 Good afternoon, my name is Rita Chin and I'm Associate Dean for the Social Sciences at Rackham and a faculty member in the Department of History. I'm here to welcome you to Rackham State of the School event. But before we get started, I wanted to address some logistical details. As part of the registration for this event, we asked you to submit questions. We've read through them all and many will be answered in the Dean's talk. But we've also set aside time to address other issues that have been raised. And if new questions emerge for you during the presentation or panel, please feel free to enter them in the Zoom Q&A portal. We will try to get to as many as possible during the Q&A portion of our time together. I should also mention that we have live cart captioning services available for this event. Now it's my pleasure to turn things over to Mike Solomon, Dean of Rackham Graduate School. Thank you very much, Rita. Hello all. Thank you for participating in our second annual State of the Graduate School event. We have over at this count over 200 members of the Rackham community registered for today's webinar. After some brief remarks by me, my colleague Rita Chin, who you just saw, Professor of History and Rackham Associate Dean will moderate a panel which will engage us with us about some of the key challenges that we are addressing today. I want to begin by thanking everyone here today for making a personal choice to engage about these important issues. I want to especially thank our panelists. Since Rackham set the date for this event in the summer, I've been looking forward to it as a way to update the Rackham community about the strategic vision that we launched last fall. On a quick technical note, if I lose my internet connection during my remarks, we will go straight into the panel with the hope that I can get back online to finish at the end. And if we encounter a total technical disruption, we will record my remarks and as much of the event as we can and make the video with captioning available. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the ongoing GEO labor action and reiterate something I shared in my message to students on Friday, which is available on the Rackham website. I respect the vigorous advocacy of Rackham students, as well as their agency to make a personal decision as how to pursue activism. I value the multiple and vital roles they play at the university as students, researchers, instructors, and scholars. For all who choose not to participate today, we will post the video with transcript later this week. And as I will describe in the conclusion of my remarks, we will create additional opportunities for discussion and exchange later in the term. As Dean of the Graduate School, I have chosen at this moment to advance Rackham's mission to support graduate education at the university and the success of Rackham students. Our purpose here today is to speak to not only the historic pressures of the last six months, but also the significant and broad changes that were in motion before, and that will continue to affect graduate education well into the future. The extraordinary interconnected challenges of the last six months have taken a significant toll on our community. On top of disrupting every aspect of our academic and professional lives, the pandemic has placed intense personal demands on each of us. Members of our community have faced a devastating, disparate impacts of the virus on our friends, our families, and the places we call home. We mourn for the loss of life we have experienced. We are navigating school closures and other restrictions affected those who we care for, including children and parents. Distancing measures have meant that our usual ways of creating community have become unavailable just when we need them the most. In May, we watched in horror and anger as George Floyd was suffocated by an officer whose charge was to protect and to serve. The appalling killings of black people at the hands of police have again laid bare and brought historic reckoning with the discrimination, violence, and unjust policies and practices of centuries of institutional racism. The effects of racism are active in our communities every day, and they are also present in our own institution with its legacy of privileging white individuals. Moreover, abrupt and cruel changes to federal policies have had a disproportionate and unfair effect on our students, particularly our international and undocumented students. Those coming here to pursue educational opportunities face the uncertainty of their goals will be curtailed by immigration policies that are blunt and overbroad, and they give rise to xenophobia. I admire the way Rackham students respond to these challenges at the end of the last academic year and over the spring and summer. Over the past six months, my Rackham colleagues and I have participated in more than 10 town halls and listening sessions to hear your input, and we have worked in partnership with organizations across campus to pursue new initiatives and policies to address your concerns. This work has taken many forms, including an adjusted grading policy, extended deadlines for canisee, dissertation, and graduation requirements, and supplemental block grants to provide summer employment opportunities. Rackham has also extended the eligibility criteria for granting emergency funds to respond to student needs during the pandemic. We have provided more than $800,000 in response to COVID-related emergency fund requests in partnership with other schools and colleges, helping more than 440 students during this time of need. More than 80% of these requests have been approved. Similar policies are on place in the 2021 academic year, and you can find out more about them with continual updates on our COVID-19 resource page at the Rackham website. Last September, a couple hundred of us gathered in the Rackham Amphitheater for the launch of the Graduate Student Strategic Vision. While so much has changed since then, the Graduate School has leaned very heavily during the pandemic on the vision that we launched that day. Our decisions and efforts have been guided by the idea of graduate education that is student-centered, faculty-led, and Rackham supported. As part of that work, we identified four major goals to reimagine the academic experience, to strengthen diversity, to enhance partnerships and community, and to strengthen the culture and climate of the Rackham organization. These goals respond to the central opportunity for graduate education, which is that there has never been a greater need for the expertise and training in research, scholarship, and discovery that Rackham programs provide. These goals also respond to the issues that continue to confront us as a Graduate School. Pressures on the antiquated apprenticeship model of graduate education that we have used and reproduced for more than 100 years are growing. There is a need for academic programs to prepare Rackham students for the broad range of careers in which they can participate, given that more than half of Rackham doctoral students already pursue careers outside the tenure track, and many have come here expressly to pursue such careers. Concerns for the mental health and wellness of members of the graduate community are increasingly well-documented, and there are rare but unacceptable abuses and misuses of the faculty-student mentoring relationship that is fundamental to the work that we do. Today, I am announcing further plans and initiatives for the next year to address the interconnected challenges that we face. Each is informed by the imperative that we rethink how we pursue graduate education so that it is student-centered, faculty-led, and Rackham supported. As part of my remarks today, I am asking that we come together to achieve these plans and provide the change that at this moment demands and the future requires as well. I am now going to screen share or attempt to screen share as I introduce each of these initiatives. So I will address our plans in the following five areas. The first is graduate student mental health and wellness. The second is anti-racism goals and initiatives. The third is the graduate student experiences with disability accommodations report. Then effects of federal policies. And finally, planning for extended time to degree. Let me begin with graduate student mental health and wellness. In June 2019, Rackham set up a task force on graduate student mental health. The charge was to identify major factors that influence graduate student mental health with the goal of identifying changes that the Rackham community can make to better support student well-being. The task force included faculty, staff, students, and mental health professionals. Rackham supported this task force as an important response to the observations of our resolution office and the advocacy of faculty and students. We recognize that mental health has direct and disparate consequences for the academic success of graduate students. And it therefore needs the continuous attention of Rackham, programs, staff and faculty. Building on this foundation, we are committed to making the support and improvement of graduate student mental health a central issue of Rackham's work in the years ahead. The task force year one report made a suite of 10 thoughtful recommendations. We will begin work on seven of them this year and pursue others as we move forward. Later this week, along with the video of today's event, I will release the task force report as well as a letter in which I accept its recommendations. I'd like to focus today on two of the committee's recommendations. The first relates to the critical relationship between mental health and advising and mentoring support. The report describes how clear expectations and lines of communication are key to a healthy mentoring relationship and the role that written mentoring agreements can play between faculty and students in creating such a relationship. This finding aligns with and reinforces the work of Rackham's faculty-led mentoring committee, the MOAR committee, which has been committed to this work now for more than 10 years. The MOAR committee has seen increasing recognition among graduate programs of the value of these agreements. A number of Rackham programs have made formal mentoring agreements in expectation. Moving forward, Rackham will work with graduate programs, graduate faculty, the MOAR committee, and the Rackham Executive Board to create a normative expectation for the presence of written mentoring agreements in all doctoral programs and a shared understanding of the critical roles and responsibilities of graduate faculty in this work. The second recommendation is to create a group of individuals who will be called graduate student mental health and wellness advocates. These individuals will have the knowledge and tools to assist graduate programs in supporting students during stressful times as they navigate their academic progress. I look forward to working both with the task force and graduate programs in that task. For example, work can involve resource creation as well as pilot training and educational workshops, which the first cohort of advocates serving as both learners and co-creators. These advocates, working within programs, can provide local sources of expertise and experience that can connect graduate faculty to the broader array of university resources, including mental health and resolution staff professionals across campus. There will be more to say about this important work, and I look forward to further discussion and feedback from the Rackham community, including as part of today's panel. I also would like to thank all the members of the task force who served continuously last year in a way that positions us to take action steps now. I am particularly grateful that in addition to recommending long-term directions, the task force also produced a resource for the Rackham community called Supporting Graduate Students During Stressful Times. It is immediately useful. This resource is available on the Rackham website, and we'll include the link to it along with the video of this event. I now would like to turn to anti-racism goals and initiatives. Rackham has long invested in efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in our graduate programs. Anti-black violence and racial injustice only reaffirms the critical importance of that commitment. It has also illustrated that the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion must be paired with work that addresses racial equity and social justice. The largest single investment of the Rackham Graduate School is the Rackham Merit Fellowship Program. Last year, I announced a multi-stage review of that program to position it for the future in promoting diversity and inclusion. That review is ongoing, and I expect to be able to report out about it to you later in the academic year. The Faculty Allies Program also continues its long-standing work to address inclusion and sense of belonging in graduate programs. This year, it will operate as a learning community with a two-fold aim, developing a critical understanding of how race shapes expertise, knowledge production, and institutional structures within the academy, and providing allies with skills to more effectively support DEI values and initiatives within their program. I also thank Rackham's Diversity Advisory Committee, called RACKDAC, for their strong, sustained efforts to continue to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the graduate education community. During this difficult period, RACKDAC has been the voice of the Rackham community for identifying our anti-racism goals for DEI. To that end, Rackham has already made important revisions to the application for admissions for Fall 2021 in order to promote access and opportunity for prospective students who may have been impacted by the criminal justice system. In addition, Rackham will conduct a year-long review of holistic admissions practices to explore the potential of eliminating the use of the graduate record exam, the GRE, in admissions. Given the unique challenges posed by the pandemic, we acknowledge that this is a critical year for graduate admissions. As a result, Rackham will later this month publish guidance to support graduate admissions committees in responding to the possible impacts of COVID-19 on Fall 2021 admissions. Faculty workshops on holistic admissions and evidence-based practices for promoting excellence in diversity in admissions will also be held in Rackham in October. Finally, one of Rackham's core values is to promote intellectual exchange, free inquiry, and learning. We are proud of the DEI Professional Development Certificate Program, as well as the Leading Equity and Diversity, or LEED, seminars that we support and host. The LEED seminars are a monthly series that this year are addressing racial equity and social justice. These seminars have so far drawn nearly 2,500 faculty, staff, and student participants, in addition to people from over 100 institutions all over the country. Students participating in the DEI Certificate, which this year has seen 300 new applications, annually show substantive and significant gains in their intercultural competence as measured by the intercultural development inventory. This year, Rackham has made additional investment to advance this work by hiring new staff to work with Dr. Debbie Willis and her professional and academic development colleagues in this work. The third area of initiatives is the Graduate Student Experiences with Disability Accommodations Report. Like our efforts to address structural racism, Rackham is committed to confront myriad of other forms of structural inequity that unfortunately continue to be perpetuated in our society. Even though, for example, it has now been 30 years since the passage of the American with Disabilities Act. To advance this work, Rackham supported a collaborative research project called the Graduate Students with Disabilities Needs Assessment. We are especially grateful to the more than 1,000 graduate students who participated in the survey and focus groups, as well as to the authors of this critical research. The findings from analysis of the quantitative study are sobering, and the personal stories our students shared about their struggles to be fully seen, included, and to obtain adequate accommodations to pursue their degrees are troubling and heartbreaking. We look forward to partnering with graduate faculty chairs of Rackham programs and other campus units to address the needs assessed in this report. We will be transparent about our progress going forward. This research study was released to its participants this summer. I am working with Rackham colleagues to draft the letter to respond to the report's findings and to move forward with recommendations. My report recommendations will be released when complete later this term to the Rackham community. Our fourth set of initiatives is around the effect of federal policies. Actions by the federal government over the summer created new obstacles and uncertainties for our international students. The closure of U.S. consulates worldwide because of the COVID emergency and the gradual process of consulates reopening has prevented many from applying for or renewing their visas. The implementation of more stringent background checks has created an additional hurdle and impeded many from arriving in time for the fall term. As a result, many international students have deferred their admissions to the winter term, but we are committing to doing all that we can to ensure that graduate programs remain accessible to international students. Through an extraordinary effort over the summer by many administrators in the business operations area of the university and with the advice of the Office of General Counsel and the International Center, we've made arrangements to allow many dozens of incoming international doctoral students to start their programs remotely from their home countries with fellowship support or with appointments as GSRAs or GSIs. Michigan also joined with other universities and businesses to oppose an initiative to end the optical practical training program, OPT, which allows temporary employment for international students in their field of study and is a critical piece of their career and professional development. These interventions were successful and the OPT program has been preserved for the time being, but much work remains to support our international students in these uncertain times of overbroad and cruel federal policies. Finally, our fifth area of initiative is planning for extended time to degree. This will be turning to a moment to a discussion that addresses the needs of Rackham doctoral students for their education, research and scholarship. The events of the past year have created disruptions in research and scholarship that affect the degree progress of doctoral students in disparate ways. Among the issues students have faced are a lack of access to laboratories, libraries and fieldwork, restrictions on human subject research, prohibition of travel, interruption in research progress due to family and our self-care responsibilities generated by the COVID pandemic, and impeded scholarly progress due to stress and uncertainty. Let me say at the onset, Rackham is committed to degree completion by all graduate students. Its policies and practices have long supported variable time to degree. Moreover, since this disruption began, we have encouraged students and faculty mentors to pursue alternative modes for degree and research progress and adopt more flexibility in the scope of dissertations. There is now a widespread need for programs to offer doctoral programs additional time and funding to complete their degree programs. Some doctoral students will not be delayed or will only modestly delayed by the disruptions. Others will be much more impacted by as much as a full year. We know of this need because it has been raised in Rackham meetings with faculty who lead graduate programs, and in the many listening sessions we joined that were hosted by Rackham's student government. Rackham is therefore implementing a plan in which each doctoral program, possibly as coordinated by their school and college, will create and report to Rackham a policy or procedure through which students may receive an additional term or terms of stipend, tuition, and benefits if their degree progress has been disrupted in the last six months and once the funding promised in their offer letter has been exhausted. The decision to extend funding will be a collaborative decision of the faculty mentor, the doctoral student, and the Rackham program. We anticipate that these policies will be in place for five years. This plan necessarily involves faculty and programs because these stakeholders generate the vast majority of funding to support doctoral programs through the grant funding they are awarded, the teaching positions available through their curriculum, and the other funds such as first year fellowships. They deploy these resources through their admissions practices, which determine the size of their doctoral cohort. Programs have the ability to use these resources to support the needs for extended time to degree. For example, a program may choose to reduce the size of its admitted doctoral cohort over the next three to five years. Modest plan changes in cohort size now can free funding to address the needs of our current students. As programs make these plans, it is particularly important to me that we focus on holistic emissions to promote and ensure diversity and excellence consistent with our collective values and D&I goals for graduate education. I believe that this plan is the right response to the historic pressures of the moment. It places faculty mentors and doctoral programs in a position to lead the academic decisions about extended time to degree. These are the individuals who are best positioned to work collaboratively with their students to identify and support their need. It centers the students whose academic experience is so important and ensures the future sustainability of doctoral programs. Rackham will play its role in supporting these activities both academically and financially. Academically, we are coordinating the planning that I'm describing here, as well as leveraging our full set of academic policies, including our academic resolution policy, which offers mediation mechanisms to support programs and their students. These mechanisms can offer assistance in resolving cases in which faculty, student, and program do not agree on the need for extended funding. I believe these cases will be rare because of the deliberate, student-centered, faculty-led, and rackham-supported planning we are undertaking in a deliberate way. Rackham will also adopt a number of measures to address formal limits on time to degree in our academic policy. To financially support these activities, Rackham will align its program-level funding mechanisms to the need of graduate programs. For example, as the term progresses, we will announce additional flexibility in block grant programs and other discipline-specific fellowship programs. I furthermore affirm Rackham's strong, continuing investment in the Rackham Merit Fellowship Program. This plan was formulated in response to faculty and student concerns originally voiced in the spring. The specific structure of the program was developed after meetings of Rackham chairs and directors held in July. Further details of the plan will be shared with Rackham programs in the week ahead, and Rackham will hold office hours for faculty with questions throughout the fall. I'm now going to turn off the screen sharing as I conclude. I acknowledge that I've recovered a lot of ground today. In the spirit of transparency, when we post a video of this event, we will also post the reports and best practices that I referred to in these remarks. We want to ensure that everyone in the Rackham community has access to the proposals, initiatives, and policies. When the extended-time degree policy has been communicated to graduate programs and finalized, it will be posted as well. We will also have some time for Q&A today by acknowledging that the size of today's event makes discussion difficult. To that end, we will also indicate a variety of ways to pursue discussion this fall. For students, Rackham student government kindly hosts lunch with the dean's events, which have been scheduled in a virtual format for this fall. We will have more of these as needed in the small enough format that dialogue and intellectual exchange can occur. We will also host comparable opportunities for faculty and for staff through our regular forums, which we will set up later this fall. I would like to conclude by extending my hand to you in partnership as best I can in this virtual environment. Graduate students and indeed the whole Rackham community, our faculty, staff, and administrators have been impacted significantly on a professional and a human level by the events of the last six months. This disruption has strained our community. Trust has been depleted and must be earned and we are struggling to find common ground. We are, however, an interconnected system and I believe that our best path forward involves working closely together. As we work through our differences, I keep in mind that we do indeed have shared goals. We can navigate this difficult period together. I offer Rackham's ideas and plans to you today in that spirit and I hope you will join us in their pursuit in this very challenging time. Thank you very much. Next, I would like to turn the event over to our moderator, Associate Dean Rita Chen. Thanks, Mike. So we've just heard about many of the challenges facing graduate students, faculty and programs in this most unusual year. And we've Sorry, technical difficulties. There we go. We've also heard about Rackham's multiple initiatives to address some of these issues. What I want to do now is turn to a panel of faculty and graduate students to get their perspectives on the year's challenges. So joining us today are Pam Badour, John C. Katford Collegiate Professor of Linguistics and faculty lead of Rackham's More Committee. Next, Wen Chen, who's a PhD candidate in chemical engineering. Sydney Carr, who's a PhD candidate in political science and public policy. Alfred Young, Arthur Thirnau Professor of Sociology and Afro American and African Studies. He's also the director or the associate director of the Center for Social Solutions as well as a longtime Rackham faculty ally for diversity. Sarah Abelson is a PhD candidate in public health. And Megan Duffy is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and leader of Rackham's Mental Health Task Force. So I want to begin with Pam. We know the critical importance of mentoring to student success, well being and sense of belonging. Pam, you sit on Rackham's More Committee on Mentoring, which engages with both faculty and graduate students to promote best practices. What do you see as the priorities in terms of supporting effective mentoring for graduate students in this current moment? So thank you, Rita. I appreciate this chance to speak for a few moments about current mentoring challenges. As Dean Solomon has indicated, the mentoring of graduate students is taking place during what is really an unprecedented moment in students' scholarly and personal lives. And so we have the intersection of the pandemic, the anti-racism work that we want to and need to engage in the hostile regulations that many of our international students are facing. And so we have a lot of other sections and others, right? Have some of our graduate students questioning not only the future, especially the academic market, but also whether what they thought they wanted to study. They thought they wanted to spend their careers working on the very reason that they're here with us at U of M, whether this work is even worthwhile. And there are simply no guidelines. There's no playbook for mentoring during such times. I mention this because the more committees work has always been grounded in the literature on mentoring. So we read the mentoring literature. We synthesize it with our own experiences of working with U of M graduate students. And then we use this to engage faculty in how to improve mentoring relations with students. But there isn't a literature, right? At least not so far on mentoring during a pandemic, much less at this really complex intersection that we're at with other global, national and local events. But let me say something about what my fellow committee members and I do see as sort of mentoring priorities or steps that we can be taking. So at first we see it as a time for sort of reassessing and re-envisioning, maybe even reimagining mentoring relations. So what worked seven months ago very well might not be working now. And that's a conversation that all mentors and mentees, if you're not already having it, that you might want to have with each other. So mentoring remotely is not the same as doing it in person. So I'll speak as a linguist just for a moment here. But we missed the body language, the turn-taking information, and other subtle and not so subtle cues that we use in person when we're establishing these working relationships. But even if we set aside, you know, the difficulties of having moved online, what students need out of the mentoring relation has almost certainly changed because they're scholarly and personal lives and the future that they're facing have changed, right? And so my colleagues on Moore and I would encourage mentors and mentees to sort of step back and reaffirm their shared expectations and goals to reaffirm what they had previously identified, perhaps through the written mentoring plans that Mike was talking about. And ideally these goals and expectations that they continue to share, but then also in that stepping back to realign expectations and goals in light of the new realities. A second point I wanted to make is that our mentoring committee has long encouraged developing a mentoring network, right? And so there are three domains that we typically consider in mentoring, the academic, the professional, and personal well-being. And challenging times almost certainly bring some of these more to the fore than they were seven months ago. But not all mentors as individuals, right? Not all of us have the necessary background in all areas. So some mentors, I'm definitely following this category, feel that they don't have the expertise to guide students seeking jobs outside the academy. Others perhaps don't feel entirely comfortable or qualified to help mentees deal with challenges in their personal lives, right? So this is where the mentoring network would come in. A network that likely goes beyond faculty, it might include professional development staff, administrative staff, community members, and so on. But it's essentially a support team to help students navigate especially difficult times. And mentors, primary mentors are clearly a crucial component of this team, but they can also help students to assemble that team to create that team. And the final point I want to make is that it's important that we are creating spaces for listening, for hearing students concerned for conversations, right? So a survey of graduate students, I wanted to get in just one little piece of the literature here, okay? So a survey of graduate students in STEM departments that was published in 2018, so pre-COVID, right? And I think that among the most cited qualities that students associated with a good mentor were patience, listening, and empathy, right? And so the listening spaces and conversations that maybe we want to be creating might well go beyond the one-on-one mentor-mentee meetings, right? They might have created a research group level or at a departmental level, but the idea is to be having guided and open conversations, right? About what our priorities are as scholars and as human beings, right? When the world feels too many as though it's exploding, okay? So stop there and look forward to questions that may occur later. Thank you, Pam. Those are some really, really useful insights. And, you know, I'll just say quickly that the mentoring network idea that you talk about, Rackham, of course, has many resources, especially in the professional and career development space that could be brought to bear and could be drawn upon as faculty and students are sort of thinking about how they might create a kind of mentoring network. But many of the points that you make are really, I think, important at this moment. I want to turn now to bring in some graduate student perspectives. Yixuan, as an international student, I imagine that your life has been turned upside down by the multiple crises of the last six months. From your perspective, how have these crises impacted graduate students? Yes, exactly. Actually, I would like to talk about the impacts of the pandemic on two international students with regard to the academic and professional and financial parts. So first, as we all know that when the pandemic outbroke back in the March, almost every search lab ramp down and shipped to remote working. Since my research project was almost 100% bench work, and I believe that is the case for a lot of other students, I had to stop all ongoing experiments and work on data analysis. To be very honest, the first few weeks were kind of refreshing to me because I could take a chance to take a break and from busy experiments and reflect on what I have been doing and they also plan for future experiments. However, when entering the second month of the quarantine, I inevitably started to concern about my progress as a PhD candidate. Am I going to have enough data for the funding report? Will my graduate date be delayed? Even after now the research labs has ramped up, our access to some shared equipment is still very limited. So I'm glad to hear the proposals that Dean Solomon just announced about the time to degree. I believe that it can alleviate a lot of concerns from a lot of students. Secondly, I would like to talk about how the pandemic impacts international students in their professional development. For me, actually, even though I'm not facing the challenge of searching for a job or losing a job as a fourth year PhD student, I have heard a lot of friends having this issue. Besides what has happened to all domestic and international students in the job market, one particular thing about international students is that we are only allowed to work on campus during the semester, during the school year. Therefore, with the campus shutting down in mid-March, some international students cannot find a job anywhere else, actually. This could add a sudden unexpected financial burden to international students. Also, most international students are not qualified for the stimulus check from the federal government, even though we are still paying taxes. And also, we are not eligible for the CARE Act because of citizenship. On top of that, there is like a $500 international student fee per term. I'm fortunate and appreciative that this fee is waived for most graduate student employees, but this fee is still applicable for most master students. And all of this financial cost and loss could be a huge obstacle for many international students on their way to pursue their education and make them more financially vulnerable compared to domestic students. Afterwards, I think it was from the mid-summer, there have been a lot of federal policies announced, which could like affect international students to a huge extent. I think Solomon has talked about some of them, and one particular policy I would like to mention was from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department. I guess many of you might have heard about that. So this policy required all international students to take in-person courses to be allegedly to be legally present in the US. There was a moment I was worried if I had to go back to my home country for not risking my health in the education. Of course, later on, I found that it would not apply to me as a PhD student because my research work would be considered as in-person course. And I was also appreciative that the University of Michigan stood out with Harvard and MIT to file a lawsuit to work this policy, which eventually resigned it. However, as far as I know, this rule still apply to new international students who have not come to US yet for international students. If you want to do an internship or full-time job during or after your course of study, you need to do two consecutive semesters in the US to qualify for those. That means for some new international students, they really need to consider either risking their health in an in-person course or sacrificing their educational experiences. This could be a huge burden on the mental health of international students at the same time and also with everything going on with the pandemic. I feel like there has been a lot of assistance from RACCAM such as emergency funding and extended time to degree as just announced. Looking into the future, it would be really, really helpful that RACCAM continues to support graduate students and consider the special need of international students and be as flexible as possible. As the co-president of the Graduate of RACCAM International Student Organization, also look forward to collaborating with RACCAM to better serve our international community. Thanks, Yixuan. It's really helpful to hear about the kind of conditions, the ways in which you're experiencing all of these challenges because I think sometimes, you know, we read these things in the newspaper and we don't have as immediate a sense of how they're impacting our students. So really appreciate your perspective there. I want to turn now to Sydney. From your perspective, as well, there have clearly been a lot of challenges in the last six months. And so I wonder how have these challenges, and especially or including racial justice, how have they impacted or injustice, sorry, impacted both graduate students and the atmosphere on campus? Yeah, thanks for that. I think that's a really great question. I'm happy to be here today to talk about that. So of course, you know, everything in the summer, we're thinking about the George Floyd incident. And even before that, right, it's not like, you know, racial injustice started with George Floyd. But I think after that, there was sort of, there was like widespread, you know, activism and protests throughout the country. And I think, you know, speaking for myself as a Black graduate student and thinking about Black graduate students here at Michigan and also graduate students of color, I think it was really sort of traumatic, right? I think that, you know, being a member of this community, you're watching and you're seeing all of these things happening on the news. And you're seeing this sort of brutal nature that Black people are sort of, you know, dealt with. It's really sort of, you know, it becomes hard in terms of, you know, just thinking about like mental health, stress, right? So from the graduate student perspective, I think this is a really important question, important dialogue to have because ultimately we want to know that Brackham and university administrators are sort of, you know, empathetic of these sorts of things that are going on. And I think sometimes it might be, you know, difficult to think about these things from the perspective if you're not, you know, a member of that in-group or, you know, a member of the Black community or graduate or a person of color. So I think, you know, I was really happy when I saw that the university was engaging in more dialogues surrounding anti-racism and like workshops. And I think that commitment to DEI is really important. I hope to see that more so in the future. Thinking about sort of, you know, what graduate students are thinking about after, you know, these instances and everything that happened in the summer concerning, you know, the really turmoil racial climate is that we generally want like more of a sense of community. So what does that look like? I think that looks like, you know, Brackham and the administration taking more time to sort of have graduate students of color and Black graduate students more specifically to have that sense of community with other members of the graduate student community. So maybe that would look like incorporating more events or, you know, luncheons or things in a non-COVID year where, you know, students of color have the opportunity to meet other students of color and also possibly meet with other faculty of color. I know that there are a few programs and events that have happened like that, but I think like more is always better because at a time like this, especially when we're thinking about how traumatic those events were and sort of the mental toll that it really takes, it's important to be able to go back to that community. So many of us here are graduate students who came, you know, from out of state without knowing anyone. So we came to Michigan. You already don't know anyone. And now all this crazy stuff is happening in the world. So it's, you know, this this theme of, you know, who do we, you know, who can we lean on during that time. And I think having that community is really, really important. And also we're also thinking about, you know, what does mental health or trauma leave look like in more concrete or tangible ways when crazy things are happening in the world. You know, of course, we're really happy that like CAPS is always supportive of these types of things that we can go talk to someone, but sometimes, you know, and specifically thinking about like people who are GSIs, right. Do you have the space or the ability to say, you know, like a lot's happening in the world right now, and I have, you know, maybe like two days off or like a week off, what does that look like. So I think that's really important. I think it's all goes back to like I said, just faculty administration being, you know, empathetic and sympathetic towards the needs specifically the mental health needs of the graduate student of color and black graduate student community when things like this happen. And so I think those are some ways to sort of address and better get at what's happening. Thank you so much, Sydney. I think that it's, it's really, I mean, some of the, the suggestions that you've made, I think are really helpful for us at RAC. I'm thinking about how we might support students of color, and being reminded of the trauma and the emotional health hole, right, that the ongoing racial injustice has taken is really important. Al, I was wondering if you could offer some thoughts from the faculty perspective. You've been a long time faculty ally for diversity and also been on the RACCM more but the faculty ally for diversity program is one of the core programs through which RACCM supports DEI work really at the unit level right in graduate programs. And so, you know, I'd like to ask how you think RACCM could leverage this initiative to make DEI work on campus more impactful. I think, and as others, I want to express my appreciation for being able to be with you today. I think important to keep in mind about the track of the allies program is that it's gone through substantial change in the now over decade that I've been involved. And I think we're at a moment where there's been some realization of new possibilities and some real energy around committing those possibilities so that allies in its early days was largely about recruiting and retention of graduate students from graduate groups were only construed. When I mean recruiting and retention, I don't mean to say that any particular unit is captured by my comment is more of a general kind of commentary but the idea was, let's find students that want to be here that can be here and get them here. And then if they're paired up with an effective mentor, then for the most part good things can happen great things will happen. And we've come to understand over the years that there's a lot around change that the allies are going to be responsible for and then and address. A lot of that has to do with intellectual change and what having different kinds of students means for the intellectual agenda of various units. To be well understood for the social sciences, maybe the humanities with issues of difference surface in a more immediate way. One of the things that the allies have talked about is when and why the service and stem field as well. So that students from different backgrounds have different orientations to knowledge, come at some of their research questions from a different epistemological point of view, have career interest that may not match with the so called traditional students in stem fields. The allies program now and the allies are really on the cusp of thinking about how we encourage and promote intellectual change. In addition to having students experience. I have a better experience in their units. I will say though that that has not sure change our commitment to understanding the complexity around diversity. And even within the group of allies we've come to understand that for some units it may be about race or ethnicity. That's a critical concern for other sexual orientation sexuality broadly construed for others gender dynamics. The list can go on and on the allies are charged with trying to figure out how to keep as much in play as possible without diluting the particular importance to any kind of identity, or any kind of social grouping that involves students struggling to have the best possible experience. And that involves a great deal of work. The critical change that's unfolded around this has been the allies have in more recent years adopted the approach that we are an intellectual community that must learn how to approach some of these issues. So we don't operate as experts, but as committed individuals who at some time need to step back and learn better, what's going on in the different units, learn better about techniques strategies approaches to deal with those issues. So 10 years ago, maybe allies met to talk about what they were doing and why it worked. Now we meet to share more ideas to raise more questions to think about how we've got to learn as a community of scholars to be more responsible to to our graduate students. No ally, I think would argue that he she they are experts around diversity. We are individuals trying to learn about what needs to happen on the ground and in different ways and so towards that end I encourage graduate students in this conversation in the audience. Yet to know your ally in your unit, bring whatever questions you have to your ally. The other questions back to the rest of us, and we really created a moment now we're trying to engage each other and really learn and share with each other. And all that to say that change takes time I think we all know that change never happens as fast we would like it to happen. But I think the allies in particular in this space to really become more effective than they ever have been. Given the critical change we've made and realizing that we have to learn as much as we do on the ground around serving our graduate students. Thanks Al, that's really helpful. Those are really great insights and really nice to think about the kind of change over time and and the, the, the crucial role that that faculty allies can play as change agents in their programs right for graduate students and really have kind of meaningful, impactful, you know, effects on graduate students, their sense of belonging, the climate of the programs, their success in graduate school. So thank you that's really helpful. I mean I think this afternoon one of clearly one of the recurring themes at least for the students has been the issue of the toll that the current events have had on graduate students mental health right I mean, both Sydney and each one have referenced that specifically. So Megan, you spearheaded the mental health task force that was established by by rackham. Can you fill us in a little bit on what the task force has done over the last year. Sure, I'd be happy to thank you for the opportunity. So we spent last year identifying some of the major factors that are influencing graduate student mental health here at Michigan so we reviewed the existing literature. We reviewed data that was already on campus so we were very fortunate that there was already rich data so we drew on data from the rackham graduate school from individual colleges and departments, the National Center for Institutional Diversity, the CEO, the healthy mind study we were really fortunate to have such a rich, rich set of data that we could draw from, and that there were already many existing efforts on campus. So we reviewed the existing data and literature but we also held multiple events including town halls and coffee hours, where we tried to really listen to the community sort of faculty to staff to grad students. Anyone who is interested in coming and talking to us about what they saw as the major factors influencing graduate student mental health, and also things that could be changed in order to better support graduate student mental health and well being. And we really appreciated the number of people who engaged in those different events and who even helped us as we were trying to think about specific recommendations with giving us feedback on how we might implement them. So throughout our work, our goal was to identify just a small number of changes that could be made across multiple levels of the institution. So there sometimes is a tendency to try to come up with your list of 126 things that you want to do in order to drive change. And the problem with that is then a couple of them get worked on you know the easiest ones get tackled you pat yourself on the back and you move on. Social Sciences is the most effective way to drive change is to identify just a handful of changes that will have a disproportionately large impact and focus on doing those well and so we really tried hard to keep our set of recommendations to relatively limited in number. And that's not because we don't think this is an important and hard problem to solve but it's because we think it's an important and hard problem to solve. And so in the end our task force report had 10 recommendations as Dean Solomon mentioned earlier, and they span a wide range of levels and themes. So they include things like modifying RACM program of you to ask about the mental health and wellness climate and graduate programs. They involve some of them involve creation of staff positions some involve development of resources for individual grad students and to get to something that Sydney brought up earlier they also include a recommendation to for changes to leave policies including creation of a shorter term leave option. And so on the whole we're really hopeful that these will drive important and meaningful change in the mental health climate for grad students here at Michigan and we're really excited that RACM has been so open to those recommendations. Thanks Meg and that it's really helpful to hear a little bit more in detail what your task force has been up to and I'm sure there will be a lot to dig into with the report once it gets put up on the website. Sarah you've been a part of this process right you're also a member of the task force. From your perspective what initiative do you think will have the most impact on improving graduate student mental health at Michigan. Great thanks Rita. Hello everyone. Thank you for including me in today's panel and to Dean Solomon and my fellow panelists for emphasizing the importance of anti racist action of extending deadlines of providing good mentoring of protecting international students and of supporting student mental health and these really tumultuous times. Just briefly before answering the question I want to acknowledge my fellow parents out there who are tuning in while caring for and schooling your children it's really too much and you're not alone. I also want to acknowledge that it was a hard decision about whether to participate participate today given the ongoing strike and ultimately I decided to speak in solidarity with graduate students across this institution. I was delighted to learn on Friday that Rackham plans to advance all 10 recommendations of the mental health task force as they will have their greatest impact by being implemented together. Evidence shows that we're most likely to achieve changes in health by transforming the environment. And too often when institutions make efforts to address health and well being they focus only on what individuals need to do differently or better. And I really love that the task force identified ways that Rackham through modifying structures and policies can improve the environment for mental health. I'm also glad that Rackham will institutionalize these efforts as Meg mentioned through staff positions and standing committees so that we don't just do this work in the midst of the current crisis. But we do it in a strategic proactive fashion that makes it possible to promote mental health and to prevent problems and not just respond to them. But all that said I'm thinking about which initiatives will have the biggest impact. I wanted to highlight as Meg did the plan to create a shorter term four to six week leave of absence option during which students would maintain their stipend their health insurance access to caps and student housing. I also want to highlight Rackham's plans to integrate student mental health into its definition of excellence and success for both students and programs. The task force recommended that Rackham support incentivize departments to ensure that they have a supportive mental health climate. And a supportive mental health climate is one in which students won't be stigmatized for admitting they have a mental health problem and one in which they feel their community would support them in seeking treatment. Supportive mental health climate is one in which faculty and staff feel that they and the institution have adequate resources to support student mental health. It's one for where it's a climate in which it's free of toxic stressors such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia and sexual harassment, which harm mental health. And a supportive climate for student mental health is one in which students, faculty and staff are clear that while graduate graduate education is and will be rigorous demanding and stressful it does not need to decorate mental health, degrade mental health. I think Rackham has an opportunity to assess programs mental health climate over time to provide resources to enhance it and to prioritize the mental health climate as it reviews programs. And I'm excited about this because what gets measured is going to get talked about. And having I'm hopeful that having department level data on the mental health climate will will give students, faculty and staff tools for advocating for and improving the climate over time. Also by assessing the climate over time Rackham will not only incentivize investment but create opportunities to identify effective interventions, which can be shared across the institution. Ultimately I'm confident that improving the mental health climate through prioritizing it in program review will improve well being and the lives not only graduate students but of staff and faculty and ultimately improve academic outcomes. So in concluding though I also wanted to note that the task force recommendations were developed prior to March of 2020. And given the unaddressed crises unfolding in our nation and brought to national consciousness this summer. I think they're in complete. And at this point in time sufficient transparent robust plans for COVID testing and contract chasing are necessary for faculty staff and student mental health. The right to work remotely without documentation and having resources for doing remote work is necessary for student mental health. Having ongoing health insurance, even and especially for those who need to take a leave to take care of family members is necessary for mental health. Expanding options for childcare providing supports for international non documented students as we've talked about today all of those things are necessary for mental health. And finally a disarmed and demilitarized workplace is necessary for mental health. I have to say I really regret that it took the events of the summer for me personally to speak out about the fact that addressing policing should have been on the list of recommendations from the rack of mental health task force. Because data and evidence make are abundantly clear on this matter. So eloquently emphasized by my colleagues faculty from across the school public health and a forthcoming piece in the daily. We know that policing negatively impacts mental health. Even police encounters that are not physically violent are linked to heightened depressive symptoms, higher rates of trauma, anxiety and post dramatic stress. Police violence, especially towards unarmed African Americans has adverse mental health effects as Sydney mentioned among black Americans, even among those not directly affected by the event were impacted by it. And decisions by post secondary institutions regarding campus policing and relationships with local police departments impact mental health and I think there are multiple opportunities for colleges and universities including our own to divest from harmful policing practices and instead take a public health approach, investing in social determinants of health to allow all members particularly those who are most negatively affected by policing to thrive. I think the lack of effective leadership and response to the pandemic in our country. The tragic ongoing anti black police violence and the demand for change all across our nation means that bold, powerful actions, not just words are what are needed in this moment. I think that need is even greater at this institution that spent years saying one thing about sexual assault and creating a safe workplace while doing quite another as revealed by the Wilmar hair report on our former provost. So I'm so glad to have rackham as a supportive partner in taking action for student mental health. And I look forward to working together to implement the task force recommendations, as well as the actions called for by the current events unfolding since we issued our report. Thanks Sarah. I was going to come back to make Megan but I worry that she may have had to drop off. So, you know, I was going to ask her about what her priorities are for the task force this year, this specific year. But why don't we just sort of move on to Q amp a I mean first of all let me just say thank you to all of you for sharing your perspectives offering such important suggestions and insights, and, you know, for for being a part of this panel. So we're now joined by Dean Solomon and we do have a little bit of time for discussion. Yes, you're back. Okay, thank you. Excellent. So, in sorting through the many questions that came in before the event it's clear that the rackham community has many concerns. We've touched on today like mental health black lives matter mentoring COVID, the others that have yet to be raised such as what rackham is doing in relation to the upcoming national elections, which is another big looming challenge, let's just say. Before we dive into some of those issues. One of the big issues on the table is the GEO strike. And so why don't we start there. Mike, a student in the School of Information asks, how is rackham responding to the strikes across campus which are organized and worked by a majority of rackham students, and specifically what is rackham's role in the negotiations. Great. Thank you. You know, as I launch in that question, I just want to take a moment to thank, you know, the panelists for today's discussion remarks. You know, it reminds me that rackham I think at its core is a learning community. And, you know, I personally can say, I'm not the same Dean I was a year ago, six months ago, or even a year or even like a week ago. So I, you know, I appreciate specifically, especially the comments of Sarah, Yixuan and Sydney. Thank you so much for sharing your views. I've learned, and then, you know, turning to our faculty panelists as well, like just to hear from your perspective, you know, rackham is at a certain place. There's clearly more that we need to learn. And that process, I think we're already engaging in today. To turn to the specific question, I think that us as a learning community really reminds me of rackham's mission, which is very much how I think about how we've responded to the geo labor action of the moment. So, rackham's mission is about graduate education and supporting graduate students. And we've kept that front and center in this moment. You know, we can't address, you know, the employee, the employee relationship labor relations, that's not for us, but we do respond to the broader context and a number of the geo proposals, a number of which we've just spoken about here. I do do relate to students to individuals as graduate students. And these are broadly felt issues across the academy as we've discussed here today. And I think our approach all the way through has been to listen to students to understand and to try to make respond as we can as a complex interconnected system to those that are that are about graduate education and the experience of graduate students. So I think that underlies really the conversation you've seen today. It aligns the collaborators and faculty and students who we seek to engage with. And it also underlies the initiatives that you heard about in the first part of this event. These are really, as I mentioned, designed and put together to address the needs of graduate students at this really challenging and historic moment. And so I think that would be that would be my answer that there's a there's a there's a there's a strong connection here. And it is really about listening and responding to the needs of graduate students as at the moment, which is really I think you can see the theme of what we've been addressing here. So can I press you a little bit. Right ahead. So one of the question was, what is Rackham's role in the negotiation. Can you tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, thank you. So again, I that that part of as I was thinking like my response to that kind of came from that we do not have a role in the employment in the partnership. But at the same time, we are available at any time with with with with members of the Rackham community of which members of of of GSIs of whom GSIs are a part to discuss our work to support graduate students and so when asked, I've been available to listen and also to respond both both at the moment and previously. I understand that sometimes I need to listen and then take that information back. You know, I think you've understood here that Rackham is a is a complex system. I would use the extended time to degree proposal as an example of that it's something that we resolve clearly in the spring. And I think that's our response to that. And it really did. We worked on this steadily across the whole summer. And the reason is is that we have 3,300 graduate faculty, more than 100 doctoral programs, 8,000 Rackham students 5500 doctoral students. Everybody needs to kind of be on board with this concerted effort. Does that do better. Yes, thanks. So let's turn now to another area of broad concern, which is mental health, we got a number of questions in this space. There was a student in robotics who noted one of the most difficult parts of this experience is the isolation from our peers, especially those who are new to the, the U of M community. How can students make connections safely during this time. What is U of M doing to support these kinds of connections. Megan and sir, do you have any suggestions for making connections safely like how one could go about creating community and then I guess to Mike what is Rackham doing in that space. I'm sure I can start an apologies for disappearing before I've now reconnected on my neighbor's network because ours died. This is also of safely developing community. This is one of the things so Dean Solomon mentioned this report that that we, the task force prepared over the summer. One of the things we were most concerned about is for first year grad students, a lot of those natural cohort building activities won't happen because we're doing so almost everything remotely. One of them can still happen. And so a good thing is that it seems like being outdoors is pretty safe. And so it is possible to do some socially distanced activities where people could, you know, be in the same park or I'm an ecologist department has something an I naturalist challenge to go out and identify as many things as possible. Right. So there are, there are some creative ways to do things where people are actually physically in the same place, but also recognizing that people have dispersed we also need to create some ways to do things online. We're all zoomed out. So sometimes we need to be creative about how we do that. We also want to be careful not to center the events around alcohol right so you don't want to necessarily make it a zoom, you know, happy hour or something like that. But there are definitely ways to still try to to build some of that community while recognizing that it's necessarily going to be different. Thanks, Megan. Mike, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, thanks. So maybe maybe two brief, brief points. One would be that in work of Rackham, the Rackham team we've tried to start to crowdsource what some of these best ideas are because I think this is new territory for everyone. And we have a brand new site, our page on the on the Rackham site where we're starting to accumulate some of these ideas. It's pretty, there's there's plenty of room for new ideas. You know, if you've, if you've gone to a park and found a certain way to make a group, you know, of a certain size work, we are interested from hearing you. Another piece I would say then is just how much we would like to support what I'm hearing from Rackham student organizations, departmental organizations about their interest in this exact question. I'm thinking in particular of, of some of the remarks that you made, Sydney, that these, these organizations, and there are, there are many of them, you know, you, you want to kind of participate in this space. And so I think just raising this as an issue that there's individual should be, you know, we just think that this is part of the solution is to reach out in different ways and create this. And then what we want to do is just collect what is working both from kind of both from the full spectrum on the technology side all the way to what works to in terms of community and social connection that's so important. And then we'll try to distribute that information across the Rackham community. That's what we view our role as. Great. Thanks, Mike. This question comes from a faculty member in Near Eastern Studies. What specific and effective practices can programs use to ensure the inclusion of underrepresented students in admissions. I know Al you've done a lot of work in this space. Is this something that you would be comfortable speaking to. I can say a few things. And most important thing to do first of all is to convene a faculty conversation to get a sense of understanding of what faculty members think about the issue. And that may be a hard challenging in some ways a painful conversation, but to assume everybody is on board and everybody's prepared to do the right thing would be an error to assume that everybody knows how to do the right thing would be an error. So, first and foremost, open conversation about what kinds of students the faculty feel are appropriate. Why they feel that's the case. And some preparedness, the faculty allies supportive faculty have got to be prepared to engage and push back and engage. Traditional ways of thinking about what kinds of students a unit attracts and tries to hold on to, because you don't want to run the risk of having a recruitment process that brings in students that become disappointed that graduated disappointed students or the leaf. So, a discussion about the climate is critical it should certainly not just rest in outreach and try to pull in numbers. Great, that's helpful. Mike, do you have any other things to add. I think. So thank you thank you and I think just to kind of think of conveyed maybe how I was hearing the one of the first parts of Al's comments which is for programs to think about what the usual standards of usual like we have talked at rack on a lot about holistic admissions. Let me let me start there. But even within the context of holistic admissions, like what asking the question through this faculty conversation about what are the things that are kind of taken for granted within the the admissions system that set up injustice and inequities. I'm thinking in particular, in some areas, you know, a certain kind of research experience is is really a significant component and how an application is evaluated. What does it mean if certain individuals don't have access to those kinds of research experiences, just due to where, where there's where their school or what their circumstances are. How does that actually create a disparate impact that may be very simple for all sorts of reasons may have been unexamined. And so I was, you know, I would I would invite more discussion but that was one of the things I was thinking about as I was making his remarks. Thank you. So, faculty member in microbiology and immunology asks, how can we fully engage all of our faculty in the work of mentoring, perhaps in part by building in mentoring and education accountability into faculty evaluations. So, you know, this is a question about mentoring Pam do you have a do you want to take a first stab at this one. Yeah, I'll try I mean so I think it's been interesting so I've been on the more committee for a few years now and it's we one of the we sort of have two programs one is we have two mentoring workshops where that you see when we were in person faculty and student mentoring pairs would come to rack them to develop together a mentoring plan the other thing we do is go out to departments. Right and and to hold mentoring workshops often during during faculty meetings and so on to engage the faculty and in a conversation about mentoring about the specific issues within their own departments. So, I mean that's one possibility right is to to engage with more to reach out to us and and and ask us to come into the department now what would be obviously virtually that we'd be coming into the department but to come into the department to try to have conversations are difficult to have and sometimes it it. It helps to bring in somebody from the outside who just as I mean we're we're not experts right as I mentioned before we're really just we read the literature and and we're learning together. But what we are getting better at what we're pretty good at is is navigating those kinds of conversations so that's that's one possibility is to to bring more into to help have these conversations that really will help engage all faculty. And Mike do you have any thoughts on how one might go about doing this work of engaging all faculty. Yes I'm thinking of a progression. Thanks thanks and connect to to Pam's remarks. I'm thinking of the progression of the more committee itself from when the idea of a mentoring agreement was was very new, you know in the research literature really or as an outgrowth of the research literature to as I'm understanding I'm learning now as as much more of a of almost like an organic, you know, large participation among a number of programs large numbers of faculty within programs. And so I guess when I think about this, I do think of it as a progression that we as the as the Racum community as the community of graduate faculty come to some sense of what is normative like what what is the what what is what is excellence mean what is what is our commitment to graduate education and graduate students mean within the space. And I feel that we're at a tipping point here that all number of just based on the many different dimensions of today's conversations that that spoke to mentoring and the value of these conversations and I'm hearing about from Pam there's been so much emphasis on conversations that that I think that creating that normative having that conversation within a program as she indicated sets us up in a path where this is this is really what what we do in the academy, and I do see that as the future. I think I've, you know, we've been doing this for 10 years now. We've been progressing and there is there is increasing agreement about the value of these conversations. Great. Thanks. And I mean, the truth is that mentoring intersects with so many other components of graduate student success right so you can't really. I mean, if the mentoring is not working, then it's very difficult for graduate students to be to move through their program well and you know our goal is obviously always to support the graduate students and so this is a really crucial component of that work. So another question that came from a student in environment and sustainability this is a little bit sort of different it's it's more specifically related to the pandemic. The student wrote this the pandemic is putting particular stress on graduate student parents with school age children who are learning who are also learning remotely. What collaborative solutions are being explored for those of us who are unexpectedly teaching and learning at the same time, often simultaneously. This is a question that I think impacts a much wider swath of the the rack of community but Mike, do you have any ideas or can you talk to us a little bit about this sort of dynamic that many of us find ourselves in. Thanks. Thanks, I'm pleased to have there's just this brief opportunity to kind of signal rackums, you know resolution of this profound challenge that is key to graduate students but then also extends to other groups of the rack community so this is kind of a little bit of a commitment to that we are here I love what we're hearing. We don't have the. I'll say just a minute about we have at a moment but I maybe want to be more future looking we are trying to talk with really any group on campus that wants to engage with us about what some possibilities might be where we are in conversation with you more with CW plus. We've had some conversation around this about about subsidies for childcare and we are to connect to an earlier comment like we are contributing our funds for to the extent that cares funding can't be accessed for unlicensed childcare. We are we are providing what I recall is funding that allows that that facility to be applied to all rackum rackum students in particular international students that can't access cares funding as was indicated like earlier, but that's one just one small part of the broader issue that I that I that I understand that question to be referring to. And I think our extended time to degree plan really is designed to be responsive like it is really specifically about the pressures of the last six months, and includes this, this challenge as one possibility. There are more things to do. There are more things that we like to understand how to do and this is a way in which we would engage with with campus partners going forward. So a PhD student in history asked, how is the University of Michigan supporting graduate education for international students, specifically those who might face travel restrictions, visa issues and financial hardship. I mean you mentioned just now the ways in which rackum is sort of reconfiguring resources to help international students with children who who don't have access to the cares act. And you talked a little bit in your talk about first year students who have been able to join their programs remotely. Are there other things that you can tell us about what rackum is doing to help international students. Well I think one one. So thanks for that reading and thanks for the for the, you know, kind of for the review of some of the supports that we've been trying to do. I guess one thing I would, I would just say would be that I would actually mention our kind of partnership with the international, the graduate rackum international, the association, the student association of international students. We listen to them, and we seek to to voice to create, you know, partnerships that allow them to pursue their ideas. And so here I think I'm going to connect to them earlier comments like the concerns of this group are things that rackum doesn't always control, but we can create environments in which are spaces in which that those conversations can occur. So around the international fee around federal regulation or OPT around the pernicious effect of of broad regulations around that that impact particular countries of origin. So these are these are the These are these are the things that we're we're thinking about. And so we will hear we'll hear more and and really do what we can. I guess the one thing last thing I would mention would be that our back our kind of support for CARES funding is is more than just childcare expenses, any request that's brought through for CARES funding would be considered through through this avenue. Okay, so maybe one last question. Regarding correlating the size of cohorts to address doctoral funding extensions. How will we ensure that this does not run counter to DEI efforts and admissions that rackum aims to pursue. I think that's a really important question. Yes, it really is I tried. I wanted to signal that as part of the remarks from earlier, that when we as as we as a community rackum program chairs, the the the deans and staff of rackum when we've talked about this plan, this is something that we really have our eyes on. So the fact that we're asking for these plans that they may be coordinated by schools and colleges will be put together by programs. We are going to engage with programs around this to be sure that this is value. And what we know needs to be done like the attention that needs to be paid as we discussed earlier is part of these plans. And so there is a there is a in the fall programs will develop these plans, they'll submit them. We'll have conversations about them. We'll share best practices, and we'll be keeping this forefront as both a value value and a goal of something that we need to, we need to, we need to continue and advance our work in this area. Okay, great. Thank you. So I think we are really at time. I just want to say thank you to everyone who attended and participated in this event. We appreciate your partnership and we look forward to continuing that partnership work with you as we navigate the many challenges for the upcoming year and for what comes beyond that. Thank you again for for coming and for participating in the state of the school, and we will look forward to our future collaborations. Thank you.