The CGS–JED report identifies challenges faced by graduate students, such as poor mentorship, the inability to access counselling services and a lack of training for non-academic careers. It also urges university administrators and members of campus communities to improve mental-health support services, revise leave-of-absence policies, and provide mentorship training for faculty members.

Ava Fergerson, a recent master’s degree recipient in psychological sciences at Western Kentucky University (WKU), spent four years working with Dr. Amy Brausch in WKU’s Risk Behaviors & Suicide Prevention Lab. Fergerson wants to better understand suicidal thoughts and behaviors in young adults who are sexual assault survivors. Her interest in the work began as an undergraduate at WKU when she began volunteering at Hope Harbor, a sexual trauma recovery center, in 2016. “I was really motivated by Gender and Women’s Studies educators to get involved in service as a way to benefit the community,” she said.

Fergerson’s graduate work used research psychology to benefit sexual assault survivors. Her master’s thesis, An Application of the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide in College-Age Survivors of Sexual Assault, considered the “applicability of the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicide (IPTS) to suicide risk in survivors of sexual victimization.” IPTS is used to both better understand suicidal behaviors and to identify those at risk and is based on the theory that a suicidal person must overcome their own fear of death through a combination of “thwarted belongingness” and “perceived burdensomeness.” One of Fergerson’s findings is that perceived burdensomeness was a predictive factor for suicide ideation but thwarted belongingness was not for sexual assault survivors.

Her exceptional work has not only received attention from her peers, but also spurred her to deeper study. While at WKU, Fergerson received numerous honors, including the Catherine Coogan-Ward Feminist Action Award from the WKU Gender and Women's Studies program, Outstanding Graduate Student in the Department of Psychological Sciences, and the John D. Minton Graduate Student Award. She’s currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Southern Mississippi in clinical psychology. To learn more about Ava’s work, visit the Western Kentucky University website.

Visit the GradImpact Feature Gallery to learn more about the amazing, innovative research being done by graduate students and alumni across the world.

Photo Credit: Bryan Lemon, Communications and Marketing Staff, WKU

However, many universities and physics departments lack comprehensive resources and infrastructure to help their students make that transition. A 2017 report by the Council of Graduate Schools found that only around 60% of institutions had formal professional development programs designed to help prepare graduate students for nonacademic careers.

Appeals for improved diversity and inclusion in higher education are often rooted in moral and political terms: We must expand access to college for underrepresented groups so that they have equal opportunities to benefit from postsecondary degrees. These claims are important. Often overlooked, however, is the economic value of diversifying colleges and universities. According to McKinsey’s Diversity Matters report, “Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.”

Sanchita Balachandran’s work embodies the way an interdisciplinary approach to complex research questions can complicate and enrich our understanding of even the most enduring subjects. In her role as associate director of the Johns Hopkins University Archaeological Museum, she’s an art conservationist and a researcher. As a senior lecturer in JHU’s Department of Near Eastern Studies, she’s a teacher and a mentor. And, as a doctoral student in preservation studies at the University of Delaware, she’s part humanist and part scientist.

Balachandran’s research shows the ways that contemporary biases have limited our understanding of the past. While she studies ancient ceramics, particularly Athenian ceramics from the 6^th to 4^th centuries BCE, she’s thinking more broadly about the people that made these artifacts and why their labor has been largely left out of classical narratives.  Balachandran wants us to think about the identities of the artisans who crafted the ceramics and how their labor was essential to ancient economies. Beyond that, she wants her work to help scholars interrogate their own biases about who mattered and celebrate the diversity of ancient societies. “Thinking about the diversity of these ancient makers and their lived experiences offer us ways to think about the dignity of work, the importance of this kind of ‘essential labor,’ the need to respond to valid critiques of Classics in general at a time when it has been rightly called out for enabling white supremacy by not emphasizing the diversity of the ancient past,” she noted.

To do this work, Balachandran uses a technique called reflectance transformation imaging that can reveal details found under the ceramics’ paint. It is a technique that fits her research’s narrative aspirations. Just as reflectance transformation aims to uncover secrets buried under paint, so too does Balachandran’s work seek to recover the voices of the marginalized artisans – immigrants, women, and enslaved peoples. Since these marginalized groups were often of little interest to elites of their time, their voices are faint in the historical record. By using reflectance transformation, Balachandran hopes to amplify these marginalized voices by calling attention to the incredible skill and care that went into their labor.

“I want to find ways to make sure that this research speaks to the most human of questions: Do I matter? What is my place in the world? Will anyone remember me?” said Balachandran. In addition to her doctoral work and role at the JHU’s Archaeological Museum, Balachandran is also the founder and director of the non-profit organization, Untold Stories, “that pursues an art conservation profession that represents and preserves a fuller spectrum of human cultural heritage.” To learn more about Sanchita’s work, visit the University of Delaware website.

Visit the GradImpact Feature Gallery to learn more about the amazing, innovative research being done by graduate students and alumni across the world.

Photo Credit: James T. VanRensselaer, courtesy of Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum

Institutions and faculty engaged with equity in graduate education adopted holistic review practices championed by many institutions and organizations, including the University of Washington, Columbia University and the Council of Graduate Schools. As early as May 2020, universities such as Cornell University began talking about holistic review practices in graduate admissions in response to COVID-19.

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson began her career as a project manager for an IT company, but she wanted to do something more meaningful with her life. The years she spent volunteering and mentoring abused women and high-risk children led her to pursue her M.S. in forensic psychology and later a PhD in human services at Walden University. Her work focused on how women manage the effects of having an incarcerated partner. Through her research, Dr. Hart-Johnson constructed a theory of symbolic imprisonment, grief, and coping (SIG-C) to consider all the ways in which those women with incarcerated partners feel loss – on psychological, social, symbolic, and physical levels.

Hart-Johnson’s research provided a foundation that she used to support families impacted by incarceration. She is president and co-founder of DC Project Connect, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., with a mission to provide crisis intervention and information resources to families affected by incarceration. “It’s rare to find an African American whose life has not been touched by mass incarceration” says Dr. Hart-Johnson. “It’s also sad that it’s become so commonplace within our communities that we just don’t talk about it.” In addition, Hart-Johnson serves as the vice president of the International Coalition of Children with Incarcerated Parents organization and as chairperson for the Advocacy in Action Coalition for the International Prisoner Family Conference. In 2018, she received the Walden University Outstanding Alumni Award for her work.

“I believe the strongest leadership role we can play as advocates and executives of nonprofits is to understand the needs of our community by listening to the voices of individuals who are most impacted,” said Dr. Hart Johnson. To learn more about Dr. Hart-Johnson’s work, visit the Walden University website.

Visit the GradImpact Feature Gallery to learn more about the amazing, innovative research being done by graduate students and alumni across the world.

Photo Credit: Walden University

“Supporting Graduate Student Mental Health and Well-being: Evidence-Informed Recommendations for the Graduate Community” is the result of a 22-month project that began prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unquestionably the pandemic has led to additional stress and impact to mental health, which is taken into consideration.

“We were already knowing there were rising concerns about graduate student mental health and well-being,” said Dr. Suzanne Ortega, president of CGS. “What we rapidly learned is that COVID, the police killings, the anti-Blackness waves have really amplified the stress that people were feeling.”

Graduate student mental health and wellbeing has become a pressing priority for graduate institutions in the U.S. and around the world.  Based on a collaborative effort by the Council of Graduate Schools and The Jed Foundation, this webinar will share findings and recommendations designed to inform future research and action on this pressing topic. Participants will also learn about a framework for individual and collaborative action to support graduate student mental health and wellbeing that has been adopted by 150+ CGS member institutions.

Click here to visit the project page where you can download the full report, executive summary, and communications toolkit. 

A new report from the Council of Graduate Schools and the Jed Foundation now finds that while graduate students face unique mental health and well-being challenges, they are underrepresented in research and in campus messaging. One recent study suggested that one-third of graduate students report symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression. But in a CGS and Jed survey of institutions, only 58 percent said they had a model, framework or plan to promote the mental health and well-being of graduate students.