Good morning everybody as you're joining.
I am going to get started
because we have quite a full agenda today.
I wanna thank you for joining us online today.
We have about 55 people
that are listening in from all over the world.
So it's very exciting.
We're glad that you're here with us virtually,
and we hope to give you an orientation
to the University of Vermont today
to help you to get a flavor of what your graduate experience
at the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences
would be.
We want you to enjoy today what we have to present to you,
and to ask questions
so that by the end of our time together,
you can feel more comfortable in your familiarity with UVM
and be excited for all that awaits you here.
We are using a teams live event format today.
So please be aware that though we wish we could,
we presenters can't see you.
We will be presenting to you.
If you have a question however,
there is a Q&A chat that I have open and am monitoring
and we'll be monitoring during our time together.
So therefore,
enter your questions in the Q&A chat
and we'll be sure to address them.
This event is also being recorded.
I will send the recording to all of the participants
with a short after event survey
where you can give feedback about the visit day.
So you'll see that there is the agenda I sent to you
earlier this week and is really read up online
and is really kind of the outline of the time
that we have today, who you're going to hear from.
And yeah, I do wanna just stress
that I'd love for you to enjoy our time together.
I am now very pleased to introduce the dean
of the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences
to give an introduction to graduate studies here.
Thank you for being here
at our Accepted Student Visit Day.
You're coming or visiting UVM at a really exciting time.
We have two brand new buildings,
innovation and discovery that house computer science,
mathematics, statistics, data science and complex systems,
physics and also chemistry.
And a fully renovated engineering building
that has the engineering programs.
So we have fantastic new spaces.
We're also embarking on renovating
a really historic building
with huge tall ceilings and plenty of sunlight
as a new graduate student space
to encourage social interaction and study
and scholarly interaction where there's meeting spaces
and beautiful graduate student offices.
So that should be coming online in the next couple of years.
I wanna also let you know that you're visiting UVM
at an exciting time because our graduate research funding
has grown by at least 50% in the last three years.
So there's really exciting work happening here,
growing really rapidly.
So I hope you take a look at all that over your day today.
I also wanted to let you know
about two other important outcomes
that we've learned about recently.
We had a reviews of all our graduate programs
in the last year.
And one of the really wonderful things
that emerged out of that
is how strong the faculty student interaction is
in our graduate programs.
The students and the faculty
have a real intellectual community
and they feel very supported
and valued by their faculty advisors.
So as you're meeting with faculty today,
explore that a little bit, but I think you'll find
that we have some of the friendliest, kindest, smartest,
most creative faculty that you could find anywhere.
That's how I feel about them anyway.
Another thing I wanna let you know about
is that we have a graduate student council.
This is a relatively new group,
but this is a group of students who provide feedback to me,
but are also doing social programming for graduate students.
So in addition to the intellectual community
that we're creating, we're working hard
on continuing to grow the social community
that we have in the college with the graduate students.
So those were kind of my key messages.
I don't know, Jane, if there were opportunities
for questions or I should step aside.
(Linda laughs)
[Jane] We don't have any questions yet,
but let's hold on a minute and give any of our attendees
a chance to put in a question in the live chat.
And so if you have any questions for Dean Schadler,
please fire away.
We'll give that just another-
Yeah, that's fine.
The important questions are the ones you're gonna ask
of your fellow graduate students that will come on today
and the faculty program directors.
So enjoy your day.
And again, thank you very much for joining us
and I look forward to seeing some of you here on campus.
Thank you Dean Schadler.
Okay, then we are gonna go right into talking
with the faculty members who are here
to introduce the programs.
And we will start with mechanical engineering
to Professor Sansoz.
So I'm Frederic Sansoz.
I am the graduate program director
for the mechanical engineering graduate student.
So if you are here today, the mechanical engineers,
I assume you've been admitted to the program,
so congratulations.
I guess the next stage now
is we'll be able getting funding or support
through your graduate studies at UVM.
And so one of the main reasons today
is to associate you with a thesis advisor.
In fact, in mechanical engineering,
if you want to receive some support, tuition remission,
you are required to conduct a thesis,
either the PhD or the master's student
and therefore you have to initiate a discussion
with a thesis advisor.
So that's the goal of this meeting to the...
So just for mechanical engineering briefly,
we have faculty in five areas
which are Thermo-Fluid and aerospace engineering,
material science in engineering,
we have faculty in robotics dynamical system,
also faculty who inform research
applied to medical research.
And we have a group of faculty focused
on computational mechanics.
So if you have any interest in one of those areas,
contact me and I will put you in touch
with the right faculty.
Thank you.
Next, we'll go to biomedical engineering
and we'll hear from Professor Doiron.
I will do a brief intro here to our program.
We're the biomedical engineering program.
You can see here on your screen are faculty
and their areas of expertise.
We range in expertise from materials and nano materials
to neuroimaging and computational modeling
with all of the focus
being of course on the application of biomedicine.
So our curriculum,
we have three options for master's degrees,
coursework only, project based and thesis based.
And then our PhD degree
where about half of the classes would be in core areas.
And then about half the classes are open to electives.
And one of the reasons that we have so many electives
is because one of the huge benefits
of the BME graduate program
is that we collaborate very heavily
with the college of medicine, which is here on campus.
It's in fact about maybe 300 yards behind me
from my office here.
And because of that, that allows us to set up collaborations
in research and in teaching
and be able to have a very strong program
that bridges the main focus areas you see here.
Digital health, biomechanics, biomaterials,
neuroengineering and computational modeling.
You can see here that we have a growing program
with a strong vision
that is focused on enhancing opportunities
for our graduate students in the College of Medicine,
Larner College of Medicine,
LCOM and the electrical and biomedical engineering
or EBE department here in CEMS.
And fostering these collaborations
is one of our main focus areas for the program.
The interests that we have in fostering these collaborations
bridges all areas of research.
And so even if you're here
to learn more about mechanical engineering,
I'd be happy for you to get in touch with me
and talk more about opportunities
that might be potential collaborations
that bridge mechanical and biomedical
or other areas of interest.
We have a active research conference that we run every month
and you can see just some topics that were covered
a couple of months ago in that conference.
And we're interested in growing
both in the number of graduate students
and in your interest area.
So I'll leave it at that and am really looking forward
to talking to some of you later on today.
Thank you so much.
With a technical difficulty,
I actually have Professor Hernandez right here next to me,
so I'm going to pass it over
to talk about civil and environmental engineering.
Hello, everybody.
Sorry for a little technical difficulty,
but we are resourceful
in civil and environmental engineering.
So I just came down to Jane's office
and decided to talk from her computer.
So my name is Eric Hernandez
and I am the graduate program director
for civil and environmental engineering.
We have a vibrant program
with more than 40 graduate students among PhD and masters.
We have 17 faculty members
that advise students at different levels.
As I said, accelerated masters, masters and PhDs.
We have several research centers
affiliated with our department,
including the UVM Transportation Research Center
that has been going on for almost a decade now.
A very strong research center that addresses problems
related to transportation, equity, transportation policy,
and other interesting issues like that.
We were just recently awarded GAN Fellowship program
where we have a number of positions available
for PhD students that are US citizens or US residents.
So definitely worthwhile taking a look.
It has a lot of great benefits
and very flexible in terms of the individual research topics
that can be addressed through this fellowship.
So I encourage all of you guys to take a look at it
and contact me if you have any questions
or any interest in talking to individual faculty
that might be of interest to you.
So thank you and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Thank you very much Professor Hernandez.
And next we're gonna hear from the complex systems
and data science with Professor Hébert-Dufresne.
Thank you Jane.
You did a great job on my name.
It's not an easy one.
So I'm Laurent Hébert-Dufresne or when I'm not there
you can call me Laurent Hébert-Dufresne.
That's okay.
So I'm a professor of computer science actually,
but the program director for our graduate programs
in complex systems and data science.
And so I think what I wanna explain today
sort of break some assumptions that people might have.
It's a weirder program
'cause it doesn't sit in any specific department.
So we have faculty members from mathematics,
computer science, also outside of the college
from food systems, philosophy.
And so I think what's important to know
is for those admitted in complex systems and data science,
just know that it doesn't mean that everyone else admitted
is just like you,
doesn't necessarily have the same interest.
It's a very diverse group of people
that are interested in working on multidisciplinary
and important problems.
And so other students admitted in the college
might also be interested in knowing
what our data science courses are like,
because that's really becoming sort of a core focus
of a lot of programs.
I like to think of the data science part of our program
as statistics for problem or the theory
isn't quite been worked out yet.
So that's a lot of natural language processing,
machine learning, network models,
trying to build on sort of the core foundation
of statistics, but in those weirder applications.
And then the complex systems,
half of our program is a lot of theory building,
building models for interdisciplinary problems
like the link between social media and mental health.
You can't tell, but I'm pointing at Chris Danforth
who's on the screen right now.
All applications of machine learning.
I'm pointing at Safwan Wshah.
And I do sort of network models
for the spread of epidemics, hate speech,
trying to understand how bad things
and good things sometimes
spread through our social networks.
I also wanna highlight that the fact that
it's a very diverse group of people
doesn't mean they're social cohesion.
I invite you to as quickly as possible
ask questions to other graduate students
about the different social activities.
We have student led seminars every Monday.
We have get together with faculty
and students every Thursday.
So as quickly as possible
you'll wanna be sort of incorporated in this cohort
because people can sit in different departments,
different labs.
It's good to like get together and talk about weird stuff.
And in terms of funding and registering for courses,
it goes as other programs which you've heard.
We have a lot of partnerships with federal funding agencies
and some private companies like MassMutual and Google.
And so we have fellowships available
for people interested in doing research.
So at if any stage, even starting today,
if you're curious in getting connected with faculty members
and you haven't done so yet, feel free to reach out to me.
If you have questions about courses,
you can reach out to me,
but I think you'll get a more honest answer
if you reach out to senior grad students
that you'll meet throughout the rest of the day.
And so I'll be happy to answer any questions
about complex STEMs and data science,
but that's the very fast sort of breakdown
of who we are and what we do.
Wonderful, thank you very much.
We are now going to head over to math and Professor Danforth
has graciously joined us today to talk about that.
Thanks Jane.
I appreciate everybody coming
to hear about what we do here at UVM.
It's a exciting time in all of the areas
that people are here to talk about.
So I'm Chris,
I've been at UVM for 17 years now
and I'm in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics
and I advise students in a few of the PhD programs
that you're hearing about today and master's programs.
But I'm filling in for Taras Lakoba
who is the graduate director in math.
So the math department has probably 16 or 17
tenure track faculty who do research
in theoretical mathematical areas like analysis,
algebra, arithmetic, geometry, number theory, graph theory,
which is sort of the more theoretical side
of network science, combinatorics, topology.
So those are some of our more active areas
in theoretical mathematics.
And then we have applied mathematics expertise also
in differential equations, numerical analysis,
mathematical biology, complex systems.
Some of the folks Laurent just talked about
work on that data science, computational social science.
So those are some areas.
And I work in applied math
and I'll just tell you briefly about one project
that's really exciting where you might not expect
mathematicians to be involved,
but we have this big new study of health
that involves 600 first year students at UVM this year
who've been wearing this aura ring
measuring their heart rate continuously.
And in the fall we just did some observation
of how much sleep they were getting,
maybe you were recently in college and know
that freshmen don't like to sleep very much.
So we're trying to figure out how to help them
do better turns their GPA will increase by a point
for every extra half hour that they're in bed.
So that's good.
And this spring we're sending them
into different treatment groups,
spending time outside being exposed to nature
and the restorative benefits they get.
There's a therapy group talking about mindfulness
and gratitude and different practices
that can help with stress.
And then there's an exercise group
that people are waking up
and trying to get their body moving and (indistinct).
We're gonna see how these wearable devices
can tell us about their health.
And there's lots of interesting data science questions
in there, data ethics questions.
I thought maybe people haven't done much of this yet,
but I'll tell you where some of our recent graduates
have gone.
You're thinking about how a graduate degree
would help you in your career.
And I wouldn't recommend going to graduate school
just because you don't know what else to do.
I think it's a good idea that you have a plan in mind
and part of our goal today
and when you meet with potential advisors
is to help you see how this could help you get there
to that goal and maybe even help you see what it is,
what that goal could be.
So that's one of the most exciting aspects of our job
is helping people get the career that they want
and love and are happy in.
So we take a lot of pride in that and work hard on that.
So we have recent graduates who are faculty members
who wanted to keep teaching and doing research
at Rutgers, Drexel, Lehigh, the University of Pittsburgh,
University of Western Washington.
Those are some recent PhDs who went on to teach there
and do research.
We have a lot of graduates in mathematical sciences
who go on to be data scientists,
several at life insurance companies.
We have a few at Adobe, L.L. Bean, Zillow and Facebook
and few other of the tech companies.
And then we also have people
who wanna do research and not teach.
And so they've ended up as staff members at NASA
in the Jet Propulsion Lab at Sandia National Lab
and the Department of Veterans Affairs
working on oncology for veterans
and the Institute for Defense Analyses,
helping do the code breaking
that helps our country protect itself.
And anyway, so those are the ways
that some of our recent graduates
have gone off into the world.
I am happy to answer questions about any of that stuff
and really excited that you're here.
Thank you.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, and I'm looking at our live Q&A
and there aren't too many questions yet,
so please feel free to put them in and I'll be sure to ask
while we have faculty here.
And in the meantime we're gonna move to stats
and talk with Professor Single
about what's going on over there.
Okay.
Yes, I'm Professor Richard Single
and I'm going to share my screen
and hopefully that is the correct screen.
Someone yell if that looks like I'm sharing my email
or some other...
So I'm gonna talk about three aspects of the statistics
and biostatistics programs here.
I'll just briefly mention some of the community aspects.
Laurent has mentioned some aspects
that our students will participate already.
We also have a separate
statistics and data science journal club
that is across the campus.
We have participation from groups, various departments.
There are opportunities for learning beyond the classroom.
I'll talk a little bit about various research expertise
of our faculty and places where you can get involved.
We have had a very strong internship program
that took a bit of a pause during the pandemic
because of issues related to being site.
One of the primary places
that we've had lots of student interns go
is the Vermont Department of Health.
And as you can imagine, they were very much involved
in the pandemic work,
and that precluded our interns
from being there on site for a period of time.
And that's just coming back.
And then if I don't go too long,
maybe I'll mention some employment issues and ideas.
So I'm gonna start by letting Hal Varian
say a few words here.
I keep saying the sexy job in the next 10 years
will be statisticians.
Okay, so I just have to play that little bit right there.
I play it every once in a while for my wife.
So she hears that the sexy job is statistician.
And now just let him finish off here.
The ability to take that data,
to be able to understand it,
to process it, to extract value from it,
to visualize it, to communicate it,
that's going to be a hugely important skill.
Okay, so that's really what our program is all about
is being able to understand data
and extract value from it.
And data from a variety of areas.
So that's what I wanna just touch on
the diversity of some of the faculty research
that we have here.
We are a moderate sized program
but the areas that our faculty touch on are very diverse.
So Professor Buzas works on measurement error
in regression models
and he has applied work in epidemiology
and economics, geosciences.
His major work is with neonatal intensive care units.
So doing assessment of the performance
of these hospitals for very young children.
Professor Cole works in cancer biostatistics
and his methodological work involves
evaluating quality of life
at the same time as evaluating survival
in clinical trials involving cancer.
Most clinical trial research
focuses strictly on the survival analysis
of individuals undergoing cancer treatment.
And this is a pretty unique area
of research that he has pioneered.
He has large collaborations with breast cancer researchers
and involved in several international clinical trials.
Professor Crocker is the director of research
for the National Center on Restorative Justice.
And so her work focuses on looking
at incarcerated populations, health disparities,
looking at the social conditions within the prisons
and opportunities for restorative justice
and evaluating those opportunities.
Professor Single, hey that's me,
works in immunogenetics.
And I work with genes of the immune system
and do both anthropological work
and look for disease associations.
The part that I find most enjoyable about this
is being able to look at developing methods
for this is a difficult area of the genome to analyze.
And so a lot of methods that work out of the box
for other areas do not
because we've got so many different variants
for our immune genes.
And also then looking at the evidence of natural selection.
And so getting to put an anthropologist hat
for a bit of my my work.
I have also been involved in opioid use disorder programs,
evaluation of the interventions for those.
And Professor Young works in Beijing Statistics.
His methodological research
is in network models and network science.
And he does his applied research.
A lot of it is involving epidemiological models
and working through
the Global Infectious Disease Research Center,
which is housed here at UVM in the College of Medicine.
And I'm going to say Laurent
because I know I will butcher his last name
if I try to say it.
But Laurent also collaborates with Professor Young
on those as well.
And finally I'm just gonna touch on a couple of students
and where they go from their degrees in statistics.
So here we've got a student Rachel,
who did an internship while she was here
in survey sampling design with a local company ICF
that's down at the bottom of the page.
She then worked for an engineering company,
the resource systems group.
And has now taken a job
that's at the Dartmouth Institute for Health and Policy.
So she is over in neighboring New Hampshire doing that.
Another student of ours started with an internship
at the Department of Health.
She moved on to her first job out of school
was as a SAS programmer for Kaiser Permanente,
which is one of the large HMOs
health maintenance organizations that we have.
She moved on to be a business intelligence analyst
and now is working as a senior data scientist for Uber.
And another former student, Frank
was also an intern at the Vermont Department of Health.
He went on to a startup, My Web Grocer
and then on to as a data scientist for paychecks,
which processes a large proportion of online purchases,
and is now a data scientist and manager
at Blue Cross Blue Shield.
So just snapshot of three individuals that we have there.
Students have done quite well
in their post grad school job searches.
Okay.
Thanks so much Professor Single.
It's really helpful to hear where graduates
are going onto and some of the really interesting projects
that people are working on.
Still don't have any questions in the live Q&A,
so just wanna put a plug into.
Please put your questions so that we can get them answered.
But next we are going to hear
from the computer science Professor Wshah.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks Jane.
And hello everyone and thanks for your interest
in CS graduate program.
I am Safwan Wshah the graduate program director.
And here at CS we have two main tracks or programs,
which is the computer science one,
which offer bachelor MS and PhD.
I am the graduate program director for this one.
And the other one is the complex system and data science
and lower is the graduate program director for that one.
So if you have any question in the future
about CS just refer to me
and complex system please refer to Laurent.
So maybe we are one of the biggest department
and maybe Chris could challenge me
that math is the biggest, right?
So maybe we are the second one
but then we have a lot of research
and many things is going on.
But most of our research I could say
it is interdisciplinary research
that is with corporation with UVM Medical Center,
with other colleges across UVM with external corporations
from other universities, from the state, from industry.
So there are many things going on here in the CS department.
The professors here working on cutting edge research,
I could see Josh Bongard and Nick, Jane working
on evolutionary robotics,
machine learning and its applications.
Nick, Jane and myself,
complex systems and networks is Peter does and Laurent.
And for the human computer interaction
is Yuanyuan Feng
and maybe Josh Bongard also in this field as well.
Software engineer is Jason Heppler,
Young Lee is in database and data mining.
Jonah data privacy and security.
So we have a group for cybersecurity which is called
and they have a center called
Center for Computer Security and Privacy
and Jonah, Jeremiah and Chris Skalka in this one.
I think also when in this one as well.
So Jonah is doing a lot of data privacy and security.
Jeremiah is doing cybersecurity and malicious activity,
understanding in online accounts and honey botts
and social network security.
Chris Skalka is focusing in addition to the security
to the programming languages and type of theory.
So all of these CS professors is working and publishing
and capturing conferences and journals
and I'm sure you will be part of this kind of
research very soon.
Also, as Linda said,
CS is also been awarded many grants
in the last few years.
I don't wanna say it was exponential increase
but at least you could say it is monatomic increase.
So we have a lot of project is going on
and we have...
And I'm sure that most of the professors at CS
looking for good students
to carry on these research projects.
So just touching base on the environments
as a PhD students or master student joining CS department,
you will have a very unique and friendly environment
to be engaged with other students actually.
So Laurent has been actually went to this
and talked about it in details
on how this interaction with our students.
So complex systems students and CS,
they kind of same floor,
they have a lot of interaction.
So our strategy is to have multiple students
from different backgrounds, from different labs
sitting next to each other.
And this experience by itself,
students learned from each other more than courses
I could say that.
Also, we have two main graduate events every year.
We have the CS Fair,
this is actually for both the graduate and undergraduate.
But this brings everyone together.
The graduate students will represent their work,
not just only for faculty and students
but also from representative from industry.
And the second one, which is the Graduate Research Day.
And this one is basically focused on the graduate students.
We invite external speakers and internal speakers
and the graduate students present their research work
in a full fund of day.
So at the end, CS there is a lot of things going on here
in all aspects, I don't wanna give you examples
but you can go to our webpage.
There is many, many examples.
We have our Twitter account
with all these kind of stories in there.
Feel free to to go there.
Also one remind if you go to our website
and go to any one of those programs,
PhD or MS at the end you will find
all that degree requirements.
So take a look there,
make sure that this actually match your interest.
And one of the good thing about the PhD,
a comprehensive exam for example,
like we leave it to the students to choose
their three areas to be in that comprehensive exam.
And most of our students actually did a great job in that.
So please at the end,
please do not hesitate to reach out to us at any time
during your study to the graduate program directors
and to your supervisor all the time.
Be connected with them and we will do our best
to make your education at UVM fun and productive
as much as we can.
Thank you very much everyone.
Wonderful, thank you so much.
And our final department is electrical engineering.
We're gonna have Professor Almassalkhi,
talk about all of the exciting things going on there.
Hey everyone, thanks for chiming in.
And I see we have 25 attendees
and hopefully some of those are EEs.
And it's too bad I can't see you guys
but I appreciate you joining in.
And so in electrical engineering
we really focus on impactful research.
So research that matters if it works
and we try really hard to make it work.
And we do that across basically three general themes.
And so that's computing
where we touch on both computing hardware
and computing software.
It's on autonomy and control
where we basically look at how do you get agents
or devices or systems to talk to each other
to achieve something that on their own they cannot.
And how do we make sure they can do so
even under significant disturbances.
So this could be for example, spacecraft,
satellite trajectory optimization, collision avoidance,
drones and autonomous vehicles.
But we also take the idea of autonomous systems
to much, much bigger systems including power systems.
And so in the third theme of electrical engineering
is really energy and power systems.
And in energy and power systems
we have three faculty that work broadly across the field
looking at both transmission scale, distribution scale,
optimization and control of network energy resources.
We look at cybersecurity and grid resilience
and we just brought in a new faculty
who'll be looking at machine learning and AI
for safety critical systems.
And hopefully we'll work
with the computer science department
to kind of accelerate the ideas and make an impact
with both our funding partners and industry national
and international as well.
In addition to our research faculty,
we also have some lecturers
who teach in our graduate courses.
And so you'll run into some of those guys as well.
And then lastly, just to bring up some of the recent places
that folks go and it really is up to the individual student
kind of the path they set
and that path is not usually set in stone.
And so we have students
who want to pursue academic positions
and then take on post-doctoral research.
And so we've had folks go to UC San Diego
to lead some of the largest research projects.
In power and energy, we've had folks go to Virginia Tech
to work on control theory
and we have lots of folks heading
to the national laboratories
to kind of bridge the gap between academic research
and industry implementation and practice.
Besides the research path,
we have folks who are very happy and succeed entering
both in this large industry but also small startups.
And so we have folks working as technology managers
in National Grid.
We have folks graduating
with an electrical engineering degree
and becoming data scientists or energy modelers
at Form Energy,
which is one of the biggest battery manufacturers
in the US today.
And then we have all kinds of engineers
making an impact in Vermont and beyond
at small and large companies
including local electrification,
aviation folks at Beta Technologies,
Dyna Power, Siemens.
We have folks coming from local companies
that I may or may not be involved in
such as Packetized Energy and Energy Hub
and we have folks having an impact at chip manufacturers,
which is surprisingly dense in Vermont.
And so Marvel for example and GlobalFoundries
are places where you find our graduates.
I'm happy to answer any questions
and happy to meet you guys later
and certainly looking forward to see you all in the fall.
Thank you very much.
Really you have heard
from all of our academic departments at this point
and I'm happy to put forth any questions
that anybody may have.
I know that a couple of attendees
have had some technical difficulties
and are kinda joining as they can.
And please be assured
that I am going to send a full recording
to everybody who RSVP.
There were over 55 who did RSVP.
So if you for some reason have a problem
and have to rejoin you won't miss anything,
you'll be able to catch right back up.
I'm not seeing any questions for our faculty members here.
And what we have in our schedule
is we are next going to hear from a current graduate student
Irfan Tahir and he will be ready at 10:15.
So it's currently about 10 o'clock.
We're a little bit early.
Oh, I do have one question here.
How can one transition from a master's
to a PhD in statistics?
So I'm not sure if Professor Single,
you might be able to talk to that question
about transitioning from a master's of science
to a PhD in statistics.
So we've had a couple of students
and do it in different ways.
We've had students that went through the master's program
in statistics and then continued onto a PhD
in complex systems and data science.
And we've also had students
that have stayed within the statistics program
and continued on for a PhD.
We are a relatively new PhD program
so we are just graduating the first of our students
with a PhD in statistics specifically this spring.
So there's two two paths that are possible for that.
Okay, looks like we're at 10:03 now
and our scheduled break was for 10:05.
So we can just go ahead, take a break,
get yourself a cup of tea or coffee or a cold drink of water
and be ready to settle back in
and to listen to some of our grad students
talk about their experiences here
in just a couple of minutes.
So we're gonna take a break and be back very shortly.
Thank you.
We do have one question,
one question just came in and I'll see if I can get that.
How can one get to know about research topics
in different departments?
I have some ideas but I will open it up
and if there's any faculty members
who want to address person might be able to know more
about the research topics in different departments.
Yeah, I'm happy to answer that question.
I think the group of people that you're hearing from today
have a good sense for the research areas that people work in
but not so much like the specific details of projects
or whether there's funding available for them.
So I think the best way to do it
is probably to go on the websites
of the individual faculty members in the programs,
which usually can be found on the websites of the programs.
That's where you'd probably find
the most up-to-date information about research
that people are doing.
There's lots of work, for example,
going on in our research group that's not on my website
because it's not ready for public consumption yet,
but then having a conversation with those people
you can find out.
So I would encourage you to kinda do your homework
by identifying a short list of faculty
in the program you're applying to
who have published work in the recent past
in the area you're interested in.
And you could even read the abstracts of those papers
and get a sense for what they're into.
You could find the graduate students
who are co-authors on those papers
and reach out to them.
And then you can ask, what are you working on now
that you know in the next few years
you think is gonna be important.
Thank you very much.
Your question about kind of the next steps for you to go,
whoever I'm seeing anonymous
on the who answered the question
that's why I don't have a name to address it to.
But let us know if there's any follow up on that.
So we are gonna go ahead and take our break
and we will be back at 10:15
to talk more about graduate student life here at UVM.
So we'll see you very, very shortly.
Good morning again to everybody.
I hope you had a chance
to take a little bit of a stretch break.
It was wonderful to hear from our graduate program directors
and faculty members a little bit earlier today
and from our dean who shared a lot
about the many things that are going on here
at the University of Vermont
with regard to just the different academic departments.
And I think a really valuable part of your day
is gonna be from talking with actual graduate students.
And we have one special graduate student, Irfan Tahir
who is a PhD student in mechanical engineering
who has graciously given his time
to be here with you today.
I wish he could see you.
As you know in this live teams event format,
we presenters are not able to see you
but are presenting to you.
But I want to just assure you
that I am monitoring the Q&A chat.
So if you have any questions you can put them in the chat
and then perhaps once Irfan has done
talking about the things that he wants to talk about
and opens it up for questions
I can help facilitate getting those questions
answered for you.
So just wanted yeah, to reintroduce you to that,
to the live event Q&A 'cause that's a great place
to put your questions.
And with that I think I'll go right to saying hello to Irfan
and thank him again for the time that he's spending today
and yeah I'm here monitoring the chat
so take it away Irfan.
Thank you Jane.
Hello everyone, it's really nice to meet you.
So as Jane mentioned,
I am a PhD student in mechanical engineering
but my research focus is in cell biology
and material science.
I am also an international student.
Originally I'm from Pakistan.
And I did my master's from the University of Minnesota
and then after that I came here for my PhD.
I actually arrived in August, 2020 at UVM during COVID.
So it was a much different time
but I will try my best to sort of extrapolate my experiences
from that time to whatever you guys will be facing
when you come to UVM.
and if you were to sort of ask me
like what are the things that I'm comfortable talking about
or what are my experiences
then firstly I already mentioned
I'm an international student,
I'm a mechanical engineering PhD.
I also do research in biomedical engineering
so definitely I'll be happy to answer questions about that.
I have done an on-campus job during the summer,
I think that was two years ago
so I can ask some questions about finding an on-campus job.
I am doing an internship next summer on the CPT
which is what international students are allowed to do on.
I had one year of teaching assistantship experience
and then rest of it has been like an RA experience,
the research assistant experience.
So you can also ask some questions about that.
So the plan is that I don't really have any slides
but I will talk for like maybe like 10 minutes
and then after that I can answer your questions.
I've sort of grouped my talking points into four categories.
The first one is academics.
Secondly I want to talk a little bit about social life.
Third I want to talk about like the pros
of UVM and Vermont in general.
And then lastly we can end with the cons
like the things that you need to be mindful of
when you're coming here.
So yeah, let's start with academics.
I think for academics the most important thing
and this applies heavily for PhD students
is the relationship that you have with your advisor
and also the advisor that you're going to end up choosing.
It's just because the way
that the academic system is set up,
as long as you have a good relationship with your advisor
and a good understanding of what you have to do
and the expectations are clear,
then you're gonna have a really good time in your PhD.
But if there's a lot of friction with your advisor
then you're basically like going to be miserable
the whole time.
And I would advise that if you sense that
in like the first few months,
then perhaps like try to find another advisor
or talk about it and resolve those issues sooner
rather than later.
I was really lucky I found an excellent advisor
who actually let me join the groups meetings online
during the summer even before I joined my PhD
and that really gave me a head start
on the kind of work that they were doing.
We also started brainstorming research ideas
which kind of forced me to organize my research goals,
my PhD goals, things like that.
And because of that I was able to win an internal grant
from UVM to do research in lab grown meat,
which is what I do right now.
And then I was also able to use that grant
then to win another fellowship
which is now like funding my PhD.
So definitely advise if you already know your advisors,
send them an email,
ask them if you can join their lab meetings,
things like that.
In terms of courses, 'cause a lot of you,
I mean, every one of you will have to take courses.
I would say that my experience with courses
in terms of like how difficult they were
varied depending on my prior knowledge of the course.
So for example, I was quite comfortable in courses
that were close to mechanical engineering, maths, physics,
those kind of things.
But I had to go out of my way to basically take some courses
and cell biology,
take some courses in biomedical engineering
and I had to work really hard in those courses.
So I remember there was this one PhD
at a cell biology course
where I had to study quite a lot
and it took a lot of my energy.
But it was totally worth it
because all of that was like quite applicable
to my research.
One thing that you find about courses
is that there are not a lot of options for courses
in terms of like exactly like what you want to do.
I think that happens with everyone
because your research topic is so specific to you
that you're not gonna have a course
that's like created exactly to your research topic.
So I would advise like definitely shop around
and talk to people from other departments
and see like what kind of courses are they offering.
So for example, my research was in cell biology
but my department doesn't have any courses in cell biology.
So I went to that department to take those courses.
One really good thing about courses is that professors
are really easy to approach and talk to.
So that can be about assignments,
about maybe like some other projects that you're working on,
things that you're confused about.
They have like a very easy like open door policy.
I was able to sort of form like good relationships
with the professors that I was taking courses from.
And I think that's really important
because if you form good relationships with them
then later on you can ask them
to be on your thesis committee
or ask them for recommendation letters, those kinda things.
And lastly for the academics
I would say that other students,
like for example like students in your class
like master students, domestic students,
I found them like really easy to work with or ask questions.
We had a lot of group projects,
we met for the group projects
like outside of the university.
Overall like I found people to be like quite friendly
and sort of like professional in their approach.
And one good thing about UVM
is that there is not a lot of competitiveness
between students.
So for example, like if you're sitting next
to a student in a classroom,
I didn't find that they wanted to be better than me
or they wanted to get more marks than me.
I found that we were all sort of like in it together,
especially in grad courses.
'Cause grad courses can sometimes be so challenging
that everyone is struggling on that homework problem
at the same time.
So I found that like to be quite nice.
All right, so I think that's enough about academics for now
and I'd be able to answer your questions.
Maybe we can move on to something more fun
like social life, which is a huge part of grad school,
a huge part of being a student.
When I joined I was in...
So this was in August, 2020.
It was during COVID, everything was online.
The only thing that I was doing in person
was like going to my lab to do the actual work.
So I was only friends with like two or three people
and they were also from my lab for the first few months.
But something that really, really helped me
make more friends was that I joined this thing
called graduate student senate,
which is kind of the student body
that is there to sort of like look after
the graduate students.
And it's made by students, it run by students.
I joined that as a senator which really helped me
and that sort of like forces you
to connect with other graduate students in meetings
and social events, those kind of things.
And then I also decided after one year of being a senator,
I decided to be an executive board member
of that organization,
which means that I was sort of like responsible
for organizing events,
organizing different things.
And I joined a few clubs
and also co-founded one of my own clubs,
which is the UVM Cellular Agriculture Club,
which might not mean anything to you,
but it's basically a club
which is based on raising awareness
about like my research topic.
So I would say definitely look for GSS,
you join as a senator, it doesn't take a lot of time.
And then that way you will get a chance
to interact with other graduate students.
Another thing in terms of social life I would say
is that sports is one of the best ways to make friends.
So we have this thing called intramural sports,
which are basically these like small like sports leagues
that are completely free for UVM students.
So you can play a variety of sports and it's very chill.
So even if you never played that sport before,
you can basically like have a lot of fun.
I've played a lot of different sports through that.
I've played volleyball, soccer, badminton, trench ball,
dodge ball, kickball, even like something like ice hockey.
It's like new things I hadn't been done before.
So definitely highly recommend
getting involved in sports more,
even if you don't have a history
of playing sports before this.
Because they really relaxed and usually they make sure
that the goal is to have fun and not basically like win.
And then I would say one of the biggest things
that led to me having like a good social life
and also like improve my mental health
was that try to start a new activity if you can,
something that you've never done before.
So examples of this include skiing and snowboarding.
Obviously because we're in Vermont we get a lot of snow
or rock climbing, hiking or biking.
For me I did start like new things I had never done before
and one of my favorite ones is snowboarding.
Before coming to Vermont I had never snowboarded,
never thought about something that I would be able to do.
But thanks to this nonprofit
which is known as unlikely rider,
so they basically give you snowboarding equipment
and lift tickets and those kind of things
as long as you are a person of color
or you're from like an ethnic background.
And because of them,
like I was able to learn snowboarding
and now it's like one of my favorite things to do.
Vermont is also super duper good place
if you want to go for hiking.
I have done a lot of summer hiking, a lot of fall hiking.
And then just like two weeks ago
I did like my first winter hike,
which was a lot of fun.
And it's also a very like bike friendly city.
So I was able to sort of like rejuvenate my love for biking.
So I bought a bike and now I basically
like bike around campus, I bike around town.
If you are into sort of like night events
like nightlife bars, clubbing, those kind of things,
it's pretty good over here.
There are some bars that are always one of UVM grad students
for example, there's one called Three Needs.
So those are really like a really good place
to go to if you wanna connect with other students
in an informal setting.
And then we have certain clubs
which have events every single day.
So they have like cover bands
or for example if you're a Taylor Swift fan,
then they have like a DJ that comes over
and plays just Taylor Swift songs, right?
So you can like always like sign up for those.
And they're all like relatively cheap,
they're like $10 or like $5 for like an entry fee.
So I highly recommend like checking on the calendars
of the local bars around town.
And I would say they go to events around campus
most of the time I find that there are way more events
than I have time to go to.
The Office of International Education or IE,
they organize some really good events like waffle breakfast,
coffee breaks, those kinda things.
And even if an event is like targeted
towards undergrad students,
you as a UVM student can go to that event
and sort of like have fun and participate.
So don't be shy of going to events
and you will stay updated with all the events
like through your email.
They're really good at like marketing the events
through that.
So that's a little bit of about social life.
Let me just do like a time check.
Okay good.
Yeah I think I'll speak for like five more minutes
and then I can get questions.
So yeah, let's do some like quick pros
of UVM to Vermont before we do the cons.
I think one of the biggest pros
is that it's a really great location
and extremely beautiful in all seasons.
Like I said, I've already been hiking
so we don't have like really big mountains over here.
So I would say like the hiking difficulty
is like pretty good.
So if you've never hiked in your life before,
you're gonna have a good time hiking in Vermont.
It's a great place to do snow sports.
It's close to two big cities like Boston and Montreal.
So definitely you are not in Montreal, you're not in Boston.
But again, like they're only like a few hours away
on a car ride.
A less unknown fact about Vermont that it's actually,
or Burlington is that it's protected
from most national disasters.
So for example, it does not lie on any tectonic place.
So there are no earthquakes here,
there are no wildfires and there's no hurricanes, tsunamis.
I think the only thing we get are like snowstorms,
but so far from what I've seen, like they're not that bad.
Maybe for like one day it's a bit of an inconvenience
and then like everything sort of like goes back to normal.
So that's something good to think about
if you're trying to be here for five or six years, right?
Something that I already mentioned
is that faculty are really easy to approach and work with.
Collaborations of research and sharing of equipment
are encouraged and really easy to do.
So for example,
I do a lot of different characterization techniques
and for that I go to the chemistry department,
I go to the physics department,
I go to the Microscopy Imaging Center
that we have in the medical building
and there's really easy to sort of like get access to that.
I just ever sent a couple emails
and then they basically give you access.
All the buildings on campus are close to each other.
This is something I appreciated
after I went to some other universities in the US.
So I think it takes like a maximum of 20 minutes
from one end of the campus to the other,
which is always a good thing.
That means that you can work in your lab for a few hours
but then at the end of the day go to the gym
and then go like somewhere else.
And Burlington also is like a really small city
and like very easy to sort of like walk around in.
Another big pro is that Vermont especially Burlington
is very progressive and liberal.
So if you sort of like are politically like inclined
towards that, I think that you're gonna have a good time.
And that's generally a good thing
for international students.
For example, when COVID happened
and the government gave out stimulus checks
to all the citizens in Vermont residents,
anyone on a visa was not eligible for that stimulus check.
But the Vermont state government gave our stimulus checks
to anyone who was an international student.
So Vermont was, as far as I know,
the only state that did that.
Or if you're religious in any sense,
there's a lot of religious freedom
or as an example of that is that,
so I come from a Muslim background and for Muslim students
there are Friday prayers in Halal lunch on campus
on Fridays, which is like super convenient, right?
Because then you don't have to take a bus
or like go on a car to a mosques
even though we do have like a mosque as well.
Those are some of the pros
and let's just end with some of the cons
which you have to be mindful of
before you of course like make your decision
or if you come here.
The biggest con which is the obvious one
that everyone talks about is the cost of living.
Living here is very expensive.
It's still lower than major cities.
So it's lower than Boston, it's lower than New York City,
lower than San Francisco.
But given like sort of like how much our stipend is
and how much things cost,
I would say it's like really, really expensive
and things have only gone worse
like since COVID as an example,
when I came here I got a studio for $950 a month
'cause I didn't want to live with anyone during COVID,
but the same studio is now 1,200.
So I eventually I to move out
and had to live with roommates.
So like I mentioned, the stipend is low
and then there is a high comprehensive fee.
So that means that you're basically then paying
some of the statin back to the university.
The health insurance is not good that we get from UVM,
so there's no dental, no vision
and the out-of-pocket maximum is really, really high.
And just be prepared that like when you come here
you will be sharing like with other students.
So you'll be living in a house of like three people,
one bathroom, something like that.
And usually those go for around like 800, $900 a month.
And these are generally speaking
like any PhD student in the US like they are poor.
So it's not like the UVM students are poor
and everyone else is rich.
So if you like sort of like compare UVM
to like other students and you'll find out
that like most PhD students like in the US
are like really poor.
And by poor I mean like they're not able to save any money.
So the stipend that they get,
they basically spend on their groceries
and spend on their rent
and then sort of like go month to month.
So yeah, that's definitely something
that you should like keep in mind.
And inflation is like pretty high.
So just keep that in mind
when you're budgeting for different things.
And my stipend actually used to be much lower
than what I think you guys will get
or like it is this year and I was able to get by.
Okay, I'm just saying like I wasn't able to save a lot.
To conquer this like take advantage of resources on campus
or like off campus.
So for example,
we have this thing called Rally Cat's Cupboard
where you can get groceries for free
or we have this program called Everybody Eats
where you can get meals from restaurants from free.
The transportation in Burlington is completely free.
You get free meal swipes
if you just let like the dining center know
that you're in need for like meal swipes.
And then we have a lot of really good thrift stores
which sell winter clothes, shoes
those kind of things like for really, really cheap
and they're like in really good conditions.
Another con is that UVM has like not the best options
for food on campus.
So most days I bring my own lunch or go home for lunch.
Finding on-campus jobs can be difficult,
especially if you are an international student.
There's a lot of places on campus
that only cater to people with a work study program
which we don't have.
It's like a federal program.
So if you don't already have a TA
and you don't already have funding
and you come here as a master's student,
so let's see you wanna work at the library
or you wanna do something else,
then it's gonna be hard to find on-campus job.
It's not impossible 'cause like I said
I was able to find it on campus job
but you have to work hard for it.
Other cons are just the same as the cons
as like any other grad school.
Advisor issues, too much work, funding issues,
those parking on campus can be difficult.
Some days are really, really cold.
So I think the worst that it got for me
was like minus 15 or minus 20.
So I definitely don't enjoy those like cold days.
So just keep in mind that we have long winters
and lots of snow
but it's still, I would say relatively better
than some places in Canada or Minnesota for example.
And the last con I would say
is that there is a lack of diversity in Vermont,
like generally, so 85% people identify as white
and the ethnic foods are just okay.
So you're definitely gonna have a hard time
like finding communities of like your own people.
Like I'm from Pakistan
and I think for the first like one and a half year
I didn't even like meet a single Pakistani.
And I think total there are like five in the university.
So just keep that in mind.
I mean that that can be a pro or a con
like depending on your personality,
depending on like how comfortable you are with other people.
And with that, I we'll open it to questions
so that we can do that as well.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Irfan.
I'm smiling at a number of all of the things you said
and for sharing really so honestly.
I really appreciate
and I'm sure that our attendees do as well.
We have a couple of general questions
because I think folks might be still processing
some of what you're saying
and I'm hoping that they will enter those questions
that they have on your specific comments
in the chat live event Q&A.
But couple of questions that have come in
that I don't know if you wanna take a stab at.
One is a really general sort of question
and that is what is the best way
for a student to prepare themselves
for beginning their studies at UVM?
So that's really very broad, that's from Farsan.
Thank you Farsan.
If there's any more detail
that you wanna add to that question be happy to,
but I don't know Irfan if you wanna take a stab
at the best way for a student to prepare themselves
for beginning their studies at UVM.
Yeah, it just depends on like if you're a master's student
or a PhD student, I could speak for PhD students.
I think the biggest thing is to start brainstorming ideas
for your research.
So for example, before you get here you can read papers,
you can do literature reviews,
you can sort of read papers off your lab
that have been published.
So you might not have done that yet,
but that's something that you can do
and familiarize yourself with the kind of skills
that they have so that when you are planning your research
then you know already,
okay these are the things that my lab has done.
That means I can go to them to ask for questions.
So I would say that's like in terms of the academic,
that's one of the sort of like the basic things
that you can do.
Other than that I'd say there's not really too much
that you really need to do.
It's like really everything like starts once you get here.
Thank you.
And we have another question
which is a little more specific and academic related.
And that is,
is it possible to do material science research
from mechanical engineering?
Is it possible to do material science research
from the mechanical engineering
as an electrical engineering student?
So I think that he means that or she
that mechanical engineering program
as an electrical engineering student.
Do you happen to know that?
Yeah.
So mechanical and electrical are both
sort of part of the same parent system
and they're both actually in the same building.
It entirely depends like on your advisor.
So for example, I'm in mechanical engineering,
my advisor is a mechanical engineer
but all of my research is in biomedical, right?
So I would say it's relatively easy to have one discipline.
So be in electrical engineering but do research
in like something that's related to that
like material science.
So I had say yeah it's possible.
There aren't any other questions
but please feel free to ask those questions
in the live event Q&A.
'Cause we've got Irfan right here
who's just been a wealth of experience
as a graduate student in-
[Irfan] I see some questions
that I can answer quickly.
Yeah, I see.
Oh, great, oh, yeah, oh gosh, thank you.
Irfan actually yes, I see them now as well.
[Irfan] Yeah, no worries I can answer them.
Okay.
Good.
So the first is like I came from Islamabad,
I'm a Muslim and I was contemplating the school stories
from Islam.
I'd say like you have absolutely nothing to worry about
in that sense.
All of my friends who are practicing Muslims,
they like are pretty happy.
They have a good time over here.
Like I said, we have (indistinct) on campus,
we have like some halal options as well.
And then the mosque is not too far away from campus.
I think it's like two miles away, something like that.
And the mosque is like super super duper nice.
Like they have actually a gym inside the mosque
and they have these community events like at the mosque.
I think the main thing is that you just like take some time
to find out other people who follow the same faith as you
and then they'll definitely be able to help you out.
So it's pretty easy.
How close or far away are your classes to each other?
Usually they're actually very close to each other.
So most of my classes were like either in the same building
or maybe like the next building.
But it depends on if you're taking classes
from like a completely different department.
And then someone said,
I'm a Pakistani student joining this fall,
how can I connect with other Pakistani students?
Just send me an email and then I can connect you to them.
As an international student we should be a bit challenging
at the beginning to think critically express your ideas
and English as we used to think,
express ourselves in other languages.
What are your suggestions?
Yeah, there's actually a couple programs
which help international students practice their English.
I would ask the Office of International Students
so you can have a session from them in a little while
about this specific question or just send them an email.
How to seek your housing before they arrive in UVM?
I would say like instead of going randomly on Craiglist,
go for like the websites of leasing companies
instead of and then applying officially through them.
So instead of applying to,
reaching out to some random person on Craiglist
or random person on Facebook,
like go through a company
and that way you would be like guaranteed housing
and of course you'd have to pay a deposit if you do that.
But that's how I did it basically.
And I will take last two questions
'cause I think we have three minutes left.
Let me see.
Yeah, if there are any.
Someone says please share your email.
Just like write Irfan (indistinct) UVM,
like you'll find it or yeah.
Or I'll send it to you a deal.
And yeah, I think that's it, yeah.
Okay.
And I see that Gideon has asked
about the statistics program
help graduate students in securing internships.
I don't think spoke to that.
Hopefully I didn't miss that.
But yes, I think faculty definitely statistics.
You heard from professor Single earlier,
but that definitely worked
to try and get people meaningful experiences
that are gonna lead to hopefully employment
or whatever it is that the student wants to do
after graduation.
Looking for information about timing,
about receiving letters, especially for funding.
And those are done at the department level.
And my understanding was that those letters
have all gone out.
If you have a question about that specifically,
feel free to reach out to electrical engineering
if you've got a contact there or if you don't,
please feel free to reach out to me
and I will help you track that down.
Let's see.
What is the average cost of living per month,
including housing and accommodation?
Yeah, I think minimum you're looking at like 16,
$1700 a month.
Including everything, not just, yeah,
housing, accommodation, fun stuff.
Yeah, everything.
I know, I wish it wasn't so expensive.
Oh, Amira is asking,
can you talk a little bit more about housing
and I do wanna say that one of the departments
has done a really good job of some graduate students
in that department of putting together
some resources for housing.
And if anybody is interested in some of those specific,
please send me an email.
Amir, I've got you down.
Anybody else, I'd be happy to share that.
It's not something I put together
but it's something that I saw and it was helpful.
So sorry and Irfan you wanna.
I just wanted to give a tip
that once you get your UVM email,
then there is this thing called grad net.
So basically what happens is you send an email
and goes to every single graduate student at UVM
and that's a really good place to ask for housing.
So introduce yourself and tell them
that this is your budget and you're looking for housing
and then somebody usually like if they have a vacancy
they'll reply to you.
So just google UVM grad net for that.
Great.
So thanks so much Irfan.
Boy, lot of information there
and I hope that I am sure that our participants
found that really, really helpful.
What we have coming up next
is actually a panel with several more graduate students.
Irfan was from mechanical engineering.
We're going to hear from Kate Porterfield,
who's one of the civil and environmental engineering
PhD students, Jenna Cohen who's in biomedical engineering,
Rick Danner who's in mathematics,
and Avi Chala who's in complex systems.
So we've got them kind of keyed up.
They're gonna each share with you a little bit
and then we'll have Q&A again.
And now that I'm on board here
for seeing that I need to scroll for Q&A
to see all of those questions.
I will be monitoring those.
But I'm gonna kinda hand it off to each of them
so they can individually kind of introduce themselves
more fully and then we'll do the Q&A.
So I am going to start with Kate.
Thank you.
I'm Kate Porterfield.
I am in my fifth year at UVM.
I think I'm in my second or third year of my PhD
and I'm in civil and environmental engineering.
And I've lived in Vermont for almost 10 years
and in Burlington for five years or so.
And yeah, that's it.
I'm happy to talk about anything
related to civil and environmental engineering
or living in Burlington, anything like that.
And I guess we can go right to Jenna,
you can introduce yourself
and say whatever you'd like to say.
Hi, I'm Jenna.
I am a first year PhD student
in the biomedical engineering program.
I'm from Connecticut and I did my undergrad
at Bucknell University.
It's in middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania
if you don't know that school.
And yeah, so I'm new to Burlington, new to UVM,
new to the PhD program.
I was right in your shoes a year ago today.
I'm trying to think about it.
Oh, and then I guess like some little things about me too,
I really like hiking and cross country skiing
and all things outdoors.
Which if you like a lot of outdoors things,
Burlington will be amazing.
Thanks Jenna, I'm just gonna introduce Rick next please.
Hi, I'm Rick Danner.
I'm in my third year.
PhD in mathematics I'm coming from California originally.
I got my master's there in Sacramento and happy to be here.
I really like Burlington.
And yeah, I like the group of people in the math department
that I'm working with.
Thanks Rick.
And I'm gonna introduce Avi next.
Go right ahead Avi.
Sorry, this is gonna be...
Hi I'm Avi I'm a first year in master student
in complex systems and data science.
I moved here from Santa Fe, New Mexico
and I'm fairly new to Burlington.
I'm really enjoying my programming in complex systems
so if you have any questions on complex systems statistics
and just being new in Burlington.
Yeah.
I see that there's one question already
about best neighborhoods to live in.
I could speak to that briefly.
So there's like the downtown district of Burlington
that's like right directly down from the university
and that I think tends to be a lot of college students.
And then on either side there's the south end
and the north end.
I'm in the north end.
Sorry, what was that?
Oh, okay.
So I'm in the north end now.
I have lived in the south end.
The south end I think tends to be more families
and there's like some great parks down there,
a whole bunch of schools.
There are fewer rental options down there
than there are in the north end.
But if it's kind of like,
if you can find something there, there's some great gems.
I think there tend to be more rental options
in the north end and you know there's also great parks
and it's very walkable to downtown and to the university.
So there's that benefit.
I live in a location right now
where it's a 15 minute walk up to the engineering building
and a 10 minute walk into town.
So I rarely ever use my car, which is pretty nice.
The new north end is kind of a little bit further away
from the downtown area
and I think there's even more rental options there
but you might have to take a bus or drive to campus.
And then there's also, Winooski
is not technically Burlington
but it's pretty close, walkable.
I know a bunch of people who live there
and either take the bus to campus or walk over the bridge.
I think sometimes there tend to be some cheaper options
over there than there are in Burlington proper.
And then if you were to go
either even further outside of town,
there's South Burlington I think has more like condo
maybe like larger options for families and then Colchester
and those are both great areas
but again you'd probably need to either take the bus in
or if you're that far outside
of the university circumference
you can get a commuter parking pass
where you would be able to drive a personal vehicle
to school park kind of far away from the buildings
and then walk to class.
So hopefully that was helpful.
Maybe someone else could jump in.
Oh, I think that was great.
Yeah, I'm in the old north end right now
and I really like where I am
and I was looking at places in South Burlington
and they were definitely more like you were saying
like condos or there were some houses there too.
And I know I have a lot of friends that are grad students
that live in all of the towns that she mentioned.
There's definitely a lot in Winooski.
Yeah, those are all good suggestions
and if you're looking for other people
maybe that are looking for roommates
or don't know how to go about looking for housing,
I would say Zillow is definitely a great one
or any of those.
I think it's like hotpadsapartments.com,
all of those are great.
And then also if we're looking for roommates,
UVM has a portal,
I don't know if you remember the name of it,
I'm blanking on it right now,
but if you just Google UVM housing roommates,
you'll find it.
And that's how I found the two roommates
that I live with now they're both master students.
And Facebook groups too actually.
Facebook groups are really, really, really helpful.
If you've looked around here in Burlington,
there's one that comes up a lot is Redstone Lofts,
then I'm gonna be going into my third year there next year.
They have you sign a lease and everything quite early.
I don't know about slots being open now,
but a friend of mine in the program
have spent quite a bit of time looking around town
and we keep coming back to the consistency here,
fairly consistent for hot water and everything.
I'm 15 minute walk from campus.
I pay 1,050 and that includes internet and everything
and I'm staring right now at the soccer field
and the track and the gym.
So if that's available now or next year,
I do recommend Redstone Lofts.
Great, Avi, anything you wanna to jump in and out
about housing or?
Oh, just if you have pets
maybe take that into consideration
because a lot of the houses here are not very pet friendly.
For some reason I know this even though
I don't have any pets but a landlord is pretty strict
but I live in South Burlington, it's a great neighborhood,
especially for families or not and can get a loud.
My friends live there.
But if you really need like a quiet, peaceful,
secluded area, Winooski, Colchester, south Burlington,
that's probably where you wanna go.
Great, thank you.
We have some questions
you can all probably see them coming in.
But odds of getting a part-time job on or off campus
or Irfan mentioned that it's a little bit hard
to get one on campus, though it isn't impossible
and I just don't know if anybody can speak
to any of the kinda off campus job opportunities.
So I know a little bit about this
because my friends do this
and again take this with a grain of salt.
But we have like a lot of industries here
that are looking to hire part-time students.
I know this because a lot of them come for data scientists.
So if you want something off campus,
there are a lot of companies
who can get you some part-time work.
On campus is a little bit more tricky as Irfan mentioned.
There's not a lot of facilities that need students here.
Usually my friends would tend to work
at the Gutterson Center,
which is the recreation center
or they would work at the Davis Center
and that's sort of what I'm aware of.
And of course there are TAs and stuff like that.
And then off campus there's also a lot of...
Like I have friends that work at coffee shops
or a grocery store, babysit, tutor jobs like that too
that you'll always find off campus.
Looks like there's a question
about clubs and activities to get involved in.
On campus or specifically
with the biomedical engineering department.
So anybody have some favorites
that you've been able to participate in
besides the graduate student council,
which is a wonderful group, but any other activities?
I probably find that my lab group
is kind of the way that I like primarily do social things
with other graduate students.
So like our lab group is going bowling this week
and then I'm like going to the game room,
which is like a board game cafe
with like some other folks in my lab tonight.
So I definitely like, we do stuff as a lab group.
I know that that varies from lab to lab.
And then between that
and just like the other things I'm involved in on campus,
like I mean the civil and environmental
engineering department has weekly seminars
for all graduate students on Fridays.
And then like a couple times maybe once a semester
there will be like an event,
that's held for graduate students.
So just going to all the things
that you know come up from being a graduate student at UVM
I feel like I get enough kind of social exposure
to other graduate students
but maybe someone else could speak
to like other extracurricular clubs.
I'm not as familiar with that.
So I really like sports and like anything active.
So I've done volleyball with some other grad students
and some med students.
I also did broom ball.
I didn't know what it was before I did it.
It's hockey but you're not wearing skates
so you're just running around on the ice with sneakers on.
That was really fun.
And I found some groups
to do like cross-country skiing with too.
About VME Clubs, I don't know about a specific club
that grad students are involved in,
but I know that there are talks that are specific
for the BME department that they'll host
and they'll be like sandwiches
or some kind of lunch normally with that.
Yeah.
Yeah, just going off of what Jenna and Kate said,
as grad students you're more likely to just be working
with your grad students
and your social circle is through them primarily.
And for clubs it really depends
on what kind of activities you like.
We have a host of activities, you wanna do yoga,
you wanna do rock climbing,
you wanna not do something that's active,
you wanna like join, like for example,
I'm doing a reading club, it's not like a,
there are many clubs like this.
So I think there's a website
that sort of curates all this information.
I don't know if Jane has access to that.
But just good typing UVM school clubs
and seeing what specific activity you like
might be really helpful.
But other than that, I'm sure when you get to UVM
you're not gonna be worried
about not having enough things to do.
That's kinda weird.
I haven't participated but the intramural sports here
seems pretty robust lots of options.
There's a new bouldering wall in the gym.
There's an old rock wall.
I don't know if they're still working on that,
but just a lot of options.
Some were just mentioned in our math department.
We make an effort together
to find times like last Friday we went out to eat
and then went to the free pizza
for a graduate student senate.
And the math form, yeah.
We do our best to get together every other week
or something like that.
There's a couple of questions that have come in.
Is it possible for prospective computer science
master's students to make a contact with faculty members
from different departments?
Generally there's a lot of...
My impression is that there's a lot of interdisciplinary
interaction, whether it's at formal talks or forums or.
I have found in general that there, like you said,
there's a ton of cross-department collaboration at UVM.
I don't think I've been on a single project
since I've been here.
The other co-authors on the paper
are only from one department.
Usually there are a couple
different departments represented.
So like I've worked closely with faculty
in civil environmental engineering.
And the natural resources department
in plant and soil science in the food systems program.
So those are obviously like very tailored
to my environmental engineering arena.
But I have the sense that there are kind of cross department
collaborations going on all over the place,
which is I think has been, is really, really wonderful
'cause if I'm starting up something new
and there's an area of it,
the project that I wanna get into
that I don't have a ton of experience,
then it's pretty standard
that I'll like reach out to a faculty member
who I know has expertise in that area
and kind of pull them onto the project.
So yes, definitely, yes.
Oh, yeah, so I am not sure
if I'm in computer science department.
I'm in complex systems, which is its own thing,
but I'm a GTA for computer science
and one of my advisor is a computer science faculty,
the other advisor is statistics faculty.
And one of the projects that I'm working on
also involves a philosophy department.
It's an ethics project in computational data science.
So yeah, I feel like the cross-departmental work
is pretty much fundamental to a lot of the research
that happens here because we have a lot of departments
like the medical score that needs a lot of help
with some of the projects, the agricultural score.
So we have like a lot of things that need to be done.
It's a big state school so that helps a lot.
[Jane] Thank you I guess that Kate,
I don't know if you can answer this.
Usual size for a CEE class.
I don't know if they're talking
from being a teaching assistant perspective or.
Yeah, so I've been in a bunch of different CEE classes.
I've been in one that was like a 395 level,
which is like the highest level.
That was just six graduate students and that was super cool
'cause we just like all sat in the front row
and did like code along in Python.
And then on the other end of the spectrum I took,
I was in a engineering undergraduate
so I wanted to go back and take hydraulics.
And so I took hydraulics and it was me
one other graduate student
and then about 20 undergraduate students.
I'm sure that there are like intro classes
that are larger than that,
but I think usually the like 200 to 300 level classes
that a graduate student would be in
are like maybe 15 people on average.
That's about the size of the ones that I've been in
and it's usually a mixture of graduate students
and undergraduate students who are in the later stages
of their program.
It's been kinda rare that I was in a class
that was just graduate students.
Anybody else wanna talk to that in their experiences,
class sizes or how that's gone.
Being a graduate student maybe in...
I know there's some UVM is doing a little bit of rejigging
of their courses to make sure that courses where
there are graduate students and undergraduate students.
They really are two different courses
even if you're hearing some of the same lecture material.
But I'd love to hear any perspectives or any others.
Okay, thank you Kate.
I mean, that was great.
There's a question about funding in data science
and complex systems in particular a master's student,
but I think it probably applies to most any discipline
and it's about how to find RA NTA positions.
And do you have any ideas that to help?
So I don't know.
Sometimes people come in I know as RAs or TAs automatically,
but I know that those kinds of things can change
and whether you can actually get them when you're here.
What kind of experiences have you had in those areas.
Specifically for complex systems and data science.
so I don't know about TA,
I feel like TA is more of like a departmental thing.
And complex systems and data science
is not like a department on its own, it's a center.
So for TA I think it really just depends on talking
to a professor who may be looking for a TA
or depending on like you can be a TA
in math, computer science, chats.
So it all depends on that.
As for the audio position,
that is strictly contingent if you have a professor
who can advise you.
So if you really want an RA for next year,
the best strategy would be
to go to the complex system center,
look at all the professors we have,
see if any of them is doing any research that you like,
that you wanna be a part of.
And then take their class if they're offering one in four
or contact them and be like,
"Hey, I'm interested in taking your class
and I'm interested in like doing this research with you."
And if they like you and if that works out,
then you can be an RA with them.
And again, it all depends
on what the funding availability looks like.
It's like a lot of moving parts,
but that's usually the system.
I have a bit of a unique situation like that.
My first year here I did not have funding
but I came from teaching back home for years
and I really wanted to do this.
Once I got to know people here,
they got me funding as a GTA for last couple years
and now with my advisor all,
he's got money for me for the entirety
of the next year and a half, which is pretty cool.
So generally I think when you come here
you're told that you have some kind of a package
and if you're not,
I don't know that you could pick one up now
they would probably tell you that by now
that they have some kind of funding for you.
But if you decide to come anyways,
that doesn't mean that once you start to to know people
and they realize like,
"Hey, maybe I want this person around."
They might find some money for you.
At least that's how it works for me.
I would just also add,
if anyone is doing or planning on doing research
as a PhD student,
that is kind of like operating somewhere
in like the environmental arena.
The Gund Institute at UVM is this institute
that will fund PhD students
for the entirety of their degree.
And it's something that you can apply to.
There's also a fellowship that's specific
to folks who are doing an engineering PhD
in the environmental arena.
It's called the Gund Barrett Fellowship.
I've been funded by that for the past two years.
It's been really, really amazing
because it's not attached to a specific project.
It's like funding you as an individual.
So I got to propose what I wanted to do my research on
and there's a little bit of extra research funding
that comes with that.
So that's the one that I'm familiar with.
There might be other kind of fellowship opportunities
like that in other departments at UVM
that I'm not familiar with.
But the Gund is there for people interested
in environmental engineering
and really just any environmental project.
I know that NASA is another big one
because I think that it's specific to Vermont
but I haven't applied for it
so I can't really speak much on it,
but if you wanna Google or ask some other people,
I know that NASA is a really big one for UVM students.
I have a couple friends waiting here back
on the Vermont Space Grant,
which I think is the one you're talking about.
Experience with faculty and peers as women in STEM,
any especially Jenna and Kate.
Anything to say there?
[Kate] Jenna, do you wanna go first?
Sure, so this is, like I said,
only my first year, second semester,
last semester actually both of my professors were female
and this semester one of them is female,
one of them is male.
So I've actually worked with a lot of female professors.
One of my advisors is a female too.
And so I think that's really great.
In my undergrad didn't totally have that.
I only had one female professor
in my entire biomedical engineering department.
So that has been really great
getting to just have females to look up to
that are in those advisory roles
and that are teaching and lecturing.
And so that's really exciting to me.
And my research group is also I think pretty 50/50 split
with females and males.
That's not how it's going to be
in every single department and group,
but that's how it's been for me.
And so that environment already of it being very diverse
is really great.
I haven't experienced anything negative
in regards to being female yet in STEM.
But like I said, this is only my second semester
I've just getting into research,
but so far everything's been really positive.
Yeah, I also would echo that.
I have not experienced any challenges
associated with my gender identity
in the civil and environmental engineering department.
In general I think all the professors
that I've interacted with at UVM
are incredibly respectful and really wonderful people.
And I think that goes for most of the people
I've interacted with at UVM.
And I think there's a lot of like support systems at UVM
for graduate students and students in general.
And there's like counselors, there's like...
I just feel like there's like a lot of people
that I can go to if I need help
but haven't yet needed to mobilize those resources.
I would also say too something
that I really appreciate about UVM
when I came in I was doing my training for being a TA.
There was definitely an emphasis
and you could tell that UVM was very focused on training us
around being respectful of everyone's gender identities
and just inclusion.
And so I think that having that kind of emphasis
and training on it should help too.
If my understanding is correct.
Sorry, if my understanding is correct,
there's also a center for women
and women identifying students.
Is there not I maybe mistaken on that.
Yeah, I think that there's like I think,
I've been invited to a bunch of like women in STEM events.
I think I went to a couple when I was first starting out.
But I haven't been to them recently.
A lot of the people in my lab are women in STEM though.
So we have our own little group.
Well there is a society of women engineers
and I know that I've seen undergraduate
and I'm sure there's graduate involvement in there too.
But that's an important organization as well.
There's some specific questions coming in
about kind of tax rates and funding letters and things.
I would encourage folks
who have those very specific questions
to reach out for your specific situation
to the graduate college,
which is where the letter came from
because they'll be able to address those more fully.
And also the question
about kind of like related PhD master program at UVM,
I guess interdisciplinary outside of sort of STEM stuff.
I think the graduate program would be a great place to start
with that conversation because they'll know more.
Can you do a job in parallel of having a GRA or GTA?
I think that's unique to the funding offer letter.
I've heard of people having different...
Like I have known people who like had a job
in addition to being a graduate student,
but I think that's something that they worked out
with their advisor
and I don't know a ton about that personally.
And again, if you're an international student,
you might not be allowed to do that.
Even if you want to.
And this is something
you probably also wanna negotiate beforehand.
Thank you for that.
Yes.
And then we have got a question
about faculty members receiving a lot of email
and if you wanna reach out to professors.
I would say that the faculty members who spoke earlier today
were the graduate program directors.
Each one of them I heard encourage questions to them.
They're really there.
They may not be the advisor that you end up working with,
but they're a good point of contact
and I believe will be very responsive to your questions.
If for some reason you have trouble,
you can always email me
and say you're having trouble getting ahold of somebody
and I can help you do that.
But I do believe reach right out.
Fact, that's what they said to do.
And I would encourage you to do that.
And we had a question about diversity
like within the math department.
I was just typing a response to that.
We have actually a surprisingly diverse group
of graduate students anyways.
A student from Ghana, from Philippines,
probably split down the middle male female,
maybe a little bit more men.
Student from Trinidad and Tobago.
Yeah, surprisingly fairly.
I was surprised coming here to Vermont,
it's been been really nice.
Not just a whole bunch of all white guys like me.
(Rick laughs)
-I can talk about just- -What about-
Yeah, this travel one.
[Jenna] Yeah.
So there's a brand new train line
that goes from directly downtown into New York City.
I haven't made use of it yet,
but I'm really excited to.
It's kind of a long ride,
but if you like bring your laptop and do work,
I think it's really beautiful.
There's an airport 10 minutes away from campus,
Burlington International Airport.
It obviously there's limited flights out of it,
but like you can get to all the major hubs directly.
So you can like fly direct to DC.
You can fly direct not to Boston, but direct to New York,
like I think direct to Chicago
and then from there get anywhere else.
So usually if I'm traveling out of state,
I'll be on two flights.
Can be pricey at times, but I do fly out of here.
The plane tickets aren't like obscenely expensive sometimes
if you get them far enough ahead of time,
it is sometimes worth it to go down to Boston
and fly out of Boston
if you're going somewhere really far away.
The other place you can get to pretty quickly is Montreal
is only like an hour and 40 minutes away
and that's a larger airport.
So if you have a personal vehicle,
sometimes people will drive up to Montreal
and then fly out of that airport.
And then there are also bus lines going various places.
So I actually for how remote we are,
it is fairly easy to travel out of state
through all those various different route.
There's also ferries across the lake into New York
that are really fun to take
if you like wanna go over there and hike
or see something else for the day.
Oh, go ahead.
You go first.
Okay.
I was gonna add that there's a ride board
on teams that anyone can join.
And so a couple weeks ago I wanted to go to Boston
and I have a car but I didn't wanna drive by myself
'cause it can be expensive gas and everything.
And so I posted on teams,
it was three days before my trip
and I had five people reach out that they were interested,
wanted to ride we split gas.
And so depending on how far you're trying to travel,
I know that there's a ride board
and there's one for like New York,
Pennsylvania, Boston, Connecticut.
And then sometimes people even post
that they're going all the way to North Carolina
and they find people to cardpool with them
or at least drop them off along the way.
So people are really good about that too.
I didn't know about the ride board.
I should look into that.
[Rick] I didn't either, I'm gonna check that out.
But the train is really cool,
the one that Kate mentioned.
I took it from New York City to Burlington
and it's just gorgeous to use.
And yeah, if you wanna fly out internationally,
Boston is your best bet.
Take a bus, I've flown multiple times.
It's great.
Great, I guess send your live event Q&A questions
in participants please.
But I'd love to hear from each one of you
maybe starting with Avi.
What do you wish you knew before you arrived?
I feel like one thing that nothing can prepare you enough
for is the winter.
I come from a very warm place
and I wish I knew what the winter would look like.
And this is weird.
There was like a lot of like fear mongering as I got here.
They were like, oh, winter, be prepared for winter,
you want to be covered, you're not gonna survive.
It's gonna be bad.
It's not that bad.
I feel like once you get used to it.
But yeah, I really wish I knew much more
about what the winter is gonna look like.
And I was also worried that as the winter might roll out
my social life would beat it out.
But that didn't happen.
I went swing dancing last night
and then honky-tonk, so it's clearly
winter is not stopping anyone.
So yeah, that was really helpful
if I'd known that beforehand.
[Jane] What about you Jenna?
What do you wish you knew before you had come?
Oh, that's so hard.
Let's go back to me.
I can't come up with anything at the moment.
Okay.
I don't know Rick, do you have any thoughts there?
I've been thinking about it.
Honestly, I don't know that I have an answer.
There wasn't anything, certainly the cold is a shock.
I knew about it.
Yeah, I think just felt negative 40 for the first time.
I just went out for about 60 seconds
to see what that was all about a few weeks ago.
That was something else.
But yeah, otherwise I can't think of anything
that was like a negative or positive surprise
that I was like, ooh, I wish I had known about that.
Maybe some of the transportation stuff
we're talking about.
I might have made some less efficient choices
'cause I didn't know as much.
So there are a ton of opportunities for transportation
and getting to know all those options will definitely
can save you some time or money.
Maybe that's my answer, yeah.
Okay, that was good.
You just made me think of mine then.
So the buses are really, really great here
and I did not figure that out right away.
And now I can take a bus every day to UVM,
which really is nice
'cause I don't have to walk up the hill.
And yeah, definitely figuring out the transportation.
There's an app on your phone,
it tells you when it's coming and it gives you updates.
It tells you, oh, it's one minute away,
it's 30 seconds away, whatever.
Biking is another really great thing
that I didn't totally know about.
And so I definitely would have invested earlier
in a better bike.
But yeah, that was...
And I guess that there's a lot of bike theft
and so that's just something
that if you would like to ride a bike,
you definitely want to make sure you know
how to lock up your bike.
Yeah, that was something that I guess
I would've liked to have known earlier.
[Jane] Kate, any thoughts for you?
Yeah, I don't think I have anything about Burlington.
Like I really love living in Burlington.
I love most things about it.
I guess the only thing that comes to mind
is just more about being in graduate school in general
and I'm like thinking back to like five years ago
when I first started
and everything felt really like consequential.
And when I made a mistake it was really horrible
and like would ruin my week.
And I think what I wish that I'd known earlier,
but maybe you just have to like learn along the way
is to like disconnect yourself
from the work that you're doing.
And so now when like I don't feel good about a product
I'm working on or like I make a mistake,
I don't take it personally anymore.
I know that it's like part of the process
and it makes it a lot easier to like push forward on things
when I have like decoupled how I feel about myself
from like how I feel about what I'm working on,
if that makes any sense.
I have one more,
it's maybe specific to the math department,
but the qualifying exams are a big deal.
This professors that'll tell you
they won't even start working with you
until you've passed them.
And there's a lot of things too exciting things
you wanna do, learn for yourself.
But least in math it'd be,
I wish that I had not gotten as sidetracked.
I passed my calls so I'm fine,
but could have passed them earlier
if I had kinda gone all in.
And if that's a big deal in the department
that you want to be in, definitely make that a priority.
We've lost several people to the qualifying exams.
But again, I think that's maybe
a little more specific in math, but I'm not sure.
Great, I wonder if anybody has thoughts
on some of the biggest sources of support
that you've had probably UVM related.
So academic student life professional that kind of thing
that you wanna share.
I know one I'm relatively new to the University of Vermont
and I've been learning about some of the career services
that we have and career services
certainly serves our undergraduate population,
but also works with graduate students
and allowing into all of the ways
so that I can help make those known to graduate students.
But even if it's just, my feel since I've been here
is that I feel a real warmth
I think from faculty and students just in general
an excitement about the work that they're doing
and an excitement to work together.
But that's an outsider's perspective, so love to hear.
Yeah, any other thoughts?
I mean, for me so far it's really been my professors
and my advisors.
Everyone has been so willing to meet with me, chat.
There's been once in a while
where I've stressed about something
and 7:00 p.m. that's okay.
They'll get back to me or we can talk on the phone.
People have been really great like that.
In terms of other kinds of support,
like you were talking about career.
There's I think her name is Holly Foster maybe.
And yeah, okay.
And so she's really great.
She helped me with my LinkedIn and getting stuff organized.
She also earlier last semester did headshot photos
for people to use for LinkedIn.
And so yeah, she's been really great too.
The career center is awesome.
They helped me with my resume.
They're excellent and they really, really wanna help.
I haven't had an opportunity
to work with the career services yet,
hopefully soon need to look for that internship.
But the Mosaic Center is incredible.
They are like this group for people of color in Vermont
and I think they are definitely a part of UVM
and they have like this amazing Friday morning breakfast,
which are great.
So you go, you socialize not just with other people
of color, but everyone in the community
and usually a department or a group within UVM
is sponsoring those breakfasts,
which is, so you get to learn a lot.
So that has been like an incredible support
coming to UVM for sure.
I feel really lucky to have a lot of people
who I consider in like my academic support network,
definitely my advisor and other graduate students in my lab.
But I've also cultivated relationships
with other faculty members at UVM,
which I've found to be really useful.
Not just for making connections for projects,
but just like when I want to get someone else's perspective
on like career path and life choices.
It's nice sometimes to be able to schedule a meeting
with someone different and who has different perspectives.
So I definitely...
I think that forming relationships
with as many people as possible is always helpful.
And sometimes that's professors who I met
through like taking classes.
Sometimes it's ones I met through working on projects.
It kind of varies.
[Rick] I've got-
Thank you so much.
Oh, yeah Rick.
I was gonna say briefly,
I have friends at other universities, we are small,
so everyone who's talked today,
it's clear that I think we all we get out there
to go find these connections.
I think there are universities
where there's like the math department for example,
has 50 grad students.
So sometimes I think they're just right in your face,
just you don't need to go hunting for it.
But it is a little smaller here,
so there's a little bit of impetus on your part
to go make these connections they're not as in your face
as like a bigger university.
And that's a great point Rick
and I do wanna say that UVM is in especially at CEMS,
College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences,
we're actually growing in graduate students too.
So really hope that the community is building
and I'm so thankful to our graduate students
who've joined today Kate and Rick and Jenna and Avi
because it really added to what Irfan said earlier
and I've found it to be very valuable.
I trust that our participants have as well.
I'm not seeing any other questions.
We are at 11:30 and now I would love to introduce
from our Office of International Student Services,
someone who can really speak specifically to process
and just the supports that are available.
And that is Sarah Denu.
So Sarah, please take it away.
All right, wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me here.
Super excited to be able to chat with everyone.
So as Jane mentioned, my name is Sarah Denu
and I am an international student and scholar advisor
in the Office of International Education.
You may hear that be called the OIE.
So that's the Office of International Education.
And I'm really excited to be chatting with you all today.
I'm gonna be spending just a few minutes
to talk about kind of the high level support
that we offer in our office
as well as go through a few action items or tasks
for you all to focus on as you are coming to UVM
in a non-immigrant student visa status.
And so if some of you are not in that situation
happy to chat kind of about individual questions
you have at a later point,
but just kinda wanna give a general overview of that.
And so I will plan to share my screen
and then if there are any issues, please let me know.
So great, now I can see it as well.
Awesome, so like I mentioned,
just talk through kind of some of the ways
that our office can support you as an international student
and then also some kinda some more task related items.
So a few action items for you to be working on
at this point in the process.
And so before we jump right into that,
just a teeny bit about me.
So as I said, my name is Sarah.
I work in the Office of International Education or the OIE
and I started working here in 2018.
Before that I lived in Colorado for several years
where I did my master's degree,
but before that I did my undergraduate degree
right here at UVM.
I'm also from Vermont,
so I grew up just about an hour south of here.
So I'm really familiar with UVM,
the Burlington area and Vermont in general.
And I'm always really excited to share my love for the state
with other new incoming students.
So I'm happy to kinda answer other questions
about Vermont or Burlington too, if that's helpful for you.
All right.
So a few action items like I mentioned.
So the first step for students that are coming here
in a non-immigrant student visa status
is to request your immigration document from us.
It sounds like some of you have already confirmed
your intent to enroll with the graduate college
and maybe some of you have not yet.
For those of you that have about 24 to 48 hours
after you do that, after you submit that intent to enroll,
you'll receive an a automatically sent email from our office
and that's going to invite you
to either request a new student immigration document from us
or tell us about an existing status that you might hold.
And so there are some students, for example,
that may already be in the United States
in a different type of status.
And so there's a lot of different situations.
And so we send you that email
again after you've confirmed your intent to enroll.
And there's a lot of helpful information in that email
with instructions as well on what to do
and how to request that new immigration document
or upload other documentation that you might have.
And we have a student portal, it's called iStart.
And in that email
you'll be able to gain access to that portal
and that's where all of those requests will happen.
So the deadline for a fall 2023 start
is not until July 15th,
which feels like a really, really far way away.
However, we strongly recommend that you complete this
as soon as possible.
The reason for that is this next bullet point,
which is to apply for your non immigrant visa.
Our office can't issue that for you.
We are able to issue the immigration document that you need
in order to apply for that,
but that is through the Department of State.
You will need to travel to the US Embassy or Consulate
in your area in order to do that.
But first,
you need to receive that immigration document from us.
The processing times vary greatly
depending on the US embassy
or Consulate that you will be visiting.
So we just recommend
that you are beginning that Visa application process
as soon as you can
to help ensure that you're able to arrive here
at UVM in time.
And so our feelings have been
that if students don't request their document
until close to that July 15th deadline,
then it can be really tricky to obtain your visa in time
for the fall semester.
So we do require that students arrive here in time
for our international graduate student orientation.
That begins on Tuesday, August 15th.
And so you are able to arrive up to 30 days
before the start date
that's listed on that immigration document
I was talking about.
So some students will choose to arrive
a little bit before that
to start settling into their accommodations,
start getting accustomed to the Burlington community,
the time change, all of that stuff.
So some will choose to arrive
maybe in the first week of August.
Sometimes this will depend
on what your housing is looking like.
I know a lot of leases might begin on August 1st,
and so some students may choose to be moving in early.
Our requirement is that you are checking in with us
on August 15th.
So that's just something to keep in mind.
Also in terms of getting your visa in time
to arrive for that date.
And it's actually two weeks before classes begin.
Typically what we have noticed is that following week,
so the week before classes begin,
is there are a lot of departmental specific orientations
that may happen for new graduate students.
And so we are trying not to interfere with that.
And so that's why we start
that previous Tuesday on the 15th.
And will talk a little bit more
about our orientation in just a moment.
And so just wanna go over a few things
that we are able to do for you as an office.
So, whoops, there we go.
Okay, immigration advising document processing.
So like I was talking about
we will issue that new immigration document for you
if you require one.
And again, it'll depend on your situation.
Read that email we send very carefully you will know.
We also do of course, immigration advising.
And it's really important
for international graduate students
to know that we are really the only office on campus
that should be giving immigration advice or advising.
There are lots of students here
that are international students
and they may have really great advice for you,
but it may be specific to their situation.
And just know that everyone
is a little bit different, right?
So even if you have a good friend in your program
that is also an international student,
it doesn't necessarily mean that what's true for them,
it's also true for you.
Same goes for faculty members
who may have really wonderful intentions
and are trying to be helpful in giving you advice.
But if is immigration related, we always say,
please come talk with us.
We're always happy to chat.
We do a lot of advising in person.
We also do virtual advising
and we also do a lot of email advising.
So we are largely available and easy to get in touch with.
So please don't ever hesitate to reach out to us.
And that also is true for kinda the pre-arrival period.
So between now and arrival,
we are still available to meet with you
via a virtual advising appointment.
So we're always happy to do that.
We offer personal support.
And so we cover kinda anything.
There's no right or wrong reason to come meet with us,
so it doesn't have to be immigration related.
We're happy to talk with you
if you are having any kind of issues
or confusion around settling in.
Maybe you have some feelings of home sickness.
That's very normal.
And we chat with a lot of students about that
and kind of work through some different strategies.
And solutions there.
Sometimes it's something as simple as like,
I can't find a laundromat and we're happy to help with that.
Setting up a bank account,
maybe you need to get a Vermont driver's license
or you're just looking for a Vermont ID
so that you don't have to carry your passport everywhere.
We're happy to talk with you
about any of those types of questions.
It doesn't have to be immigration related.
We also do a lot of connecting to campus resources,
and it sounds like you've probably heard
of a lot of these already this morning,
but we can help direct you to services
that help support you both academically,
but also to help support
your mental and physical wellbeing as well.
So we're really tuned in to what's going on around campus
and we talk with a lot of different campus partners
and try to connect students to those resources
where we make it would be helpful.
So if you're not sure where to turn,
if you just need a place to start,
we are always happy to be that place for you.
We also lead some social and cultural programming events.
And I will talk through those in just a moment.
But know that that's something else that we offer
and coordinate through our office.
Some other things that we do.
So leading international graduate student orientation.
And so I had mentioned that it's required
for international students
and it does begin on that Tuesday, August 15th.
We generally have three main goals for orientation.
One is just that we're providing you
with some helpful information.
You're gonna get a lot of information
in those first few weeks,
so we know that it can be an overload.
But we hope to give you some helpful information
that's gonna support you in your success here at UVM.
And that can be both academically
but also your mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing
and all of that.
So we're gonna give you a lot of information on that.
We're also going to just give you some time
and resources support
to help you get settled in to your housing
to the UVM campus.
That might include a campus tour,
leading volunteer led trips to the local banks
so that you can open a big account.
Things like that as just as examples.
We also offer volunteer life shopping trips.
And so if you don't have a car,
you're not sure how the bus system works yet.
We have volunteers that are other students, current students
that will take you on the bus to those shopping areas.
And so you get to kinda learn how to do that
and not have to do it by yourself.
And I think that can be really nice.
So we wanna make sure we're giving students
the time and support to help get settled in.
And then lastly, and I think personally maybe
the most important to me
is that we are providing plenty of opportunities
for you as new students to meet other new students
and current students.
So just making those connections early on.
We know that you're gonna be working closely
in your departments and you're gonna have classmates
that you collaborate with a lot,
but we wanna make sure we're giving you opportunities
to meet some other people too
that maybe are not in your academic discipline,
but find connections
both with the other new graduate students,
but also just other students around campus.
So we coordinate some different events,
certainly during our required sessions during the week,
we provide parts of those sessions kinda dedicated
to making sure students get to know one another
a little bit more.
So that's really important to us as well.
So I wanna touch on some organizations.
I know this looks like a huge list.
This is just a screenshot from our webpage
and that's the URL if anyone is interested.
Honestly, I typically just Google UVM, OIE
and then if you say involved, it'll take you to that page.
But this is just a list
of some international student organizations
and we are always recommending to students,
both incoming international graduate
and undergraduate students to reach out
to these clubs and organizations early on,
even before you arrive to start getting
some of that connection building.
So you can see we have it broken down in different ways.
So there's some country specific groups and organizations
regionally, globally focused groups,
and then also identity-based groups.
There's contact information for all of these.
And so again, you can find it on our webpage
is probably the easiest way to do that.
But just know that this exists.
This is not an exhaustive list
of all the clubs and organizations on campus certainly,
but it is kind of a focus
on the international student organizations.
I have talked to a lot of students
that have found these to be really, really helpful
for a number of reasons.
Sometimes it's just because take for example,
the Bangladesh student and scholar group,
maybe you are from Bangladesh, you are coming by yourself,
you don't know anyone else.
And to be able to connect to the other students
from Bangladesh that are in this club,
it can be just really, really helpful and comforting
and just a really great point of support
when you're first settling in.
We've had students find airport pickup rides
by contacting people through here,
find housing by contacting groups through here.
So I think there's no wrong way to get involved
with these groups,
but I think reaching out to them early
and saying, "Hey, I'm interested in being part of this.
What kind of resources can you offer,
or how can I get involved?"
These students have all volunteered to lead these groups
and so they're all quite active and excited
to work with new students.
So know that that exists and we definitely recommend
that you take advantage of that.
And again, that's just on our getting involved page
through the OIE.
So just to go over a few of the programs and events
that we coordinate and offer
through our office specifically.
So we do host waffle breakfast,
which happens on the first Friday of every month
during the school year.
So it does not happen over winter break
or the summer for example.
But we do have it all semester in the fall
and all semester in the spring.
So we just had one last week for March.
They're really, really fun.
They're very relaxed.
It's like the international student lounge,
so it's attached to where our office is on campus.
It's totally free.
We cook fresh waffles all morning.
We have a giant fruit salad.
It'd be a hot coffee and tea
and anyone in the community is welcome.
But it is international student waffle breakfast.
So primarily we see international graduate students.
We might see some international exchange students
that are just here for a semester or two.
We might see our international undergraduate students
and we might see some fun campus partners showing up
whether they're from different identity groups on campus
or identity centers.
So Mosaic or the Interfaith Center,
sometimes we have folks joining us from those places.
It's really fun, it's very relaxed.
You don't even need to sign up,
you can just stop by anytime to get a free breakfast
and just kinda be in some good company.
So that's something we do that's ongoing.
Another ongoing series that we coordinate
is the Cultural Kitchen series.
And these are pictures
from our most recent one we had in February
that was Cultural Kitchen, Mexico.
And we have one graduate student on the left there
and an undergraduate student on the right.
And they helped host that for us.
And so we made chilaquiles and conchas
and they were delicious.
But it's this event that we do three times each semester
and so we just had the first one in February.
We'll do another one later this month.
And student hosts get to plan what they would like to make.
So we had two Mexican hosts this coming month.
We have three Japanese exchange students
that will be hosting a Cultural Kitchen, Japan.
And my hope is that April will have one for Jordan
and the Middle East.
So it's up to students.
They can volunteer to sign up,
they get to decide what they would like
to have students help them make.
They teach students how to make these things.
We make them together as a group,
and then we get to sit and enjoy the food together.
And it's just a really special event
that we do throughout the semester.
So something else just to keep in mind.
So if you're a graduate student and you love to cook,
or even if you don't know really how to cook,
but you love food, this could be a great event for you.
And so we're always looking for a new hosts for that.
So that's something that's ongoing.
We also coordinate through our office,
the community host program.
This is a picture on the right
his face got a little bit cut off,
but he's one of our international students from Argentina
and he joined his host family for Thanksgiving there.
So this program pairs international students
with a UVM staff or faculty member
that really acts as like a community friend and mentor.
So sometimes people are confused by the term host.
They are not hosting you in the sense
that you're not living with them,
but they are really just acting
as a community friend and mentor.
So you might meet up with them for coffee,
you might decide to go for a hike together
outside of Burlington,
maybe you both share a love of the theater.
And so you might go to a local theater production
in downtown Burlington together.
Maybe you really like hockey,
so you go to a hockey game together.
There's really no rules.
It's not a very structured program.
So our office is involved
in the sense that you express interest,
we will find a host for you
and then it's up to you all to decide
what you'd like to do, how often you'd like to meet.
So there's tons of flexibility there,
but it's a really special program.
It helps build connections,
I think outside of your academic discipline,
it's really not meant to be academically focused,
it's more just to have someone in the community
that can help you feel a little bit more grounded
in your experience here
and kind of explore Burlington and the surrounding areas.
So we've gotten just a lot of great feedback
so far in this program
and the matches are just made on a rolling basis
and we ask that students
kinda commit to one semester at a time.
In my experience,
students have stayed in touch with their hosts for years.
So they're choosing to stay in touch
even after they graduate.
They stay in touch with their hosts
and so I think that's kind of speaks
to how great of a program it can be.
So that's just something that is available
that we coordinate through our office
and really recommend that you take advantage of,
especially if you're feeling like you are looking
for more connection as you settle in.
All right, I'm gonna stop sharing my screen.
I wanted to save plenty of time
to see if there are any questions that I can help answer.
All right, there we go.
And so I guess I will add too,
I know that every student
may have like specific immigration related questions
that may be just really unique to them.
And so I think if you are one of those people
in that situation, certainly we'd love to chat with you.
If it is kind of a personal question,
it might be better answered
through our international student email account
or by setting up an appointment with us.
But if you had kind of general questions
that might be relevant to the whole group,
of course I am happy to try and answer those.
Thank you, Sarah.
I do wanna just kind of ask a general question myself.
When students kind of first get here to UVM,
is there an international student orientation?
What can people expect kind of when they first arrive?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And we do host two different orientations
and so that the two weeks before starting August 15th,
that is specific for graduate students.
The following week is for our international undergraduate
and exchange students.
And the major difference kinda that I noticed
is undergrad or the graduate students
are all living off campus
and so there's a really specific move in time
and day that everyone arrives for the undergrads
in that following week.
There's a lot more flexibility when students are arriving
for graduate students
because there isn't any set move in time for them.
And so because you're able to arrive up to 30 days before
that program start date,
that's gonna be listed on your immigration document,
sometimes we see students sort of trickle in,
they might show up to our office and say, "Hey, I'm here"
Which is wonderful.
Folks can set up earlier check-ins if they do arrive early.
Our first required event
is starting on that Tuesday the 15th
where they're officially checking in with us
and that's really the kick, excuse me,
the kickoff to orientation.
So it really will vary what to expect.
But if students arrive early,
they do have the opportunity to contact us, check in.
We're happy to sit down and meet with them,
give them some materials
kinda before orientation actually starts
just in case they need a little support for settling in.
But we really seen a lot of folks arriving
kind of in early August
and so by the time we're officially meeting with them,
they may have been here already for a week or two.
So yeah, it does depend,
but Tuesday the 15th is our check-in.
We'll have a big welcome event that's required.
Some of the sessions during orientation are optional
and a lot of those are the more of the social
kind of connection building events.
But during our required events,
that first one is our welcome session
where everyone will be in the same room,
they'll all have a chance to kinda introduce themselves,
get to know one another a little bit,
and then get to know us as well.
So that's really the first time
at least that would be required
where everyone would be together.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
And I know you did talk about this,
but I know I'm not a hundred percent clear.
At what point do each of the students,
we have a lot of international students joining us today
start to work with you on the immigration
in the visa paperwork.
So does each person,
'cause I'm not seeing any specific questions in the Q&A
But I'm assuming does each person know
in the International Student Service Office
who they need to reach out to in your office?
Yeah, it's a great, great question.
My understanding is that they first will confirm
their intent to enroll with the graduate college.
Our office will not know that they have been accepted
to UVM until that point.
So we really are removed from that at the point
that they confirm their intent to enroll the students,
it'll sync with our system usually a day or two later.
So it's not immediate, but a day or two later,
whenever that syncs into our system,
it automatically triggers an email to go out to that student
with instructions to either say,
"Hey, it's time to request
your new student immigration document."
Or sometimes we have students
that may already have an existing status
so we give them an opportunity to tell us
what that might be in upload documentation.
So they will not hear from us and we are really not involved
until after they've confirmed that they're coming to UVM.
At which point,
yeah they'll start getting communications from us
and we will issue an immigration document
typically within five business days of getting that request.
So it's a pretty quick turnaround
once we have everything we need.
Occasionally we may go back and forth
a little bit with a student.
So for example,
sometimes they may upload the wrong funding documentation
or something like that.
Maybe it's a student with a graduate assistantship
but they didn't upload that letter, whatever it might be.
So we may go back and forth a little bit.
But if everything looks good,
we get alerted when that submission is complete
so we know that it's there
and we'll process that within about a week or so.
And yeah, the student will be notified,
they will get that immigration document
and they can use the information that's listed on that
to start moving forward with the visa application process.
Fantastic, thank you.
That is so helpful.
I'm still not seeing any Q&As.
If there's any question that anybody has for Sarah,
please feel free to publish that right now
and we'll answer it live.
And assuming Sarah,
that if somebody has a question afterwards,
you'd be willing to get an email
and get back to somebody?
[Sarah] Absolutely yeah.
And I think probably the best contact
is just our general email account,
which is internationalstudents@uvm.edu, no punctuation.
So pretty simple.
And the reason I say that is all three of the advisors
that are working right now will see that
and so that's the fastest way to get a response
is to use that general account.
Certainly it's fine if I get an email personally
but it might take me a little bit longer to get back to you.
So I think generally the best bet
is to email that internationalstudents@uvm.edu email.
And once you get that first communication from our office,
you will have our email.
So you can always reply to that as well.
But you can also find us online
if you are looking for contact info
just on our regular webpage.
And it does look like we have a question here.
Somebody has an interview next week
and do we have any suggestions
about things we should pay attention to
before the interview?
Yeah, well that's wonderful.
They have an appointment already.
I'm very excited to hear that.
So yeah.
I think my best advice is to check out
our visa application web page on our website.
So we offer a lot of good guidance there
and I can actually pull it up right now
just to give you the correct new URL.
It is just, yeah.
The page is just titled applying for your F1 or J1 visa.
It's under the main immigration tab of our website.
So certainly you can pull that up.
But we go through the basic rundown of what it looks like
to apply for your F1 or J1 visa
depending on your situation that will vary.
We can help determine that for you though at the point
that you're filling out that paperwork for us online.
In most cases international students that will be joining us
for graduate programs will be coming as an F1 student.
That can vary depending on different factors like funding,
but again, you'll learn more about that
when you fill out your paperwork through iStart.
But on this webpage about applying for your visa,
we kinda lay out the steps of,
first get your immigration document which we talked about.
Paying a CVAs fee.
So it sounds like this person already did that
because they have their appointment,
they completed their DS-160.
We kinda lay out these steps here
under we have a step called schedule
and prepare for your interview
and there is some helpful information
about kinda some of the questions you might expect to get
at that interview.
I will say they're typically extremely quick,
they're like two minutes,
and the officer will ask you some quick questions
and you give them the documentation.
There's no dilly-dallying, it's like vary to the point.
So just kinda being prepared
to answer honestly, accurately and briefly.
They don't want your life story.
And so there is a common list of optimists to prepare
that's listed on our website.
It's a pretty long list so I won't go through them,
but please do take advantage of this page.
And then we do have a section on attending the interview
and some tips for that.
And so let's see if I touched on them.
So yeah, answer questions clearly, briefly speak honestly,
politely maintain a positive attitude,
be ready to explain how your time at UVM
fits your academic and career goals.
I think that's an important one.
And then if you don't understand a question
I think it's best just to name that right away
and say, "Can you please repeat that question."
Instead of kinda doing a little bit of rambling
trying to figure it out.
I think it's best if you just sort of directly address that.
So please do check that out.
But I'm thrilled to hear that already have
an appointment scheduled, that's great.
Well Sarah, thank you so much
for spending the time with us.
That was really very informative.
[Sarah] Great.
And yeah and I appreciate your willingness
yet to for that general sort of reach out
and certainly if anybody has any trouble
reaching international student services
they can certainly also.
I'd be very happy to help make that connection.
[Sarah] Yeah, wonderful.
Great, well yeah, thank you so much for having us.
Yeah, take care.
-Bye everyone. -Have a good day.
So for the rest of our time together today
we have some virtual tours of our facilities.
We have really a STEM complex,
three main buildings, Votey, Discovery and Innovation.
We've got some folks who are just gonna give you
a quick tour of what those facilities are,
even though it's a little bit hard virtually.
Then around 12:45 there will be a break
and then really our time together will end
because several of you, either that ends your day
or you might have some academic advisor meetings
that you've set up.
Don't worry if you haven't set up a meeting
with your academic advisor.
I think you heard today that the graduate program directors,
if you don't have an advisor yet
or need to speak with somebody,
I'm very happy to help facilitate that.
So just 'cause it might not be happening today
is no worry at all.
You can certainly set up another time in the near future
to talk with them.
So we'll go on our tours and then you take,
hopefully you'll have a little bit of time
to take a little break and then it will be time
to meet with your advisors.
So here is, I'm gonna introduce Jamie Catalan
who's our lab manager in Votey.
And he's gonna start us off
by taking us through really the engineering building
in the engineering labs.
So thank you.
Here you go Jamie.
[Man] Gotta unmute, you got It.
Hi everyone, I'm Jamie, I'm the STEM lab manager.
If you have questions you can type them in the chat
or just speak out loud and we'll try and answer them.
I'm gonna go through Votey Hall.
Votey has the majority of our engineering departments
and engineering labs including teaching and research labs.
We'll kinda walk up and down and go through some labs.
Right now we're in the materials and structures lab.
This lab's primarily used by civil engineering
as a teaching lab,
but as with most of our teaching labs,
a lot of the equipment in here
is used by research faculty as well.
So here we have like an introduction
to structures for students.
We have concrete crusher, some ovens for heating materials,
thermal chamber, (indistinct) which is oldest piece
of testing equipment in college.
new tensile compression tests
and then a large reaction frame for larger scale testing.
So a lot of the first floor
is devoted to civil engineering labs,
some of the bigger labs.
This building was mostly renovated about six years ago
when the STEM complex was also constructed.
So a lot of the labs have been recently refurbished.
This is our student club space,
which is mainly undergraduate
but it's a cool space for the undergrads.
There's the arrow vehicle in there
which they design and build.
Walk in on my right here is our senior design space
for mechanical, electrical and biomedical engineers.
So you might TA in here
but you wouldn't actually be taking a class
but that's just where our senior design students work.
On my left here is our machine shop.
Machine shop is used
for an intro mechanical engineering class,
which is available to other students as well.
We have things like mills, lays, drill presses,
saws and water jet and one CNC that our machinists used.
So in addition to teaching classes,
our machine shops supports teaching and research labs.
Floyd and I work together on a lot of projects,
designing and building specific equipment
that you can't buy elsewhere.
Manufacturing things needed for testing.
Our left, this is a geo tech lab, civil engineering.
So this space again is used for undergraduate teaching labs.
But we also have spaces that are used by researchers.
So we have a mixing area back here
which we use for concrete mixing
and it can get dirty and we don't care about it.
It's easier to clean up.
And then we also have a Darwin Chamber
which controls temperature and humidity.
So we're able to properly cure concrete specimens
for classes or a lot of faculty do research on concrete.
Here this is the hydraulics and fluids lab.
It's shared between mechanical and civil engineering.
So mechanical has a pipe flow apparatus and wind tunnel.
And then civil does variety of bench top experiments
for hydraulics.
And then they also have a large
recirculating plume in the back.
There's a undergraduate
I mean, teaching lab going on in there right now.
We'll head upstairs.
Second floor has variety
of our wet and biological research labs.
We also have other spaces,
this is a large capstone space used by civil engineering.
They're able to work collaboratively in that space.
There is a printer for printing out large plots
and design drawings.
Good questions.
[Man] Second, maybe there's a bubble on the Q&A.
[Man] No questions in the Q&A yet.
Right, this is part of what we call our Fab Lab,
abrication Lab, we did a laser cutter
and a circuit bar soldering oven in there.
And then I left the rest of the Fab Lab
which has a variety of 3D printers
and some senior design students working in there.
So this space is open to anyone in the college.
You can send in tickets to have things 3D printed
if it's for teaching or research project.
So I'll need something printed out or design it myself
and send it in they print it out
or if you need help with design
then they have students that help with that as well.
So there's a couple of research labs on the inside,
we'll take a look in one of them on the other side probably.
Briefly step into this is our VME teaching lab.
So yeah we're doing a tour.
You wanna talk about some stuff.
Bring those to the chemistry park.
But otherwise I don't know what did I talk about?
It's all right.
So this is used by an undergrad,
a couple undergrad VME labs kind of introductory courses.
So we have a BSL lab,
biosafety lab in the back with biosafety cabinets.
We have a tensile and compression tester over here
and a plate reader just donated by biotech,
which is a local local company
we have some connections with.
In the back here you'll see a sec.
Our ski test, ski safety testing lab.
So the equipment in there was designed by some UVM grads
who started a company locally
and then they have since retired
and re donated the equipment back to UVM.
So that tests ski binding releasing and ski flexer.
So there's a senior design group in there
working on getting some of the equipment running again
and some more modern DAQ involved with it.
Look into to Dr. Doiron's lab.
She is a researcher in biomedical engineering
working in nanoparticles.
One of her grad students is working in the lab right now.
So one of these labs,
they're a dedicated labs but they're connected
and so there's a lot of collaboration
even though there's mechanical,
environmental and biomedical engineering
all working closely together.
They're collaborating on research projects
and their students work together a lot.
Look into to Matt Scarper's lab.
Matt is a (indistinct) environmental engineering.
Hello.
We're giving a tour (indistinct).
Matt does worked with biodigesters
and what we could harvest from our waste.
So there's back.
Here we have a couple of his anerobic digesters.
So we feed them different effluent
and then he observes the processes and what comes out.
A lot of analytical in the lab.
Stairs this way.
The third floor now.
Third floor has majority
of our electrical engineering teaching labs
along with some research labs.
So we have a VME lab that's looking at EEG caps
and work on sensing in the brain
when you introduce different stimuli to people.
Jeff Froelich's lab, he's an EE.
Works on radio frequencies transmission a lot.
We have an open lab
which is going to be renovated this summer
for Dr.Bernstein who's in VME
and works with microbiomes a lot.
Doing a lot of computational work
and then validating that work within his research lab.
Dr. Shaw does a lot of work with high performance circuits
and semiconductors he's involved with.
We're developing a semiconductor certificate program
in the new labs, he's just been really involved in that.
One of EV labs.
It's kind of a standard undergraduate lab.
Yeah, a lot of undergraduate classes go through here
and a lot of EE grad students are TAs for these classes.
So we have oscilloscopes, power supplies
and that kind of stuff for basic circuit testing I guess.
That is the majority of the tour of Votey.
If anybody has any specific questions
about any of our facilities, we gonna ask them.
(indistinct) off to.
[Jane] So this would be kind of the last time
to ask some questions directly of Jamie,
our lab manager here
in the engineering part of the building in Votey.
I don't see any questions coming through.
Okay, well then I think we'll pass it off.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
So we are next going to be walking to our STEM complex,
which is two fairly new and large buildings.
One is called Discovery,
the other is called Innovation
where we have math, stats,
complex systems, computer science,
physics and some of the chemistry
and biology and biochemistry kinds of labs, lab spaces,
workspaces, faculty rooms, classrooms, meeting rooms.
And I'm showing you we're on sort of a bridge
from the third floor of Votey.
You're looking out ne right next to Votey,
which is, as I said, the engineering building.
We are next to the business school
and directly across the green, which is not green,
it's covered with snow right now
but is the Lerner College of Medicine
and some hospital facilities and things.
Somebody had asked a question earlier in the day
about how close some of the academic buildings are.
And you can see there's housing
which is an undergraduate dorm which is fairly new,
is kind of right in the middle of some things too.
But that's another building that you're seeing.
I'm gonna go across on the other side of the bridge here
and I can actually see down to the lake, Lake Champlain
which is probably about a little bit less than a mile away.
A downhill, we're at the top of the hill
but you see some of the old buildings
that UVM has on on campus
'cause we've been here since I think it's 1791.
So you see a little bit of our Waterman
which is our administrative building.
And I'm meeting, you've already met him
but your friend and mine, Avi Chawla
who's going to speak to.
I'm gonna hold the the camera and laptop as he.
Let me know if there's like a particular part
of this building that you wanna explore.
Like if you're are on a department like
hey what's my department look like?
Think the ideal would be.
[Jane] Yeah we can see your,
any questions in chat so feel free
to keep asking questions if you have any.
So this is a brand new building.
I'll also have you hold anything if you want.
[Jane] Oh, thanks.
Okay.
[Jane] No worries.
Of course I'm live but let me just check make sure it says.
Okay, there we go.
Sweet all right.
This is the brand new building,
this building is divided in two parts.
Innovation and Discovery.
I really don't look the difference between the two
if I'm being honest with you
but I think some of the departments
are in the Discovery side
and some of the departments are in the Innovation side.
And they have a different color scheme.
Super scheme.
[Jane] I will say the city of Burlington
considers it one building.
There you go.
[Jane] But we consider it two.
City of Burlington and I consider it one building.
So this is the chemistry area.
So we've got labs on the left and right.
So if you are joining the chemistry department,
this is most likely where study your own thing.
One thing about this building
is it has a lot of lounge space.
So a lot of undergrad graduate student.
So like its like a simple hall way.
A lot of lounge space.
Enough for everyone to sit down onward.
So we are on the second floor right now.
My goal is to go down to the post door,
see the lounge space of the post door
and then go current forward.
I'm going bias you at the fourth
because that's where the complex system is (indistinct).
(indistinct)
We have some boots there sometimes
like companies such as they come join us.
They wanted create some ceilings.
And the best part I feel everyone possibly will be like
a lot of the (indistinct) around.
Like for example that little thing
that does way motion stuff
it's been a while since I did physics so I don't.
[Jane] I'm seeing it, there we go, a little.
I'm not great with the camera.
Everybody so sorry about that.
(Jane laughs)
Oh, yes, thank you Avi.
All right there you go, okay.
[Jane] Much better.
Awesome, yeah that's (indistinct).
So that's a Discovery side on the patient side
and it's just like a lot of big hallways and lounge around.
So let's now go to the third floor.
I'm gonna, let's take the stairs over there.
There's multiple elevators here.
(indistinct) space.
For one thing is that the elevators are too slow.
(Jane laughs)
And I was told that that's by design
'cause they want me to take the stairs.
It really works like it's incredibly slow.
You don't wanna be taking them.
Nothing exciting about the stairs.
(Jane laughs)
(indistinct) also I think physics department
on the (indistinct) second floor.
(indistinct)
So if you like physics and want to step in quickly let know.
[Jane] Avi is much faster than I am going up the stairs.
(indistinct)
[Jane] No, no, I'm good, thank you.
So (indistinct) computer science department.
(indistinct) lounging around people are working.
(indistinct) get the new addition
I didn't know when they added that.
But yeah so that side over there is Discovery.
Oh, check the offices, (indistinct).
This is like where the offices are.
(indistinct) by or is it good?
[Jane] It's good.
Okay, well our computers (indistinct) are.
And of course like people like to work and collaborate.
So if you probably can see like a bunch of notes
on the glass windows.
It's a testament to the work we do and our insanity.
We cannot find the washroom.
(Jane laughs)
All right.
Thank you.
So now we go to my favorite floor,
the Complex Systems Center.
And here make it explore like what the classes
also look like, what the rooms look like.
'Cause I have a much better access to those.
So as soon as you open
you get to the Vermont Complex Systems surveillance room .
We are big on branding and in cool little stickers.
So like if you see these walls,
one of the illustrators from our department,
so these are all the professor complex system centers.
It's really cool.
We have all our little personas.
Recently we got some sketches done
for all the grad students as well.
So all of the students of grad.
We have a lot of cool stickers, few.
I'm really just starting to (indistinct).
(Jane laughs)
[Jane] Shamelessly.
Shamelessly.
Yeah, so this is where like
again, if you're in complex center, computer science
this is where you be working from.
We have like a lot of people already working.
I gonna show some of the offices.
(indistinct) the graduate student at UVM.
(indistinct) most of them are assign a desk like this
and these are my friends.
That's my roommate over there.
(Jane laughs)
(indistinct)
So I'm not gonna disturb them anymore.
All right.
Again, a lot of notes on the board.
(indistinct) just like people working
a great collaborative space.
I love this black paint work .
MassMutua center of excellence,
contact systems and data science.
So I think this (indistinct).
[Jane] Yes we don't have.
Let's how classes look like.
We have some office equipment.
Again the kitchen.
When the floor plan is exactly the same,
it's just we have different people (indistinct).
That's my office over there.
Which is a little bit different.
So there we had different kind of chairs,
but I sit all the way in the back,
that's my friend over there
who's working with (indistinct)
doing science, saving humanity.
All right, so this is really the innovation in discovery.
It's really not about the building as much
is the people to work here, which is pretty exciting.
Great friends, great professors, and yeah.
Is there anything else there?
[Jane] No, I think we're good.
I mean, it gives us a good flavor.
Perfect all right, thank you so much.
[Jane] Thank you Avi, really appreciate it.
I'm gonna see you later.
-[Jane] Have a good day. -[Aviral] Okay, good.
So, hi everybody.
I'm turning the camera on myself
and this is really unusual for me
trying to be a little quiet 'cause I'm in a public space
and I'm far away from my office.
Now, so it'd be hard to kind of end things.
The kind of day together is really completed.
I wanna thank you all for being a part of this.
I'm sorry the light is not good here.
I see that I'm kind of a shadow,
but I do want to just thank you all.
I will send a complete recording to everybody
so that if there were any technical difficulties,
you don't have to worry that you've missed anything.
Please do feel free to reach out to me
if there's anything that I can do for you,
any information you want clarification on
to learn more about, be very happy to help you do that.
On behalf of the College of Engineering
and Mathematical Sciences, I just wanna say thanks
and I really hope to meet you in person very soon.
So thank you again.
And if you have meetings with your advisors
or the graduate program directors leader today,
you will have set those up individually.
And so you'll be able to have links
to get to those as needed.
And again, don't panic if you need to connect with somebody
because you can reach out and find another time to meet,
today is not the only time this afternoon.
So again, I wanna thank you
and wish you a very happy rest of your day or evening,
depending on where you are.
Take good care.
Bye-bye.