Days and times are subject to change.
Welcome to the Grad Slam Judges page. The faculty, staff, and community members that serve as judges for Grad Slam support graduate students by helping them enhance their public speaking skills, all the while learning about the amazing creative and academic work that takes place at the University of Arizona. Past Grad Slams have featured judges from all over the University of Arizona and Tucson community.
This page provides an overview of what Grad Slam judges do, how they are selected, and how to get involved.
A primary objective of the University Fellows Program is to produce interdisciplinary and collaborative leaders. To achieve this goal, the Graduate Center has developed weekly programming that fosters professional development, interdisciplinary innovation, community engagement, and mentoring, Fellows benefit from rich opportunities to forge new connections with people and ideas, while strengthening their foundational knowledge and professional preparation.
The Graduate Center is committed to helping students and postdoctoral scholars find events that meet their professional development, skills development, and interdisciplinary networking needs. In addition to our own programs, we work with units across campus to promote opportunities that benefit students and postdoctoral scholars.
The calendar below includes opportunities available via webinar or in-person all across campus.
The University Fellows Program is the flagship initiative of the Graduate Center. The program includes a fellowship offered to the University's highest-ranked incoming doctoral and masters students.
Staying healthy is key to being productive and happy, but can be challenging in this stress-filled world. This series on Healthy Living features eight talented scientists and practitioners who will share their research-based strategies and advice for how to achieve and maintain good physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual health.
The Healthy Living lecture series is hosted by The University of Arizona Graduate Center with support from the Office for Research & Discovery, and the School of Mind, Brain & Behavior
You may already know Grad Slam as an annual competition and fantastic opportunity to share your work with a diverse audience; however, there is an exciting opportunity specifically tailored for graduate students of music, dance, poetry and more: the Grad Slam Performing and Creative Arts Competition.
As of Fall 2019, the Writing Oasis Program is being combined with another program to become Writing Efficiency Sessions. More information about the Writing Efficiency Sessions is coming soon.---
A Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge, a two-time winner of the Astronaut Scholarship, a published author in Applied Optics, and a researcher in the BIO5 Institute, University Fellow Travis Sawyer is a luminous presence in the University of Arizona’s top-tier optical sciences program. Laser-focused on his research in medical imaging, he is working to improve early cancer detection by measuring how the optical properties of tissue change throughout disease progression.
Communicating the value of one’s research to the general public can be a difficult task. But the UA prepares graduate students to do just that.
Academic conferences are an exciting part of sharing scholarly work, but the costs and stresses associated with those professional development opportunities can be prohibitive to graduate students. An array of graduate-oriented conferences and events offer the same benefits, as well as added bonuses such as lower cost, less anxiety, and more opportunities to assume leadership roles.
Award-winning cellist Juan Mejia has spent most of his life performing and sharing his expertise with others on multiple continents. After stints in Medellín, Bogotá, Interlochen, and San Francisco, he has brought his remarkable talents to Tucson.
The UA grants more PhDs to Native Americans than any other institution in the world. This in itself is impressive; the work to reach this status is no less noteworthy. For over a decade, a grant from and partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has provided the UA an opportunity to support the community of Native American scholars as they work toward degrees.
Like many graduate students, Amanda Snell isn’t waiting until she earns her degree to start making the world a better place. For the past ten years, she has worked with underserved populations on behalf of literacy, access, and the many social needs and policy issues related to language learning. She has designed innovative courses in English as a Second Language for adult learners, published articles about her research on family literacy and community-based classrooms, presented her work on multilingual curricula at national conferences, and effectively partnered with language communities in three countries.
The University of Arizona boasts many interdisciplinary and community collaborations that produce exciting, vital work. One such gem is the partnership between the UA College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Southwest Folklife Alliance, whose work was featured in the Graduate Center’s Spring 2017 Interdisciplinary Collaborations Lecture Series. And while you’re likely familiar with Tucson Meet Yourself, you may not know about the year round-programming that celebrates the southwest.
Most graduate students beginning their work at the University of Arizona haven’t already established their credentials and credibility as a scholar, researcher, or artist. Not Khaled Jarrar. With internationally acclaimed art projects stretching back a decade, Jarrar is already an established, lauded, and highly visible artist.
First enrolled as a pre-med neuroscience student, University Fellow Mel Ferrara changed to Women and Gender Studies in their sophomore year and has blazed a new path of research and advocacy while remaining connected with their scientific roots. Mel was recently awarded a prestigious Point Scholarship in recognition of their accomplishments. In our feature interview, Mel talks with Terry Pitt-Brooke about their story, their research interests, and their plans for the future.
The Graduate Center’s Interdisciplinary Collaborations Lecture Series begins Friday, January 27, 4:30 to 5:30 PM, in the Student Union Kachina Lounge (all lectures to take place Fridays at the same time and place). Professor Ellen McMahon and Eric Magrane will present Creating Intersections Across Communities: Institute of the Environment’s Arts, Environment and Humanities Network. Throughout the series, attendees will share the experience and insights of participants in four initiatives that bring together diverse perspectives from the sciences, arts, humanities, social and behavioral sciences, and communities around the globe. In addition to discussing their innovative projects and synergies, experts will address best practices for creating, building, and maintaining collaborative initiatives.
University Fellow Sarah Sutton was recently in Florida to witness the launch of the OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu. The images she creates from the data the probe will be sending back when it reaches its destination will help mission planners choose the best site to bring the probe within “arm’s reach” of the asteroid, to allow it to collect a sample that will be brought back to Earth. She talks with Terry Pitt-Brooke about how an artist ended up in Planetary Science, the power of math, mentoring, collaboration and much more.
For many native Tucsonans, out of state visitors, and students, winter is a welcome change from the intense heat of summer. But for those who do not have the luxury of shelter, Tucson’s winter temperature swings of 30 degrees or more and near freezing nighttime lows are difficult and dangerous. This Fall, the University Fellows Program partnered with WORKship, a nonprofit organization with 16 years of experience serving Tucson’s homeless, to make preparing for winter a little easier and to raise awareness of the challenges facing some members of our community.
The Graduate Writing Oases Program is on hiatus as of Fall 2017.