Announcements

New Students Selected for the 2016 Graduate Student Leadership Development Program

During the last two calendar years, we have had two classes of graduate students participate in the Graduate Student Leadership Development Program that is sponsored by the University of Missouri System.  This program was initiated on the foundation of enhancing transferrable skills to develop superior leadership abilities in our graduate students.  The four campuses that comprise the University of Missouri System came together to develop a plan that is similar to leadership development programs available to faculty and staff.  The Deans considered the questions: “Shouldn’t we have leadership development programs for Graduate Students?  What are the desired learning outcomes for a system-wide leadership development program?”  The Deans went to work, developed a proposal and were funded to have five students from each campus selected for each cohort.  The plan included leadership programming where students would travel to each of the four campuses and have monthly activities at their home institutions to build their leadership skills.

Recently, the UM System increased the funding to allow each institution to select up to 10 students per year.  This year, eight students were selected from each campus and we plan to have 10 students selected next year.  At UMKC we sent a call to all graduate students and received 48 applications.  This was many more than what we anticipated, and judging and selecting students to participate was a major challenge.

We are pleased to announce the following students selected for the 2016 year:

Elizabeth Horn, Interdisciplinary PhD, Chemistry / Pharmaceutical Sciences
Bryan Fox, PhD, Psychology
Xiaomei Xiang, MSA, Accounting
Jennifer Fournier, LLM, Law
Mohammed Aleinzi, MS, Computer Science
Kim-Ndor Djimadoumngar, Interdisciplinary PhD, Geosciences / Computer Science
Anas A. Katib, Interdisciplinary PhD, Computer Science / Telecommunications and
Computer Networking
Prachi Shah, MBA, Management Information Sciences

Please join me in congratulating these students.

 

UMKC’s 3-Minute Thesis Competition

There will be 28 UMKC graduate students participating in the 3-Minute Thesis campus-level competition 1-5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 9 in the UMKC Student Union, Rooms 401A and 401D. All UMKC students, faculty, and staff members are invited to attend. The winning Master’s and Doctoral students will receive cash prizes, and the Grand Award winner will represent UMKC at the regional-level competition in Chicago in April 2016 at the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) annual conference.

During the Fall 2015 semester, an open invitation was issued by Dean Denis Medeiros to all UMKC Master’s and Doctoral students to participate in the 3-Minute Thesis Competition. This international competition was founded by The University of Queensland in Australia in 2008. Graduate students are given three minutes and permitted to use one PowerPoint slide to present their thesis or dissertation research using language so that an educated layperson can understand their ideas and the significance of their research.

The first round of the competition will take place from 1 until 2:30 p.m. with 9 Master’s students and 19 Doctoral students. These presentations will take place in Rooms 401A and 401D of the Student Union, with three judges in each room who will score the presentations using a standard rubric. The top eight graduate students will emerge from round one to complete in the Final Competition from 3:15 until 4:30 p.m. in Room 401A of the Student Union. There will be five judges for this level of the competition, in addition to a cash prize for the Peoples’ Choice Award determined by the audience. Awards and Certificates of Participation will be given immediately following the Final Competition.

 

Graduate Writing Initiative

The UMKC School of Graduate Studies, University Libraries, and the UMKC Writing Studio have partnered to implement a Graduate Writing Initiative to provide resources such as writing workshops and online tutorials for the more than 5,400 graduate students enrolled in UMKC’s degree and certificate programs. The resources include:

  1. A new Graduate Writing Resources web page is available on the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) website that provides links to online and campus-based graduate writing resources and development opportunities
  2. A Blackboard organization site, titled Writing Resources for Graduate Students, was created with access for all UMKC graduate students and graduate faculty members. After logging in to Blackboard, this site appears in “My Organizations.” This site provides examples of outstanding thesis and dissertations, links for helping students with poster and oral presentations, information on managing citations, information on avoiding plagiarism, links for publishing, presentation, and grant proposal opportunities, and much more.
  3. Writing Workshops offered throughout the Fall 2015 semester provided opportunities for graduate students to engage with a variety of facilitators on topics such as Formatting Theses and Dissertations, Writing for the Humanities / Sciences, Proofreading Tips and Techniques, research help, and Grant Writing. Attendance at each of the workshops ranged from approximately 5 to 50 students. A Spring 2016 calendar of Graduate Writing Initiative Workshops will be available on the SGS website in January, and graduate students and faculty advisors will receive emails throughout the semester regarding upcoming writing workshop opportunities. There are also plans to expand opportunities for students to participate in workshops online through Blackboard Collaborate, and to archive writing workshops on the Blackboard Writing Resources organization site.
  4. Several Online Tutorials were created for the SGS YouTube Channel, including a series of short videos by Dean Denis Medeiros titled Avoiding Plagiarism and a two-part video series on Thesis and Dissertation Formatting by Nancy Hoover.

These Graduate Writing Initiative activities will continue throughout 2016, in addition to new resources to support excellence in graduate student writing. The School of Graduate Studies and Writing Studio plan to hire a part-time Graduate Writing Specialist to support UMKC’s graduate writing community through both facilitating programming and working directly with graduate students.

Designated Graduate Student Writing Workstations with specialized software will be available through online reservation at the Writing Studio in the Atterbury Student Success Center starting in the Spring 2016 semester.

 

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