• Purdue Brings Peer Institutions Together For Future Graduate Students
• Purdue Plans Welcome For International Students
• Graduate Teacher Technology Certificate Available For Interested TAs
• Ice Cream Social/Reception Will Honor 2005 Chorafas Foundation Competition Nominees
• 2005 Convocation for New Graduate Students
• Graduate Staff Fee Deferments Due By August 29, 2005
• Premium Listings on GradSchools.com Available at No Cost
• Graduate School Ombudsman Web Site Now Available
• Fall Recruitment Discussion Scheduled
• More than 750 Receive Graduate Degrees at August Commencement
• Graduate Faculty Mentoring Workshops
• Combined B.S. Engineering and MBA Programs Gain Final Approval
• Important Dates

Purdue University will host the second Big 10+ Grad School Expo on Monday, September 26, 2005. The Grad Expo is a cooperative effort to provide prospective graduate students interested in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), or Agriculture fields with comprehensive information regarding graduate education. Students from institutions around the nation have been invited to receive comprehensive information and to talk to faculty, graduate students, and staff from a variety of CIC and other premier institutions.

If you would like more information about participating in the Expo with other representatives from your College, please contact the appropriate planning committee member:

Agriculture: Ms. Jane Alexander, jalexander@fnr.purdue.edu
Engineering: Dr. Dan Elliott, elliottd@purdue.edu
Science: Dr. Aditya Mathur, apm@purdue.edu
Technology: Ms. Mary Walker, mewalker@purdue.edu

Read more: http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html3month/2005/050711.Werner.grads.html

As summer winds down, Purdue University is making plans to welcome more than 1,000 international students to campus before classes start Aug. 22.

Graduate and professional program students will begin arriving on the Purdue campus on Aug. 8. Graduate students will attend orientation sessions Aug. 8-12.

Special orientation offerings will include a variety of activities, including presentations in a lecture hall, campus tours and picnics. A special graduate student picnic and barn dance will be held 4:30-9 p.m. Aug. 12 at Prophetstown State Park.

Read More: http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html3month/2005/050722.Brzezinski.internat.html

The Graduate Teacher Technology Certificate (GT2C) offers a unique training opportunity for Purdue graduate TAs for Fall 2005. The certificate was developed for the purpose of assisting graduate students in their career development and provides much needed technological skills for today’s courses on campus.

The Graduate Teacher Technology Certificate (GT2C) program is centrally administered by the CIE (Center for Instructional Excellence). Specifically, the GT2C certifies that a graduate student has acquired the technological skills needed to teach today's courses. The technological components are:

• Web Authoring: Course Management Systems (WebCT Vista)
• Web Page Design (Dreamweaver)
• Converting Documents (Adobe Acrobat)
• Computer Mediated Communication
• Graphics: Digital Imaging (Fireworks)
• Future Technologies: Multimedia e-learning tools (Breeze, Tegrity, Camtasia, etc.)
  

To be eligible, students are required to hold a TA position in the current or upcoming semester. Students are also required to have a Purdue faculty member sponsor, under whose guidance they will develop course components incorporating technology. Each faculty member can sponsor only one graduate student per semester.

The GT2C program runs from September 13 to October 27 (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30-4:30 p.m.). Interested students must complete this form by September 2, 2005.

For more information, please visit: http://www.cie.purdue.edu/gradtadev/index.cfm?category=gt2c

For a complete list of teaching workshops, please click here: http://www.cie.purdue.edu/workshop/register/index.cfm

Additional questions may be directed to Sim Senol of ITaP, or Christian Reiner of CIE.

An ice cream social/reception will honor the 2005 Chorafas Foundation competition nominees. The College of Engineering’s Office for Research and Entrepreneurship is hosting the reception.

The Chorafas Foundation chose Purdue as one of a select few institutions eligible to award a Chorafas Prize to one of its doctoral students. The Chorafas Foundation was established in March 1992 in collaboration with the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, and Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences. Altogether, 26 partner universities in 15 countries compete for 20-30 awards per year.

This year's nominees include: Zun Chen, MSE, Loren Garrison, AAE, Alaina Michele Pizzo, ME/BME, Arijit Raychowdhury, ECE, Basit Shafiq, ECE, Sybil Sharvelle, CE, Akiner Tuzuner, IE, Sonu Sam Varghese, ME/BME, Shijun Xiao, ECE, Yanan Zheng, BME.

Last year’s Chorafas recipient was Sean Peterson who was among 15 students competing for the award. For the engineering prize, doctoral students typically have been selected from suitable candidates in computer science, with emphasis on the design of complex systems, imaginative projects in new technology, database mining, sophisticated software for networks, and intelligent software (agents, expert systems).

As you look ahead to the beginning of the fall semester, the Purdue University Graduate School invites you to a Convocation for New Graduate Students. The convocation will be held Friday morning, August 19, 2005, beginning at 9:00 a.m. in Stewart Center's Loeb Playhouse on the West Lafayette campus. An information fair and light breakfast follow the Convocation in Stewart Center 202 and 214. New graduate students from all Purdue campuses are welcome. Please make plans to attend.

We are looking forward to your enrollment this fall!

Graduate staff who hold appointments as graduate research assistants, graduate teaching assistants, graduate administrative/professionals, or residence assistants/staff residents can request a special deferment of their fall 2005 fees. The fee deferments may be requested in person from August 18 through August 29 in Hovde Hall, room 14. This process will defer fee payment until October 3, 2005.

Complete details about this special deferment can be found at:
http://www.gradschool.purdue.edu/downloads/announcements/GRADUATE_STAFF_DEF_2005.DOC

The Graduate School is pleased to announce that it completed an agreement with GradSchools.com to enable all West Lafayette graduate programs to have a priority listing and, therefore, increased visibility free of charge to the program.

The high priority listing on GradSchools.com ensures that each graduate program is viewable in the first tier of programs that appears when a prospective student conducts a program search. Additionally, the Purdue University logo appears at the top of the listing and is linked to the program’s Web page. GradSchools.com refers to this service as a “hot button.”

Graduate programs that have entered a free listing on GradSchools.com and have not reviewed it recently should do so now to ensure that the listing contains the most current information. You may also wish to review other programs’ listings to identify best practices.

If a program has already purchased a “hot button” from GradSchools.com, a Recruitment Services’ staff member will follow up with the program individually to explain the contract renewal options.

If you have any questions about this service or GradSchools.com, please contact JoAnne Sandifur in Recruitment Services at jsandifur@purdue.edu or 6-3310.

Approximately 432 students received master's degrees and another 320 students were awarded doctoral degrees during Purdue University's commencement ceremonies at 9:30 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 6, in the Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music.

Jennifer Pate Offenberg, a doctoral candidate from Concord, Calif., delivered the student response. During her time at Purdue, Offenberg was one of four graduate students in 2005 to receive the Graduate School’s Excellence in Teaching Award and was involved in the Krannert Doctoral Student Association and the Purdue Graduate Student Government.

Mark Jaeger, manager of the Graduate School’s thesis and dissertation office, logged in 372 theses and dissertations this summer, likely the largest number of deposits in any term.

The Graduate School will offer three graduate faculty mentoring workshops in the fall semester. The workshops are intended for new tenure-track faculty and will help prepare them to supervise graduate students and to succeed as graduate mentors. The fall schedule of workshops is set for:

September 20, Tuesday, 9:30 – 11:30, STEW 314
September 30, Friday, 1:30 -3:30, RAWL 3082
October 6, Thursday, 1:30 – 3:30, STEW 218 A&B

The dean of the Graduate School will invite new faculty at the beginning of the academic year to register for one of the workshops.

The combined B.S. in Industrial Engineering and MBA and the combined B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and MBA degree programs received final approval from Provost Sally Mason. The programs were recommended for approval by the Graduate Council at its April, 2005 meeting.

The combined degrees will enable a small number of highly qualified BS students in IE and ME to also gain admission to the School of Management and to work toward the completion of both BS and MBA degrees over a course of five years.