The Fund for the Graduate Community

Ike Colbert and Barrie Gleason

A bold new idea has evolved from exciting community-authored initiatives.

• Introducing reusable ceramic mugs changes the nature of social interaction in the EAPS departmental lounge, not to mention local conservation efforts.
• Graduate students manage a design competition for "un-useless things," attracting the attention of the Boston Globe .
• The Academics, Research, and Careers Committee of the Graduate Student Council analyzes their focus group research and presents their recommendations for improved advisor/advisee relationships at the May faculty meeting.
• The MIT Libraries establishes a seed collection of foreign language literature for recreational reading.

These are just a few of the current projects that received full or partial funding in round #4 of the Graduate Student Life Grants.

These grants were introduced in 2002, when the Dean for Graduate Students received a significant allocation of funds to be used for enhancing the quality of student life. Seeing this as one approach to understanding the role of community in graduate life, he decided to use the allocation to design and implement the innovative Graduate Student Life Grants process. The grants offered funding for creative initiatives for enhancing the graduate experience through a request-for-proposal process. Anyone in the MIT community was welcome to participate.

Between June 2002 and December 2004, the Dean and his selection panel have orchestrated four rounds of proposals; out of 112 proposals reviewed, they have funded 64 to date.

Initially, the student life fee funds provided an opportunity to experiment. Now a clearly successful proving ground, the grant process shows that there is a wellspring of fresh, creative ideas for enhancing graduate student life in the community. Successful programs point to the ways in which the Institute might support graduate life more broadly and on a permanent, sustained basis. While the Dean remained committed to shepherding the grant process, it was clear that a fund would offer resources to change the Institute landscape on a more permanent basis.

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To that end, a small team representing the Alumni Association and the Graduate Students Office (GSO) developed the case for the Fund for Graduate Community and submitted a memorandum to the Treasurer, who approved a new expendable Fund. In March 2005, the Fund was announced in an appeal letter sent to all graduate alumni/ae over the Dean's signature This appeal described the opportunity to "ensure a vibrant community life for our graduate students," and explained that future Fund resources would be used for three main purposes. First, to generate and support more initiatives by institutionalizing the annual request-for-proposal process. Second, the Fund will support programs and activities serving targeted constituencies (ideas that surface through the grant process, or otherwise). For example, in the context of the Institute's priorities, such programs and activities might focus on international students, incoming women graduate students, students with families, or student parents. Finally, the Fund will offer the opportunity to sustain seminal ideas, those ideas that stand the test of time and should be integrated into the fabric of graduate student life at the Institute.

The team who developed the case for the Fund is currently at work on fundraising plans. The Fund for Graduate Community is featured as one of MIT's priorities for student life and learning on the Institute's "Giving to MIT" Website (giving.mit.edu), and the GSO will introduce special coverage on its own site early this fall. Even without a formal marketing strategy in place, the Dean's appeal letter has attracted 165 gifts totaling $24K, to multiple designations; of that, 67 donors have contributed $10.4K directly to the Fund for Graduate Community.

The deadline for round #5 of the Graduate Student Life Grants is October 14, 2005. For more information about the Fund, or the Graduate Student Life Grant process, please contact Barrie Gleason in the Graduate Students Office at bgleason@mit.edu.

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