On September 26, Dr. Michael Hunt, Dean pro tem, Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, and Dr. Ainsley Carry, Vice President Students, co-hosted a listening session for graduate students at UBC Vancouver.
Students shared their perspectives on the following five guiding questions:
- What is working well?
- What is not working well?
- What should we keep doing?
- What should we stop doing?
- What questions are we not asking?
Participants
Approximately 80 graduate students participated, representing a diverse group of international and domestic graduate students, at both the masters and doctoral level.
Planning and Institutional Research (PAIR) analysts attended both sessions, took notes, and analyzed the data. This report provides a summary of the aggregate data from the Listening Sessions.
Results
The following key themes emerged from our consultation with students:
- Accessibility
- Health and wellbeing
- Graduate student funding
- Time to milestones and completion
- Post PhD career pathways
- Housing and childcare
- Onboarding processes and requirements
- Equity, diversity, and inclusion
Multiple initiatives are either in development or already being executed to address some of the concerns raised by students. As we move forward in the weeks and months ahead, our commitment is to continuously work with graduate students and the respective units to address the issues and concerns raised.