Question

Dear Deans,

I was wondering if you might consider a change to the conference grant criteria. Personally, my research has required a lot of work to obtain presentable results, so I’ve just recently used the conference grant (in year six!). I could present at more conferences this year if I could use the grant more than once in a year, but the criteria do not account for my situation. Why not something like a per-student number of grants anytime they like?

Now a Presenter

Response

Dear Now a Presenter,

I’m glad you are able to benefit from the conference grant program now that you’ve obtained presentable results! We review the operation of this grant program each fiscal year to verify it’s still meeting the needs of our student-presenters so the timing of your inquiry is good. Funding for the conference grant program is finite so we have to structure the guidelines carefully to meet the demand. Your suggestion, to offer a set number of conference grants per student, is something that I’m happy to look into. Before we could make a change like this we would typically discuss any tradeoffs with both the GPSA and Directors of Graduate Studies, so please understand that any change would not be implemented right away.

We’ve also recently received feedback from some students that it would be helpful to set eligibility by calendar-year since the current grant calendar (July 1^st to June 30^th) makes it harder to accommodate certain meetings that fall just after July 1^st one year and just before that date the following year. We understand that summer is a busy time for conference travel so we’re assessing the impact of this requested change. Your feedback is very helpful and I’m always eager to hear from students with ideas for improving services offered through the Graduate School.

Sincerely,

Jason

Jason Kahabka
Associate Dean for Administration