there is lots of information to provide. This information will help us better plan our CSVP visits.

The link is:
https://survey.vt.edu/survey/entry.jsp?id=1256046874979

Posted on

Opening of the GLC Plaza & Amphitheatre

Friday was a very exciting day for the Graduate Community.  On an afternoon with perfect weather the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony was effectively the kick off for our homecoming events.  We appreciate the contributions from the Parent’s Fund, the Class of 1959, and the Class of 2009, that made this project a reality.  We now have a wonderful space outdoors including cafe tables and chairs, stage, lawn seating, a fountain and a sculpture display area.  A number of new trees and shrubbery have also been added to the space. 
We’ve already had quite a bit of interest already in reserving this space. Thank You!  We appreciate your patience with us while we work out those details and the finishing touches are completed in the space.  We hope to have the mechanisms in place by the beginning of Spring Term.

Posted on

Master’s Thesis Awards announced

Three students have recently been recognized as winners of the William Preston Society/Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Master’s Thesis Awards. Nominees were required to have completed their thesis in the last academic year and fit under one of the three categories listed below. We had an excellent slate of nominees this year.  They were judged on the basis of contribution to the field, research methodology, and clarity of presentation.  The following students are the award winners:


Life Science category:  Karen E. Drahos.  Biological Sciences, advisor: Carla Finkielstein. Sulfatides mediate disabled-2 membrane localization and stability during platelet aggregation.

Social Science, Business & Education: Ge Zhang.  Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics, advisor: Wen You. Incorporating food-away from home into the thrifty food plan.

Innovation Application of Technology to Scholarship William Robert Story. Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, advisor: Leigh McCue. Application of Lyapunov exponents to strange attractors and intact & damaged ship stability.

 

These students have been put forward to the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools to be considered for additional awards selected by that organization.

Posted on

Recruitment Summit

We would like to invite all graduate program directors and graduate program coordinators to our Recruitment Summit to be held on October 13th at 1:30pm in Room F of the GLC.

The role of this meeting is for us to brainstorm about how to improve our recruiting efforts at Virginia Tech. We will present some new recruiting activities that we will carry out this year (with your support). We also would like to initiate a dialogue among participants about your best-practices when it comes to recruitment, and what are your biggest needs.

Come join the conversation.

Graduate Recruiting Summit
Sponsored by the Office of Graduate Recruiting and Diversity Initiatives
Room F, GLC
October 13, 2009
1:30-3:00

  1. Snapshot of applications and yield for last academic year
    Ethnicity/gender, State by state, Universities, Nationality
    What is missing?
    Where should we put more effort?
  2. Presentation of current recruitment activities
    Graduate fairs
    Summer Pizza Party for MAOP, McNair, REU
    McNair scholars
    Undergraduate conference at VT
    Fellowship opportunities
    Application fee waivers
  3. Description of planned recruitment activities
    Coordinated School Visit Program
    Call for recruiting/diversity initiatives – how can we help you?
  4. Open Discussion Best practices? What do you do to recruit?
    What would you like to do but can’t afford or can’t do alone?
    How can we partner to recruit a better/more diverse graduate student population?
Posted on

Email Subscription Feature Addition for the GSB

We had a few inquiries about the potential to continue to receive new content notification from the Graduate School Blog. In response to those inquiries, we have added the ability to subscribe via email, in addition to the RSS and Atom feeds. You will be able to manage your email subscription to the blog individually. Near the top of the right side quick navigation area please note the updated “Subscribe” section that will allow you to choose how to keep up with the Graduate School Blog.

I have also fielded a couple of calls asking about RSS. Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a standardized “feed” of information. This allows you to use a feed reader such as Google Reader, or the reader you may find within Outlook or your preferred browser. These tools typically allow you to assemble any number of feeds to effectively create your own newspaper with the content you specifically want. Using RSS can save you time by narrowing the information you are looking at, and allowing you to skim content more effectively.
The Graduate School offers a number of feeds, and we hope to add more to our list shortly. https://secure.graduateschool.vt.edu/GSITWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=RSSFeeds

Posted on

Exam Publication Tool!

We are excited to announce that the Graduate School is now publishing upcoming final examinations on our home page.  This information is published from Banner, live. We know your program may manually publish this information already.  We have several options to do this an automated fashion so that you may avoid some of that effort.  We are providing the name, date/time, location and thesis title currently.  Students with a confidential record will not be posted.  Future enhancements may include providing the committee members, a historical listing…  We would really like your feedback, so feel free to comment on this post to help us identify useful data or functions to add.

For those interested, you may subscribe via RSS. Website content publishers may use our widget to feed information for specific programs.  Alternatively we offer a JSON feed for you to customize the presentation of this information on your website.  Please see our wiki page for more details on adding this content to your website.

Posted on

Monthly Memo Changes

The Graduate School is updating the usage of our blog tool to conform with how blogs are typically utilized.  Specifically, we will be posting entries with information as they are relevant, rather than waiting for a formal publication. This will ease your search for relevant information, rather than finding relevant information within a publication.  This will also make tools, such as RSS readers and the myVT portal feed, more useful to scan whether posted information is relevant to you or not.  Since many items in the News and Announcements section of the Graduate School home page have historically been placed in the Monthly Memo, we will be using the blog tool to highlight information in that section, rather than a distinct posting.
Historical Monthly Memo posts will remain for your reference.
As always we welcome your feedback by using the comments function of the blog- or through email.

Posted on

August 2009 Monthly Memo

Personnel Changes: Associate Deans

On August 10th, 2009, Dr. Rosemary Blieszner and Dr. Janet Rankin joined the Graduate School as Associate Deans.   Dr. Blieszner is Alumni Distinguished  Professor in the Department of Human Development.  Dr. Rankin is Professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise. Dr. McNabb will retire at the end of September and will transition her responsibilities to the new Associate Deans.  Please join me in welcoming them to the Graduate School and thanking Dr. McNabb for her dedicated service to the Graduate School. 

Search for Associate Dean/Director of the Northern Virginia Center

A search to fill the position of Associate Dean for graduate education and Director of the Northern Virginia Center is currently underway.   We are seeking qualified candidates who have both the academic credentials of a faculty appointment (Associate or above) and relevant administrative experiences.  Anticipated start date is January 2010.  Nominations and applications are encouraged. 

Defending Student Status Clarification

To qualify for DSS, a student must have a thesis/dissertation ready for defense at the beginning of the semester and must be considered on active status.  If a student has not been enrolled for more than one year, readmission is needed and that process must be completed prior to requesting final exam scheduling and DSS status.  To be ready to defend, the student’s Advisory Committee members must agree that the work is in a form ready for defense; that is, the thesis/dissertation must be finished.  The DSS registration period is the first three weeks of an academic semester and qualifying students must have their examination scheduled by the end of that time.  Although the examination can be held beyond the first three weeks, to qualify for DSS the thesis/dissertation must be finished and examination scheduled during the first three weeks. To facilitate this process, please submit the scheduling forms as early as possible, preferably by the end of the second week of classes.  The Graduate School had been allowing such delayed examinations by exception when circumstances required delay in the Spring 2009 CGS&P formalized policy wording to support this practice. International students should consult with one of the immigration advisors in the Graduate School concerning visa implications and enrollment requirements for examinations held beyond the first three weeks of the semester.

Resources for Graduate Coordinators & Graduate Program Faculty

The Graduate School has created a wiki for use by Graduate Program Faculty and Graduate Coordinators and is intended to assist them as they work to complete tasks associated with their graduate students and interactions with the Graduate School.  Please select the link above and bookmark it for future reference.

ETD Resources and Discussion Forum

The Graduate School has created an ETD wiki open to all Virginia Tech graduate students and is intended to assist students as they work to complete their thesis or dissertation.  Please select the link above and bookmark it for future reference.

We will also be offering the ETD Speaker Series this Fall.
Each session will be held in the GLC, Room F  and videoconferenced to the Northern Virginia Center, Room 401 from 7pm-8:30pm.

September 15th: Standard and Manuscript Formats
Dr. Karen DePauw will discuss standard and manuscript ETD formats

October 7th: Copyright
Gail McMillan will discuss copyright, permissions and representing other author’s works in your ETD

November 10th: Graduate School Review of your ETD
Graduate School staff will discuss items they check while reviewing your submitted ETD and the timeline of the submission process

New Process related to Preliminary & Final Examination cards

Effective August 17th, the Graduate School will no longer be sending out paper versions of the examination card to committee chairpersons.  We will be sending an electronic version of the examination card in PDF format to the student, all committee members,  and the departmental graduate coordinator when the exam has been formally scheduled.  This will allow for quicker receipt and more widespread availability.  Samples of the examination cards can be found under the Exams section of the Graduate Coordinators wiki.

Outstanding Fall 2009 application decisions

There are still a number of Fall 2009 applicants who have not had a formal recommendation made on their application by the department.  Please make your final recommendation by Friday, August 28th.  Any application not finalized by that date will be rejected by the Graduate School as "not having space within the department".

William Preston Society – Conference of Southern Graduate Schools
Three awards will be selected in September for the William Preston Society and the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools.
 
For the 2009-10 year, one category will be for an outstanding Master’s thesis in Life Sciences and the second category will be for an outstanding Master’s thesis in Social Sciences, Business and Education. The third category will be restricted to the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools category and is titled  “Innovative Application of Technology to Scholarship in a Master’s Thesis”.
 
The awards will be selected by a review committee convened by the Graduate School Associate Dean. Winners also are recognized at the Fall semester William Preston Society awards banquet and automatically become the VT nominees for the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools annual Master’s Thesis Award competition.
 
Eligibility Requirements:
 
·          Secured theses are not eligible for consideration of the award;
·          Nominees must have completed their thesis in the last academic year (2008-09), including summer of 2009;
 
Nomination Requirements (to be submitted by the student’s department)
 
·          Presentation quality PDF copy of a letter of endorsement from the major professor which must address contribution to the field or discipline, scholarship, research methodology and clarity of style and presentation;
·          Presentation quality PDF copy of the 1-2 page maximum, double spaced abstract;
·          ETD web link access information for the thesis;
·          Presentation quality PDF copy of the nominee’s 1-2-page abbreviated CV.
 
Call for Nominations: Deadline for 2009-10: Send presentation quality nomination materials by PDF file by Friday, Sept.11, 2009 at 5 PM to Pat Goodrich at goodm@vt.edu. All PDF files will be sent “as is” to the Review Committee for their review.
 
Successful candidates will be notified and will be invited to provide a brief overview of his/her thesis at the William Preston Society’s annual meeting on Friday, Nov.20, 2009. William Preston Society Gold Watch Awards will be presented at this meeting.
 
For more information contact Janet Rankin, Associate Dean, Graduate School, at jrankin@vt.edu.