Shilpa and I (and other MSL staff!) are back on the road for more excellent adventures. This time, we’re travelling to grad fairs and info sessions at universities, as well as some larger conferences. In this post, I’ll give you a quick summary of our travels over the past couple weeks. Make sure to read until the end to see where we are headed next!

IU Grad Fair

Our first trip of the school year was a visit to my alma mater, Indiana University! Our main focus of the visit was the Graduate School Fair, hosted by the Career Development Center.

We also had the opportunity to participate in two panels with students interested in attending graduate school. Each panel focused on everything undergraduates need to know when considering grad school, from the admissions process to the on-campus (or online) student experience.

The first panel was organized by Michael Jordan, Career Coach in the Walter Center for Career Achievement, and Elizabeth Smith, Senior Advisor for the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Mathematics, as a part of their course on Getting into Graduate School. Michael and Elizabeth teach this elective course for undergraduates who seek guidance on the graduate school admissions process.

Shilpa Gokhale sat on the second panel, hosted by the CDC, which featured the following representatives:

• Jeff Goecker, Office of Graduate Admissions – Purdue University
• Tina Simons, ED.D, Director of Admissions – Illinois School of Professional Psychology
• Meredith Richardson, Admissions Manager – Case Western Reserve University

The Grad Fair took place in the Indiana Memorial Union’s Alumni Hall and featured a huge variety of programs. If you’re an undergraduate at IU, definitely consider attending this fair in the future! It is a great opportunity to explore graduate programs and get all your program-specific questions answered.

Food Highlights

On the drive down, we stopped in Indianapolis for a quick bite to eat at Kuma’s Corner. Having a location in Chicago, Kuma’s Corner is a fairly well-known burger joint in the Midwest; however, neither Shilpa nor I were aware/ expected that the restaurant is heavy metal-themed. Nonetheless, the food was delicious, and I highly recommend stopping by if you’re in the area!

Bonus: Can you name the Bloomington restaurant that features this artwork?

Grace Hopper Celebration

The 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration took place in Houston, TX. If you haven’t heard of GHC, here’s a quick summary of the event from their website:

The Grace Hopper Celebration is the world’s largest gathering of women technologists…GHC is a three-day celebration designed to bring together women in computing to discuss research and career interests. The celebration includes presentations on a variety of topics, professional development activities, an open source day, and much more.

Being a first-time attendee, I was amazed by the scope of the event. I represented the MSL program at the Career Fair portion of the conference, which featured both employers and graduate school programs. Many of the attendees I met had backgrounds in computer science, though there were certainly other STEM areas represented.

Although our booth wasn’t made out of balloons and didn’t feature a robot (see below photos), I met a great group of women for whom the program clicked! They were excited by the potential opportunities outside of traditional CS careers (software engineering, data analysis, development, etc.) and were intrigued by the coursework that focuses on the legal implications of technology.

Here are some highlights from the many impressive displays and exhibits at the fair:

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Next Stops!

If you plan to attend one of the below conferences or are at any of the below institutions, let us know by sending an email to msl@northwestern.edu! We’d love to connect with you!

Conferences:

• SWE
• BMES
• AIChE
• SHPE
• oSTEM
• NSBE
• NPA

Universities:

• UIUC
• MSU
• Claremont Colleges
• University of California, Berkeley
• Stanford