 Welcome to the 2021 FRACAM Fall welcome. My name is Alondra Desartes and I am a third year PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Master of Ceremonies for today's program. We are gathered here today visually to begin the year. While we will not have in person a plus today, we will have opportunities to engage and connect in person throughout the year. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that the University of Michigan is located on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe people. In 1817, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Boruwa dominations made the largest single land transfer to the University of Michigan. This was offered ceremonially as a gift through the 3D at the foot of the rapids so that their children could be educated. Through this word of acknowledgement, their contemporary and ancestral ties to the land and their contributions to the University are renewed and reaffirmed. At this time, I would like to introduce our fan for a band to begin the Fall welcome. You will hear from several speakers who will tell you much about Rackham and can also provide you with some practical advice for success along the way. It is my great pleasure to introduce you to Dean and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Graduate Studies, Mike Solomon. Dean Solomon is a professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering, Dean Solomon is a professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Micro Molecular Science and Engineering. His research interests are in the area of complex fluids which are soft materials with properties intermediate between fluids and solids. Dean Solomon is working diligently with students, faculty, and staff to get input that will create and enhance student-centered experience for all Rackham students. Please help me to welcome Dean Solomon. Thank you very much, Alondra. Hello, I'm Mike Solomon. I would like to take this chance to personally congratulate each of you and to welcome you to what I believe is a place like no other, the Rackham Graduate School. It's a place and community that can help you learn and create the knowledge that will move your field forward as you pursue your goal of a graduate degree. I thank you for joining us virtually for these remarks and I look forward to meeting you at the Welcome Social on Rackham's Lee East Lawn afterwards as we seek to take advantage of in-person events that offer interaction and the chance to build community at this time. You are part of a long tradition at the University of Michigan. U of M conferred its first master's degrees in 1849. It awarded its first PhDs in 1876. And in fact, these were among some of the first doctorates awarded at a public university in the United States. Although this is a very different place and a very different time, nearly 150 years later, our mission to support you as you pursue your educational goals and make your research discoveries remains as unwavering as ever. The past 18 months have been supremely difficult period. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted nearly every facet of teaching, research, and scholarship along with bringing intense personal pressures to all members of our community. The killing of George Floyd and too many other appalling instances of racialized violence by police sparked an urgent movement to address and redress institutionalized racism in America and the world beyond. Foreign policy changes have had an outsized impact on our international student community some of whom were already experiencing a rise of hateful xenophobic attacks and rhetoric and a deeply divisive presidential election added further considerable strain. I admire the way that Rackham students, staff, and faculty responded to those challenges. You, as new Rackham students, have also persevered as you charted your transition to adjoin us here for graduate study from wherever you call home around the globe. I respect the resilience you displayed to arrive here today. Of course, resilience is an important resource to draw upon as a graduate student at any time. It's even more essential now and it's a skill that you will develop more fully during your time here at Michigan. There are many avenues of support at Rackham and across the university to help you as you do that. You can learn more about them through the COVID-19 resources linked below this video and I hope that you will. Your holistic well-being is important to all of us at Rackham. We will strive each day to create an environment in which you feel safe, valued, and welcomed in which you engage in the discovery, free inquiry, open exchange of ideas, and creation of knowledge that graduate education is all about. When I started graduate school, I faced challenges of my own, though nothing compared to those that I just described. But I think an important lesson I learned early as relevant at this time when we have before us been so isolated and I would like to share those experiences with you for that reason. I majored in engineering and economics as an undergraduate, but in the year prior to graduate school, I traveled abroad. I hadn't thought about academics in 14 months when I arrived on campus and I arrived late just as classes started and somehow ended up living in the law school dorm even though I wasn't in law school. I was in graduate school. In my courses, we had weekly problem sets due. I would go back to my dorm room, work really hard on them by myself, but I wasn't finishing them and I was worried about my first midterms. And then one day I walked into the library and a bunch of my classmates were sitting there working together on the problem sets that I had found so challenging. It was an impromptu study group. I made a really good choice that day which was to sit down and work with that group. Even though I hadn't known it, they were struggling just like I was. They helped me, not only with the problem sets themselves, but also with a sense of shared interests and difficulties. There was solidarity there and it really helped me in those all important autumn months. And whether these types of groups that take place are over a computer or across a table, I strongly recommend that you seek out some kind of informal study work or academic group within your program or department. These groups, which don't need to be more than a few classmates working together, can help you transition to your first year as a graduate student. As we continue to respond to the challenges of the pandemic, you don't need to navigate the launch of your graduate study on your own. I can tell you from experience here in Ann Arbor, the September is beautiful here. If you are more comfortable meeting your classmates, lab mates, or project partners outdoors, I recommend that each of you do so. By meeting your peers now, you will take a step towards realizing one of the advantages of a Michigan education, connection and community. They will be invaluable as you progress through the rest of your academic year and beyond. Study groups are just one kind of group on campus. At an institution as big, diverse, and varied as U of M, there are many opportunities to join groups and organizations outside your program. Some of the graduate students I mentor in my laboratory have shared with me how groups outside their departments, groups like you'll hear from today, Rackham Student Government, students of color of Rackham and graduate Rackham International have helped them. You likely learned about these groups and many, many others at the Virtual Information Fair that is paired with today's event. Please follow up with these groups that interest you. Our Rackham students in these organizations have voiced to me that they want to meet you and support you. The way we make connections may vary in our current environment, but the importance of doing so absolutely has not. In fact, I think creating community for yourself is important now more than ever. I also want to stress that there are many things that the Rackham Graduate School can do for you. Please think about your own goals and avail yourself of the support Rackham offers to help you achieve them. For example, applications for our diversity, equity and inclusion professional development certificate just opened. The recently launched Grad School 101 Canvas portal aims to connect you with the services and resources that Rackham has to offer. We have career-based workshops, research grants, supports for your well-being and numerous other resources and programs to assist you. After today's event, you can find continually updated information on the Rackham website in our weekly student newsletter. I encourage you to be unintentional about what you want to accomplish during your education here and to take full advantage of the ways that Rackham can be your ally in that pursuit. I'd also like to take this opportunity to admit that there's something that you can do for Rackham. We are interested in your experience as a graduate student. What challenges you? What supports you? We are committed to using data, analysis and research to improve graduate education itself, to enhance student success and to catalyze new research in the field of graduate education. As part of this effort, we survey different groups of Rackham students to learn more about your experiences. For example, later this year, several of you who are master students will receive a survey about your experience in your graduate program. Moreover, in a few weeks, a survey invitation will go out to first year PhD students. This is a significant opportunity for you, for your voice to be heard and they'll let us know about your transition to doctoral study. It's very important that we hear from all students so that all voices and experiences inform our understanding. Therefore, if you receive a survey invitation for us, I hope you will participate so that all of us at Rackham and those that come after us can benefit. This dovetails with the planning and outreach that we're doing with faculty and student organizations develop long-term strategies to better serve you as students. Of course, this academic year, there's something else you can do for Rackham, for yourselves and for the entire University of Michigan community. Join our fellow students along with you Michigan faculty and staff in following safety measures across campus to help protect us all and stop the spread of COVID-19 so we continue to work, learn, and pursue our goals. I realize that many of us continue to have concerns about our health and of those closest to us, especially in light of the prevalence of the Delta variant. Rackham is ready to provide flexible support as necessary in response to the frequently dynamic conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. I also encourage you to follow updates on the campus blueprint website and to submit questions for the regular campus COVID-19 briefings with University leadership. If you missed it, the video of this morning's briefing will be available soon. Additionally, over the course of the year, I personally commit to two-way communication with you about what you're experiencing. To that end, I will be writing a regular column in the student newsletter to address questions and concerns I hear from Rackham students and the student organizations who represent you. In addition, we have a long history of town hall dialogues at Rackham. We hold four per year and we'll continue to do those this year. Finally, I will host a state of the graduate school event in mid-September that you will all be invited to. I'm thankful for the chance to undertake this important work and to serve as Dean of such a varied and academically vibrant community. I'm thankful for the outstanding staff, excellent faculty and devoted colleagues across campus who make our efforts possible. And most of all, I'm thankful that you have chosen to join the more than 8,500 Rackham students at Michigan, giving shape to the vital issues of our day. Welcome to the next step on your intellectual journey. Thank you. Thank you, Dean Solomon for those words and for always being willing to participate in conversation about graduate education and the future of it. What we want to do and where we want to go. And speaking of where to go, I want to take this moment to talk to you about the grad school 101 portal. Grad school 101 is a portal that has all the essential information that you will need to be successful in grad school. In grad school 101, you can submit a question, get timely updates, access recording from past workshops or engage with self-paced mini-curses. As an incoming student, you're already part of grad school 101. All you have to do is access your Canvas site or fill out the form at the end of the broadcast to get connected. I will also like to take a moment to discuss the Michigan doctoral experience study or MDES. The MDES is a longitudinal study aimed at understanding the experience of PhD students here at Rackham. The goal of MDES is to use the data to better inform and meet the needs of Rackham graduate students. Keep an eye out in your email for the survey link which will go out on September 20th. Rackham is fortunate to have strong students' organization that are committed to enhancing and elevating their graduate student experience. At this time, I am pleased to introduce you to Marshall from Rackham Student Government, Yoshin from graduate Rackham International and Sydney Carr from Student of Color of Rackham. And each of them will tell you more about their organization and the many great things they do for students. Please help me to welcome them. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the University of Michigan and to the Rackham Graduate School. My name is Marshall and I'm a fourth year PhD candidate in chemical engineering and I'm also the president of the Rackham Student Government. Rackham Student Government is the organization that represents all graduate students within the Rackham School and we also serve as the primary liaison between students and the University Administration. It is our primary duty to serve you as you start your exciting journeys in this graduate school. There are a number of different ways that we serve you and I'll name a couple of them just to give you an idea of all the different things that we do. Firstly, we organize social events like dinner and dance events, concert series, and even like later this afternoon, food and drinks on the east side of the Rackham building. I look forward to seeing many of you there. We also advocate on behalf of graduate students and various graduate student issues at the local, state, university and federal levels. Some of these topics in the past years have included mental health, diversity, equity and inclusion and anti-racism, research funding and affordable housing. We host a wide range of professional networking events like how to give an elevator pitch and also the importance of appreciating failure because not every graduate student has a perfect experience through their studies. We're also incorporating sustainability practices in all the facets of our organization and just this weekend we're hosting another park cleanup where we go to parks around Ann Arbor and help to make it a nicer environment for everyone in our community. We collaborate with other graduate and professional schools on campus to give truly interdisciplinary events and initiatives and we also are charged with helping to fund other graduate student organizations within the umbrella of the Rackham program to help you host your own events and initiatives and in the last year we've given out thousands of dollars to help graduate students do that. Finally, we've also since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, directly supported graduate students in the form of our micro grant program and in the last year alone, we've funded over 17 students for small everyday items like dumbbells and fitness equipment and groceries and transportation costs as we navigate this hybrid environment of studies. So all of our events are student driven and if you'd like to learn more about what it means to be a member of our organization or if you'd like to provide feedback on what kind of services we could do to service you, you can reach out to us through our website which is rsg.umich.edu. I welcome you all to the University of Michigan and to the Rackham Graduate School and I wish you all the best of luck with your studies. Go Blue. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the University of Michigan. My name is Yixuan Chen. I'm a PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering and I'm also the co-president of the Graduate Rackham International. We usually call it Grain for short. Grain is a student organization sponsored by the Rackham Graduate School to foster a diverse and inclusive community at the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan is a hope to students from 115 countries and around 40% of the total graduate students in the Rackham Graduate School are international students. So no matter where you come from, you will feel belong here. We all know that the past one and a half year has been very challenging to our community, particularly to the international students. The COVID-19 pandemic, travel and visa restrictions had made many international students unable to experience the vibrant campus life here. Computer and phone were probably the only ways you could connect with your peers and the professors. For this past isolating one and a half year, we in Grain were actively following the involving situation. We connected with international student groups in other universities and wrote resolutions in the comments to the federal policies that affected our international community. We met with Rackham Leadership and International Center to express the concerns and needs we heard from the international students. We also quickly adapted all of our events to a virtual format to engage our students remotely. We provided the airport arrival support package last semester and this semester to help international students have a smoother transfer from the airport to Ann Arbor when they first arrived in the university. Today, I'm so glad that we are finally back to this beautiful campus in person. Grain will continue the support to our students who identify as international or multi-ethnic, racial, or cultural. Our events and initiatives will help you grow both professionally and personally during your time at the University of Michigan as well as enrich your social life. Even though I cannot meet your face-to-face today in the auditorium, I hope to see you soon in one of our events. Again, on behalf of all members of Grain, welcome to the University of Michigan and Go Blue. Hi, everyone. My name is Sydney. I'm a fourth year PhD candidate and the joint political science and public policy program here at Michigan. And on behalf of SCORE, Students of Color Rackham, we want to formally welcome you to the University of Michigan as you begin your graduate school career. So, SCORE is an organization here at Michigan to vote it to the well-being and success of our graduate students of color. We do a ton of things throughout the semester and the academic year, ranging from social and social justice-based events, community service in the local Ann Arbor and its Solanny area, and professional development. So these events include barbecues, happy hours, movie nights, and an annual social justice symposium in Formal Gala, just to name a few. Graduate school can be hard, especially for students who come from marginalized communities. And we know that with everything going on in the world and in our daily lives, it's hard, right? And, you know, topping on the stressors of graduate school can be a lot. Know that SCORE is always here for you and to help guide you through your graduate school experience. One thing that SCORE really prides itself on is being almost a community and a family in a sense, right? We know that our graduate students of color, sometimes you come here, you may not know anyone here, you're coming to a totally new state, and on top of that, you're a person of color. And that can feel really isolating, especially in your classes sometimes and even in your departments. And so SCORE is basically here to help facilitate your grad school experience and to help you feel a sense of community. And we know that having a community to help you during your time in grad school for however long you're here is super, super, super important. So just one last quick plug about SCORE, we're having our first kickoff event of the semester on Saturday, September 11th. We're having a welcome back cookout and carnival at Island Park in Ann Arbor, Shelter B. Tickets for that event are now on sale. So we can't wait to see you. This semester we have a ton of really fun events planned and we're excited to be getting back in person. So welcome to you all again and go blue. Thank you all for that insightful information. Now I want to echo three important offices resources which can help you greatly during your journey. Service for student with disabilities or SSD, Counseling and Psychological Services, CAHPS and the Requiem Emergency Funds. First, the mission of Service for Students with Disabilities is to support the university commitment to equity and diversity by providing support and academic accommodations to students with disabilities. SSD shares information, promotes awareness of disability issues and provides support of a decentralized system of access for a student within the university community. To learn more, plus visit ssd.umich.edu. We value mental health here at Brackham. At this time, I would like to remind you that the University of Michigan Counseling and Psychological Services, UM-CAHPS, offers free and confidential counseling, crisis walking support, group psychotherapy and psychological assessment for all graduate students. The main CAHPS office is located in the Michigan Union at 530 State Street. Other CAHPS counselors are embedded within individual units across campus. This includes our campus and the Brackham building. The CAHPS embedded psychologist for Brackham Graduate School is Laura Moshoff. Please email her to schedule an appointment and visit the CAHPS website, www.caps.umich.edu for further information. And now, sometimes in grad school, life happens and sometimes most of the time, life costs money. The Brackham Graduate Student Emergency Fund is intended to help meet the financial needs of all Brackham graduate students who encounter an emergency situation or one-time, unusual and unforeseen expenses during their degree program. For more information, you can visit the link you see on the screen. Brackham is filled with opportunities for you to grow and learn. Our next three speakers will highlight three signature programs at Brackham, which I've been proud of all of them. In the following order, please welcome Joe Sholdola, Program Manager for Public Scholarship, Dr. Stena Lin, Coordinated for Graduate Student Career Advancement, and Debbie Willis, Program Lead for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Certificate and Assistant Director of Professional and Academic Development to talk about their great offerings. Please, help me, welcome them. Welcome to Brackham, everyone out there. As Alondra mentioned, I'm Josiah Della and I work on Brackham's Professional Development Team, running workshops, programs, and training related to public scholarship. Simply put, public scholarship is about finding diverse ways to create impact, reach, and imaginative possibilities for your scholarship in collaboration with partners outside the university to serve the greater public good. Brackham's opportunities for professional development in the area of public scholarship include four core programs. The Institute for Social Change happens each May. This program is a week-long introduction to doing collaborative public scholarship geared towards creating positive social change. We have a variety of speakers, site visits, mentoring opportunities, and time for you to develop an idea for a publicly engaged project of your own. The Engaged Pedagogy Initiative is a semester-long workshop happening each fall term. This training program provides an opportunity for you to develop in the area of community-engaged teaching and learning by developing a syllabus for a community-engaged course that you design. It is facilitated in partnership with the Ginsburg Center for Community Service Learning here on campus. Public scholarship grants provide up to $8,000 in funding for Brackham students to implement a mutually beneficial scholarly project co-created with a community partner. Projects in the past have included oral histories, exhibits, policy impact research podcasts, and K-12 school programming. We also offer summer internships where we work with a variety of partner organizations on and off campus to develop funded opportunities that provide you with a chance to contribute to work that serves the greater public good while also learning from their work and developing new skills to advance your career. Some of our partners this past summer included the Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development, the Ecology Center, and the Detroit Justice Center. There are no prerequisites for these programs and you can participate at any point during your time at Brackham and at the University of Michigan. Each program has its own application process and deadlines. In addition to training, each of these programs provides a community through interdisciplinary cohorts of students from across campus and there's more information on our website and I'm always happy to chat and answer questions. We are incredibly lucky to have resources for these programs for graduate students here at Brackham so I hope you will take advantage of them. Thank you and go Blue. Hello and welcome to the University of Michigan. We're so glad you're here. My name is Kirsten Elling and I'm the coordinator for Graduate Student Career Advancement. I'm on staff at the University Career Center, also known as UCC and I'm embedded in the Brackham building so that you can more easily access UCC's career and job searching expertise, employer connections and other resources. My role represents a deep commitment on the part of both Brackham leadership and UCC to serve your unique career development needs. We know how important it is to prepare for a variety of career paths both within and beyond the academy, especially given the changing landscape of higher ed. Our services are a university benefit you're entitled to so I encourage you to tap into this resource during your time here. Pursuing a graduate degree is an exciting and challenging time. Well, you may not know exactly how you want to shape your career path within your chosen field. It's important to know that you will be making strategic decisions related to your professional career as you move through graduate school. You will be exploring, reshaping and preparing for multiple options. By bringing intentionality to your process, you can prepare yourself as a scholar, a professional and a skilled candidate regardless of the external conditions that will exist in the years ahead. The University Career Center is a key resource for support throughout this process. UCC offers graduate students customized career coaching and advising. In this setting, we can talk specifically about you. What are your aspirations? What kind of internship experience should you seek out? What are your values and work life considerations? Definitely schedule an appointment early on so we can have these exploratory conversations, review your LinkedIn profile or practice your interviewing skills. You will also have access to group experiences through workshops. Many students take advantage of both. Workshops are a valuable complement to individual appointments, providing the opportunity to learn along with other students about networking, resume creation, internship and other practical experiences. I encourage you to utilize the full range of UCC resources available early on and throughout your program to assist with your career exploration, support your networking efforts, sharpen your resume, prepare for internship interviews and ultimately help you negotiate job offers. I really love those appointments by the way. In addition to individual appointments and group workshops, you should also join the handshake platform or your school and colleges equivalent. Where you'll find job and internship postings and employer events sponsored by a wide range of employers who are specifically recruiting U of M students. Career fairs are another great way to connect with employers and explore a range of opportunities. I encourage you to attend one early in your graduate career to practice networking with employers and get inspired about your many career options. Many entering graduate students ask, what can I do right now? I would urge you to actively build your networks. Seek out U of M alumni via professional networking sites like LinkedIn or UCan. There's a Rackham hub for that and talk with them about their roles. This is a great way to learn about their career paths and even to identify internship opportunities. Be intentional about maintaining connections you build through your graduate school cohort, speakers who come to your department, people you meet at conferences and other professionals you encounter on campus and beyond. I hope your graduate school experience is off to a great start. I'm really looking forward to working with you as you explore all of your options and reach your full potential. Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Rackham is committed to enhancing the development and training offerings related to diversity, equity and inclusion for all U of M graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. In 2017, we launched the Rackham Professional Development DEI certificate program. I'm Debbie Willis and I have the privilege and honor of leading this initiative. We developed the program after hearing from our students that they wanted professional development in these areas. See, we listened to our students and they still continue to inform the offerings that we provide. This program was designed to prepare its participants to work in a diverse environment while fostering a climate of inclusivity. Students appreciate the interdisciplinary community that they're able to build with scholars from all over campus who are passionate about equity and inclusion. We encourage you to sometimes get outside of your own department. The details for the program can be found on the website. You can just Google Rackham DEI certificate. And right now the applications for the program are open and they will close on September 13th. We are currently hosting information sessions and we have two sessions still coming on Thursday, September 2nd at 10 a.m. and on Friday, September 10th at 12 p.m. We hope you join us for those sessions. If you have any questions on our website, we have the information about the program, the core curriculum, how long it takes to complete everything you need and we're looking forward to seeing you at the information sessions for more information. We look forward to partnering with you and we invite you to join us on this journey. We love learning and growing with you. Thank you. Thank you, Joe, Kirsten and Debbie for all that information. There is one more opportunity I would like to talk about and this is Rackham and All-King Talks. I remember calling my mom and telling her, mom now is my moment and it was my moment. I'm gonna tell you soon, what is it about? King Talks are textile talks given by students communicating their relevance of their research to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy and or a coin, the theme of U.M. Martin Luther King Jr.'s symposium, which changed each year. Please note that the King Talks are a paid opportunity for students to share their knowledge with the university community. And you know, life happens and life costs money. I had the honor of participating in this year Rackham King Talks. This year, the theme of the symposium was where do we go from here? It was my moment. During my speech, I talk about the perks of being part of the population living with an invisible disability during the COVID-19 era and ended my talk inviting all to join people with disabilities in their fight for equity and inclusion. King Talks gave me that space. I have been claiming since I was diagnosed with the complex regional pain syndrome back in 2011. It gave me a voice and I share my story with not only my family and friends, but with my institution and the place I now consider home. I felt powerful and stoppable. It also gave me the opportunity to learn from my peers and to get inspired by them. If you feel inspired, if you feel there's something you want to tell the world that aligns or echo the work and the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., consider applying to next year's King Talk. More information about King Talks will be available at the end of the presentation. Thank you so much for joining us here today and for choosing the University of Michigan. If you're interested in any of the programs you've heard about today, please scan the QR code on the screen now to express your interest in all the great offerings at Brackham. Welcome to our community. Welcome to Michigan and welcome to Brackham. Remember to take advantage of all the cross programs, academic, professional and personal growth opportunities or university and specifically Brackham offers. Come to us and let's start building tomorrow together because as Helen Keller said, alone we can do so little, together we can do so much. Thank you for being here and go blue.