I volunteered to represent the graduate students from the school of journalism and mass communication in the University of Iowa’s Graduate Student Senate. As a senator, I have two main responsibilities. First, I attend monthly meetings that detail a variety of institutional occurrences that affect graduate students. Second, I am required to serve on a committee within the Graduate Student Senate. I will be working with the Graduate Student Teaching committee. Previous iterations of the committee found that grad students felt undertrained before entering the classroom for the first time, so our goal is to develop a program aimed to help graduate teaching assistants get more training for their teaching. While there are many wonderful services at the University of Iowa that offer training for faculty, grad students, and more, we’re aiming to supplement these services by working to cater toward the schedules of grad students.
