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Welcome to Stony
Brook University. This is the first of 5 orientation podcasts
designed specifically for new graduate students. My name is Caitlin and I'll be your orientation
guide along the way. As a fellow graduate student and native Long Islander
I'm excited to welcome you to Stony Brook and help you get settled in to your graduate program.
In this podcast I'll briefly introduce you to Stony Brook University,
Long Island and the surrounding areas.
At the end of the podcast we will here from interim Dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Chuck Taber.
I've designed each of the subsequent four orientation
podcasts to give you information you need to begin a successful career
here at Stony Brook. Part 2 will cover all of the important administrative
policies and procedures, including registration, financial aide and tuition.
Part 3 will cover the various health insurance options on campus.
Part 4 will introduce you to Stony Brook's library and technology facility
and finally part 5 will cover several important elements of graduate
student life on campus, including the Graduate Student Organization,
information on the student employee unions and an interview with the graduate student
advocate. With that let's begin your introduction to
campus. Stony Brook University is a really exciting place to be these days.
Stony Brook is a young university, just founded in 1957
and the first PhD was awarded in 1966.
Since then, Stony Brook has grown quickly to become one the top public
universities in the world. This productivity and the university's reputation are
largely a product of the quality of Stony Brook's faculty and graduate students.
As new graduate students you'll no doubt contribute to the continued success of Stony Brook
as you work towards your degree. Stony Brook has award winning faculty who
are among the most productive faculty at public universities, as well as
technical facilities that are rivaled by no other universities in the region and are
among the top ten in the country for a public university.
Recently Stony Brook has been growing rapidly. In the last three years Stony Brook has
launched tremendous growth in its masters education programs. This gives
Stony Brook the opportunity to greatly expand graduate education as
well as the opportunity to meet the needs of both the nation and the world for a masters
educated workforce. Stony Brook has a number of
new physical buildings on campus and intellectual centers that you may be involved in during the course
of your research. New buildings and facilities on campus
include the Charles B. *** Center, which is a center for asian culture and asian american
studies, The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics,
The Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology
which unites research in physics, mathematics and computational science to
advance both biology and medicine and The Center for Excellence
in Wireless and Information Technology, the CEWIT.
Stony Brook University includes two satellite campuses at Manhattan
and Southampton. At Stony Brook Manhattan, university members have the
opportunity to take a variety of courses and to engage directly with New York City.
At Stony Brook Southampton there is a thriving Graduate Arts program
including a renowned creative writing program.
Closer to home, Stony Brook is fortunate to have strong partnerships with other research
institutions on Long Island, such as Brookhaven National Laboratories
and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Both of these major research
institutions are within a half hour to forty five minute drive of campus
and many faculty and students have close ties with research labs and projects
at one or both institutions. Doctoral students
have the additional opportunity to take part in the Interuniversity Doctoral
Consortium. This consortium allows Stony Brook University doctoral
students to take classes from other New York area universities including
Columbia, NYU and the City University of New York.
The consortium allows for an intellectual community to develop
and doesn't cost students anything beyond Stony Brook tuition.
Long Island is a remarkable place. For those of you not from the area,
well, it's a very long island. About a 120 miles long
and 15 miles wide. There are always a lot of things going on.
Long Island has easy access to New York City and all of the events and activities
you might want in the city that never sleeps, as well as its own unique
activities and locales. The campus is situated
right in the middle of the island on the north shore in the Three Village area.
Farther south and
east you have the Hamptons which are a world renowned vacation resort
with fantastic beaches and unique shops. Although these shops might
be a bit out of the price range of a graduate student. The north and
south forks are home to Long Island's world famous vineyards and many of the vineyards
have tasting rooms and tours. Beachgoers have a multitude of options
including rocky north shore beaches just a short distance from campus,
and sandy south shore beaches, many of which are top ranked surfing
areas. And now I'll turn it over to Dr. Chuck Taber
Interim Dean of the Graduate School who has some advice for new graduate students on how to
maximize your experience at Stony Brook. Hi I'm
Chuck Taber, I'm the Dean of the Graduate School, I've been at Stony Brook for 24 years.
I wanted to talk with you about the importance of
relationships and balance. Many of you will
form life long relationships in graduate school.
These relationship will be with other graduate students, with faculty mentors
with dissertation advisors,
with classroom teachers, with students from other programs.
Many of my best friends were formed in graduate
school. This network of relationships is
the most important support structures for you as you build your
academic, professional and scholarly lives.
I have relationships with graduate students that I was in school with
that I still depend on
in my professional life. I see people at conferences
when I'm producing a paper. I distribute it
to my old friends who read it. I talk to my dissertation
advisor on a regular basis and these are the sorts of things that will really help
you build your professional and scholarly
lives. I also wanted to talk with you about the importance of balance
in your life. When graduate students work on their research or in their
classwork, they often become consumed with what's going on in their laboratory
or in their studies and it's often tempting
to ignore the rest of your life, and research
in my own experience suggest that it's just it's really important
that you get out of the labs, get out the library, get out of the classroom and spend some quality
time with other students in activities not related
to your graduate studies. It will help you
be fresh in your studies and it will really help you to
keep your enthusiasm and excitement going and not burn out in
graduate school. I'm really happy to welcome you to Stony Brook. Stony Brook
is an exciting university and we're really
happy to have you as part of our community at Stony Brook.
Thank you Dr. Taber. As I wrap up your
introduction to Stony Brook there are a few key contacts and online resources
that I wanted to introduce you to before we get into the nitty gritty of administrative policies
and procedures. The first two are your graduate program
coordinator or GPC and your graduate program director
or GPD. You will get to know your
GPC very well as they will be your first go-to person when you encounter a
problem. The GPCs on campus are very friendly and helpful
staff members who would love for you to come by and say hi, even when you don't have a problem.
But, when a problem does arise they are the first line of defense
here at Stony Brook. Your GPD on the other hand is a faculty member at Stony Brook
who runs the academic side of the graduate program you're in.
So if you have academic questions for example about the requirements of your
program or questions about your future career options after graduate school,
your GPD, your advisor and the senior graduate students in your program
are the people to talk to. In podcast 2
you'll be introduced to the Graduate School, along with all of the important policies
and procedures. Podcast 5 will
introduce you to the Student Organization, the Graduate Student Advocate and the students employee unions
on campus. Every year the Graduate Student Organization
produces a graduate students survival guide to help new students get situated
and information on downloading a copy of the guide can be found in
podcast 5. This podcast and the others in the orientation
series will be archived and accessible from the graduate school website should you
ever need to refer back to them. Finally, the official graduate bulletin
is available online on the graduate school website and contains all of the official
policies and procedures for each program. Welcome to campus.
Now on to podcast 2 and administrative policies and procedures.