Graduate students say the university does not provide enough funds for travel to conferences or enough information about how to get the funds, forcing graduate students to stretch their already thin budgets to afford a key networking and academic opportunity.
Administrators and graduate students agreed the benefits of going to conferences were numerous, including helping a student’s career and increasing university programs’ rankings in surveys. But students said too little money is available for grants, and information on how to get them can be hard to find.
The Graduate Student Government recently unanimously passed a resolution asking each university department to include information about how to get department funds to help with travel on their websites and in the packets they distribute at orientation.
Each department has its own way of allocating money for graduate students to use when traveling to conferences, GSG Vice President for Committee Affairs Tomek Kott said. He said it is difficult for students to find out whether money is even available to students and, if so, how students can get it. Kott said he can’t even find the information on his own department’s website.
“We just want to make sure students are able to find [the information] as easy as possible,” said Kott, who is also the chair of the GSG’s academic affairs committee. “If [departments] have no money, that’s fine; we’ll just look for another source.”
Currently, the only funds available through the graduate school are in the form of the Goldhaber Travel Grant, which does not provide enough money to cover students’ travel and can only be awarded to each student once, according to GSG President Anupama Kothari. The one-time limit makes things difficult for Ph.D. students, who can spend close to a decade getting their degree and may have to attend multiple conferences.
“It’s a little sad because faculty get lots of travel grants [from the university], and faculty make way more [money] than we do,” she said.
The travel costs can stretch the budget of graduate students, who are only guaranteed about $14,000 if they are serving as either a research or teaching assistant. Some graduate students do make more.
Teresa Moore, the executive director of department operations for electrical engineering, said her department offers some students $1,000 travel stipends with their fellowships and has a matching program in which the department will match the travel money awarded to students who attend specific conferences.
Moore said the money is given out on a case-by-case basis, and sometimes there is not enough money to help all the graduate students who request aid, but she has not heard a lot of complaints from the students.
“[Whether students get money] is more of a question of whether we’re able,” she said. “Venturing into any new program is difficult right now.”
Jaganath Sankaran, who is on the GSG’s academic affairs committee, said multiple students brought up the issue, and their concerns dealt with making information about the availability of the money and the rules about getting the money more specific.
“We want the whole process to be much more transparent,” Sankaran said. “If there’s money available, we’ll take it,” he added, laughing.
Conferences are also an important opportunity for graduate students to network, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School Cynthia Hale said. She said the university encourages students to attend them because they provide students with the opportunity to present their research and receive feedback on it.
“[Traveling to conferences] is an absolutely important part of graduate education,” Hale said. “I know [the lack of travel funds] is an important issue for students.”
Master’s students attend about two or three conferences during their academic careers, while doctoral candidates attend about 10, Sankaran said. In many cases, students have to travel internationally to those conferences, he said.
The Goldhaber Travel Grant awards a maximum amount of $250 to students traveling east of the Mississippi River, $400 to those traveling west of it and $600 to those traveling internationally. In any case, it is not nearly enough to cover travel costs completely. The grant is only given to each student once because the university does not have the money to give out more, Hale said.
The GSG resolution asks that departments put up-to-date information on their websites about whether they have money to give graduate students to help with their travels and, if so, how they can get that money. The resolution also requests the same information be printed in the departments’ packets distributed to every student in graduate programs. Kott said the change will be easy for the departments to make and will not take a lot of time, but it will make a big difference.
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