A Message from Dean Limesand
Dean Kirsten Limesand spent the last few weeks meeting one-on-one with every member of the Graduate College. The first question she asked everyone was, “What do you love about the Graduate College?”
Most of the team had the same answer: They had great coworkers, and they supported the mission of the Graduate College. Dean Limesand felt encouraged, but she knew that the team was facing some external challenges—the same challenges facing graduate colleges around the country.
“The first of which is financial support,” says Dean Limesand. “We’re all feeling a financial pinch right now, and it’s not a problem we can solve quickly. I had a conversation with GPSC last week about how to deal with the financial strain, and we talked about building in more basic-needs support. If the economic situation is going to be a slow change, we need to look at things we can change quickly.”
The second challenge in mental health self-care.
“Mental health is a spectrum,” explains Dean Limesand, “from wellbeing all the way to crisis. Thinking about mental health as self-care allows you to be any place in that continuum and still try to improve your wellbeing.”
To that end, the Graduate College is trying to hire life management counselors, to be housed in the Graduate Center, who would see graduate students free of charge. The counselors could help students examine where they could improve aspects of their own life that are inhibiting their ability to get through graduate school, which raises another question: where are our graduates headed?
“Academia is not the primary career path for our graduates,” notes Dean Limesand. “For example, the number of biomedical PhD students who are in tenured or tenure-track positions is less than 20 percent.”
Based on data like these, Dean Limesand believes that we need to have active conversations about how to link the activities of graduate school to skills and competencies that students can parlay into jobs in the private sector, government, and non-profit work.
“I always ask students where they want to go with their career and how we can facilitate their experiences to help them be the best candidate in that direction.”
And that direction might not be immediately apparent.
“A lot of wildly successful people take very circuitous routes,” says Dean Limesand, “But we don’t always talk about that. Your career path might not be an autobahn straight to your dream job. Sometimes, it’s a hike.”
But whatever your career path after you graduate, you’re here right now, and Dean Limesand wants you to know that “you belong here. You were accepted into a graduate program. Therefore, you belong here. I know many students struggle to feel like they belong in their program, and even if they do, they may not feel a sense of belonging within their community. So I’d encourage you to create a network of mentors. Think about areas of support that are needed in order to achieve your goals. This might include career champions, peer mentors, or socio-cultural mentors. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my network of mentors.”
Those mentors may be drawn from various sources around the Graduate College, which is why it’s so important that the college continue to move in a positive direction.
“We want to be the destination for people to complete their graduate degree,” states Dean Limesand. “We truly believe that we can achieve great things.”