BSOE Graduate Student Newsletter
Announcements
*PLEASE NOTE THE UPCOMING UNIVERSITY DEADLINES*
Please note the following upcoming university deadlines, and ALWAYS check the Academic and Administrative Calendar for important dates and deadlines. Bookmark this year's Academic and Administrative Calendar and refer to it regularly.
Friday, May 7th Late Add with Fee Deadline
The Add by Petition form requires the signatures of both the instructor and the department adviser and needs to be submitted to the Office of the Registrar.
Friday, August 27th Leave of Absence Summer Deadline
Deadline to petition for leave of absence (LOA) beginning the next quarter. LOA forms must be approved/signed by your faculty advisor and submitted to the BSOE Graduate Advising office by the posted deadline. LOA application forms are available on the Graduate Division's website.
Supporting students with the latest Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds
The Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA), signed into law in late December, provided our campus with $28.8 million on March 17 to mitigate the financial impact of the pandemic on the university and its students. Our Financial Aid and Scholarships Office will directly award $9.7 million of the CRRSAA funding to graduate and undergraduate students with exceptional need to help with expenses related to COVID-19 including tuition, housing, food, health care (including mental health care), and child care.
Financial aid grants will be directly awarded to graduate and undergraduate students who demonstrate exceptional need, for example very low expected family contribution levels or student parents with dependent children. Determinations will be made based on existing financial aid information. In most cases, additional applications or requests will not be necessary. Graduate students who appear eligible based on prior financial aid information but who did not complete an application this year will receive information by email on how to file a Declaration of Exceptional Need to confirm eligibility, a new requirement due to changes in this round of higher education relief funds.
The Financial Aid and Scholarships Office consulted with campus leaders, and with leadership of the Student Union Assembly and the Graduate Student Association, on how best to award funds within program requirements and regulations. The minimum spring quarter award will be $1,000. Students identified for an award will receive an email in the next few days to ensure direct-deposit information is current. Money will be disbursed soon afterward. The CRRSAA awards are one-time grants that do not need to be paid back.
Though CRRSAA funds are restricted to students eligible for federal aid, UC Santa Cruz will provide equivalent awards to students who have completed the California Dream Application.
Any student experiencing a financial emergency, regardless of aid eligibility should contact the Slug Support team.
The remaining $19.1 million will be used to cover campus expenses associated with COVID-19. Following federal guidance, costs may include additional course offerings or sections to ensure compliance with social distancing requirements, shipping course materials to students taking remote instruction, continued technology costs supporting remote instruction, lost revenue, COVID-19 prevention such as campus vaccination services, testing services, etc.
Our thoughts are with all members of the UC Santa Cruz community as together we continue to face the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Please stay safe, stay well, and stay connected.
For more information click here
Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL) Teaching for Equity Graduate Certificate Program - Spring 2021
Registration opens Monday, February 22 at 9:00am Pacific Time: bit.ly/
Are you passionate about promoting equity in higher education? CITL’s Teaching for Equity Graduate Certificate Program is a unique professionalization curriculum designed to enhance your understanding and implementation of best practices in equity-focused pedagogy. Through engaging conversations and structured learning activities, we’ll explore key issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in college classrooms. You will be guided in developing teaching strategies shown to foster the equitable learning outcomes that inspired so many of us to pursue higher education as a calling.
This intimate learning community of graduate students from across campus will meet bi-weekly (5 sessions total) during Spring quarter. Included among the topics we’ll cover: identifying common institutional barriers to learning; teaching to cultural strengths; implementing Universal Design for Learning; embracing identity and difference in the classroom; promoting active and collaborative learning; using emotional connection to motivate learning; and scaffolding assignments to benefit student success.
Depending on your personal teaching goals, you will be supported through the process of developing components of an equity-focused course syllabus, along with associated lesson plans and learning activities.
This program is a commitment -- but we promise you’ll come away from the experience with an invaluable toolkit of equitable teaching strategies that will shape your course design and teaching practices for years to come. Please join us!
Program Dates: Five live Zoom sessions on every other Friday in Spring 2021, at 10:00am-12:00pm Pacific Time:
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Friday, April 2 (Week 1)
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Friday, April 16 (Week 3)
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Friday, April 30 (Week 5)
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Friday, May 14 (Week 7)
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Friday, May 28 (Week 9)
How to Participate: Graduate students in any discipline and with any level of prior teaching experience are welcome to register. The certificate program is limited to 30 participants. Participants commit to attending all 5 workshops and to completing teaching-related projects with the structured support of the learning community.
Registration opens on Monday, February 22, 2021 at 9:00am Pacific Time and will remain open until Monday, March 1 at 9:00am Pacific Time.
Registration link: bit.ly/TeachForEquity2021
A waitlist will automatically open after 30 people have registered. CITL will contact people on the waitlist in the order in which they sign up if any spots become available.
Find this information online at: https://citl.ucsc.edu/
CART Fellowship Application Now Open
Applications for the CART Fellowship Program in Summer and Fall 2021 are now open! The deadline to apply is Monday, May 10th.
In the Center for Archival Research and Training, you can:
- Get paid experience working remotely with archival materials
- Create your own digital project aligned with your research and creative interests
- Enhance your research skills using archives and primary sources
- Help make archival collections more discoverable to researchers
- Learn about different library and archives career options
- Explore innovative digital tools that you can use in your research and teaching
- Make connections with graduate students from different disciplines and interests
More information about this year's CART fellowship is available on our website, and an online information session will be held at 12pm on Wednesday April 14th. Register here.
Contact CART Archivist Alix Norton at alix.norton@ucsc.edu with any questions you have about the application and the program.
Summer GSRs for Salton Sea Project
Here are announcements for 3 GSR positions for this summer, with a total of 5 openings. GSRs will be working with PI Brent Haddad on a project that will be reviewing proposals for the restoration of the Salton Sea.
Graduate students in Environmental Studies, Economics, Engineering, GIS, Earth and Planetary Sciences, and related fields are encouraged to apply.
Please see each of these announcements for more information about the individual positions, deadlines, etc.
Announcements: GSR_Information.pdf
SDSC GPU Hackathon to be held in May- APPLY Now!
SDSC GPU Hackathon
Grab a Team and APPLY Today!
Application Deadline: March 4, 2021
Hackathon Prep Day 1: May 4, 2021
Hackathon Day 2 – 4: May 11 – 13, 2021
This event will be held virtually at no-charge.
GPU Hackathons provide exciting opportunities for scientists to accelerate their AI research or HPC codes under the guidance of mentors from national labs, universities and industry leaders in a collaborative environment.
The SDSC Hackathon is a multi-day event designed to help teams of three to six developers accelerate their own codes on GPUs using a programming model or machine learning framework of their choice. Each team is assigned mentors through the duration of the event.
This is a unique opportunity for teams to jumpstart acceleration or optimization of their code on GPUs. With the help of experienced mentors, each team should have significantly accelerated their code or know which steps to take to continue the work.
To get a better idea of what the virtual GPU Hackathon will be like, check out this blog post on the first virtual hackathon in the series hosted by SDSC last year.
SDSC's Annual High-Performance Computing and Data Science Summer Institute
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SDSC's Annual High-Performance Computing and Data Science Summer Institute |
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July 28, 2021: Preparation Day Application deadline: Sunday, May 2, 2021 Application and details at SDSC SI 2021. |
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2021-22 Guru Gobind Singh Fellowship Competition
You will find attached the call for the 2021-22 Guru Gobind Singh Fellowship Competition.
Nominations should be submitted via email to vpdgs@ucsc.edu by May 2.
FLYER: Guru_Gobind_Singh_call_2021-22_UCSC.pdf
Piatt Fellowship 2021-2022
The Graduate Division and the Office of Foundations Relations are
pleased to share this limited submission call for applications to the
Piatt Graduate Fellowship in the STEM disciplines.
The Piatt Fellowship is a graduate award from the Capitola-Aptos Rotary
Club. The anticipated amount of $15,000* will be awarded to a STEM
graduate student who is also a graduate of a public Santa Cruz County
High School.
Please send your application packet to Almut Wolf | awolf2@ucsc.edu |
831.459.2902).
Submission deadline is Monday, May 3rd, by 5pm.
Call for Application: PiattFellowshipCall_Applications.pdf
Application Form: PiattFellowshipApplForm.pdf
Startup Pitch Contest: IDEA Hub 2021
IDEA Hub is UCSC's Annual, Spring Quarter, End-of-Year pitch contest:
• Open to all UCSC startup teams
• Open to all departments, research areas, and degree programs
• Open to all business and social/environmental business models
• Founding team must have at least one 2020/21 UCSC student
• Non-traditional founders are strongly encouraged to apply
Deadline:
• First Round Applications due 5/14/21, 23:59 PST
Application instructions are included here:
http://bit.ly/ideahub2021-
Contact:
If you have any questions regarding IDEA Hub or this application, please contact UCSC Entrepreneur in Residence: mothusi@ucsc.edu
Bakersfield College Teaching Assistant Diversity Recruitment
Application Components:
- A letter of interest specifying why the candidate is interested in teaching students at Bakersfield College. The letter should also discuss how the candidate’s educational experiences have prepared them to teach at a community college with a diverse student body, like Bakersfield College.
- An updated curriculum vitae with at least three professional references and contact information listed, one of the references needs to be from a current or former supervisor.
- College/university transcript (unofficial transcripts will be accepted), including all college units attempted.
- One signed letter of recommendation written within the last six months specifically for the Bakersfield College Faculty Diversification Fellowship Program from an individual who has provided post-secondary academic instruction to the applicant.
- Link to application: https://careers.
kccd.edu/postings/13765
PowerPoint Presentation: Bakersfield_College_Recruitment_Presentation.pdf
Summer GSR Opportunities with CITL/HSI
Summer 2021 Graduate Student Researchers
The Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL) seeks two (2) 50% Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) for Summer 2021 to support the Redesigning Calculus in the Life Sciences component of the Graduating and Advancing New American Scholars (GANAS) grant, a Career Pathways HSI Title V project. The Redesigning Calculus in the Life Sciences activity will implement a comprehensive overhaul of curriculum and pedagogy with active learning and problem-solving sessions and focus on inclusivity and equity.
The GSRs will research and develop projects and active learning problem sets that bridge the introductory biology and calculus curricula to be used in the redesigned course.
Preferred qualifications include:
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Experience with developing learning activities (quizzes, mini tests, homework problems, worksheets) as a GSI or TA.
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Experience with articulating learning outcomes and their alignment with assessments and teaching practices.
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Exposure with application related concepts in biology where introductory calculus is relevant and integrated.
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Strong knowledge of calculus and some knowledge of biological sciences to bridge the transfer of knowledge between MATH 11A and the BIO20 series.
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Knowledge of Active Learning strategies.
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Typesetting knowledge in LaTeX or similar tools.
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Experience with Canvas content creation.
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Knowledge of rubric development for project based assignments.
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Works well in a collaborative environment where exchanging of ideas is dominant.
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Experience with literature review for the purpose of the designing of the Math 11A course learning activities.
These positions are 50% GSR appointments, which includes graduate student health insurance (GSHIP).
Interested graduate students must submit an up-to-date CV and a letter of application of no more than one single-spaced page that addresses your interest in the position and how your skills and experiences prepare you for the position.
Send applications to citl@ucsc.edu with the subject line “GANAS GSR Application” by 9:00am on Monday, May 3.
Timeline:
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Letter of intent due to CITL by Monday, May 3, at 9am (email letter to citl@ucsc.edu with subject the line “GANAS GSR Application”).
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Selected candidates will be invited for an interview by Friday, May 7.
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Interviews will take place the week of May 10.
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Final decision will be made by May 17.
About the GANAS Grant: The Graduating and Advancing New American Scholars (GANAS) - Career Pathways HSI Title V Project represents a major step in the evolution of the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Hispanic-Serving Research Institution. In the last 25 years, UCSC has doubled in size and more than tripled its Latina/o student population. Currently, Latina/o students comprise 27% of UCSC’s 17,500 students. The GANAS Project aims to support Latina/o, low-income/EOP, and underrepresented students to, through, and beyond UCSC by addressing curricular, co-curricular, and institutional barriers.
FLYER: GSR_Calculus_Life_Sciences_Redesign.pdf
Internship Opportunity
Internship Description
Digital Dynamics, Inc seeks an intern with experience in software design, coding and debugging. The intern will gain real-world software engineering experience at a thriving industrial controller company.
We frequently work in small teams to solve problems, explore new technologies, and learn from one another. The ideal intern for this environment will be enthusiastic and collaborative.
Responsibilities
- Document and test new diagnostic software applications in Linux and Windows
- Develop diagnostic software applications (coding, programming)
- Perform system testing on hardware with diagnostic software applications
Requirements
- Computer Science/Network Engineering, Engineering, or Mathematics major
- Excellent analytical and mathematics skills
- Ability to work in small team
- Experience programming in C, C++ in Linux and Windows operating systems
- Experience with MS Visual Studio a plus
Benefits
- Practical experience with a wide variety of software engineering tasks
- Collaborating hand-in-hand with a skilled team of software engineers
- Shadowing, mentoring, and training opportunities with seasoned professionals
- Flexible schedule for students
- Compensation available
If you’re interested please contact Gary Daniel who is DDI VP of Engineering (gdaniel@digitaldynamics.com)
Open Call - JSMF - 2021 Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards
2021 Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards for Dynamic and Multiscale Systems
Application Deadline: June 11, 2021
Overview
The fellowship is geared to students near the completion of their doctoral training and committed to acquiring new skills and experience in a multi-disciplinary field such as complex systems science. The JSMF fellowship is designed to provide students with opportunities to pursue postdoctoral training aligned with the student's interest and desire to obtain additional skills and experience that will further their pursuit of careers in complex systems science.
Eligibility:
·Students should anticipate completing their degree requirements and activating the Fellowship between May 2022 and April 2023.
·The JSMF Fellowship is a unique opportunity for students with an interest in and an aptitude for complexity science who are in the final stages of completing their Ph.D. and looking to add new dimensions to their graduate training that will either be difficult or impossible without an independent source of funding.
·Important: This Fellowship is not intended for individuals that already have completed a Ph.D. or students that have already identified a postdoctoral position and a postdoctoral mentor as traditional.
Award Details:
·$200,000 USD to be expended in no less than 2 and no more than 3 years.
·The cost of the full postdoctoral salary or stipend and fringe benefits must be paid in full from the fellowship.
·Institutions cannot request that other funding sources be used to cover the Fellow’s salary or stipend; the primary purpose of this fellowship is the independence of the postdoctoral fellow.
·JSMF does not consider dependence on institutional or research grant funding as commensurate with such independence. The fellowship is not intended to provide general support to a laboratory or department.
·If the institutional postdoctoral salary scales are set such that there are funds in excess of what is needed for stipend and benefits, the excess funds can be used by the institution to support the Fellow’s research.
Special Requirements: Please promptly submit your proposal intake form prior to the UCSC's Internal Institutional Deadlines. For proposal support, or for any questions about institutional requirements, please send requests and questions to the research development team at resdev@ucsc.edu. A proposal development specialist will field your requests.
Call sent: March 12, 2021
The Office Foundation Relations is a unit of University Relations. The FR team creates and maintains mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with private organizations, matching grant initiatives with educational and research programs and centers. FR supports faculty and staff to identify and approach these and other private foundations and corporations for funding, to assist in strategic positioning of the grant application, and to facilitate funder campus visits.
For a list of recent funding opportunities, please visit the FR website. FR Calls for Funding
Internship Opportunity
Internship Description
Digital Dynamics, Inc seeks an intern with experience in software design, coding and debugging. The intern will gain real-world software engineering experience at a thriving industrial controller company.
We frequently work in small teams to solve problems, explore new technologies, and learn from one another. The ideal intern for this environment will be enthusiastic and collaborative.
Responsibilities
- Document and test new diagnostic software applications in Linux and Windows
- Develop diagnostic software applications (coding, programming)
- Perform system testing on hardware with diagnostic software applications
Requirements
- Computer Science/Network Engineering, Engineering, or Mathematics major
- Excellent analytical and mathematics skills
- Ability to work in small team
- Experience programming in C, C++ in Linux and Windows operating systems
- Experience with MS Visual Studio a plus
Benefits
- Practical experience with a wide variety of software engineering tasks
- Collaborating hand-in-hand with a skilled team of software engineers
- Shadowing, mentoring, and training opportunities with seasoned professionals
- Flexible schedule for students
- Compensation available
If you’re interested please contact Gary Daniel who is DDI VP of Engineering (gdaniel@digitaldynamics.com)
CALL for Graduate Students to teach for the Writing Program in 2020-21
WRITING PROGRAM
Graduate Student Instructor CALL 2021-22
The Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz invites applications for qualified Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) to teach sections of required first-year writing classes in fall, winter, and/or spring quarters of the 2021-22 academic year.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: Master’s degree (or equivalent). Experience in teaching at the college level (see CEP guidelines). Formal training in Rhetoric & Composition (WRIT 203 qualifies). Familiarity with current scholarship in Writing Studies.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: Independent teaching at the college level (instructor of record). Master’s degree in Rhetoric & Composition and/or TESOL.
CLASSES AVAILABLE: 12-15 sections per academic year, with 1-2 courses assigned to a single GSI
TO APPLY: Applicants who taught with the Writing Program during the 2020-21 academic year should submit an updated curriculum vitae that includes 2-3 teaching references, one of them a Writing Program faculty member. All other applicants should submit an informative letter of application describing their interest in and approaches to teaching writing, as well as the connection of those approaches to research in Writing Studies and/or TESOL; a curriculum vitae (including a UCSC email address and 2-3 teaching references); and a unit plan for a writing project that is appropriate for Writing 2.
Materials should be submitted to the Writing Program through the online application form.
CLOSING DATE: May 14, 2021
SDSC HPC User Training Series 2021
January 22 – March 12, 2021 & April 9 – May 7, 2021
Friday’s from 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (PST)
Register TODAY
This High-Performance Computing (HPC) User Training series is open to all who are interested in advancing their knowledge and experience on HPC systems and concepts. The program was originally developed in 2019 to support UCSD undergraduates interested in furthering their knowledge of HPC concepts and hands-on training, as well as, building a team interested in competing in the annual Student Cluster Competition held at the annual International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC). This program continues to focus efforts on building a team to complete in the annual SC Student Cluster Competition but also extends to any who are interested in attending.
Learn more about the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
Additional SDSC training for Advanced Computing Users
Questions regarding our events, please contact us at events@sdsc.edu.
Climate Justice Symposium for Transforming Education
Climate Justice Symposium for Transforming Education
A free event open to everyone
Climate Justice is both a movement and a way of approaching the climate crisis that foregrounds connections between global warming and social injustice. Climate Justice must be imagined and produced from the standpoint of the impactful work of ongoing Environmental Justice scholarship and activism, which demands that Climate Justice be achieved through Anti-Racism. Climate justice holds that though U.S. communities of color in the Global North and communities throughout the Global South have contributed less to climate change than communities with more privilege, they are the most likely to experience the worst effects of climate change. Because climate change is an extension of other forms of oppression, these communities’ traditions of resistance must lead the way for identifying climate solutions.
During the symposium, we will be exploring:
- How to integrate climate justice into higher education curriculum (including into medical school curriculum) and how to scale up these efforts;
- Community engagement through climate justice curricula;
- Just and transformative pedagogies; and
- The role of health in the climate crisis dialogue.
This event is free and open to anyone interested in attending. Sessions will be offered in a mix of pre-recorded and live formats. All live components of the conference will also be recorded and available after the event, so if the timing doesn't work for you, we still encourage you to register so that you can receive instructions on how to access the free post-event recordings.
The virtual event will be hosted April 28th through May 1st. Live sessions will occur between 10am-12pm and 2-4pm each day in addition to pre-recorded sessions available at your convenience.
Registration Link for Attendance: https://tinyurl.
Lightning Talks and Opportunity to Win Prize Money!
We are also seeking proposals for lightning talks from Faculty, Graduate Students, and Undergraduate Students who would like to present 3-5 slides in 5-7 minutes on one of our core conference topic focuses (see bullet points above). We will ask presenters to pre-record these lightning talks and participants will be able to vote on their favorite talks. Cash prizes will be awarded to the most popular pre-recorded lightning talks and awards will be given in the amounts of:
- Three CSU Faculty will be selected for: Gold ($1,000), Silver ($500), and Bronze ($300)
- Three CSU Students will be selected for: Gold ($1,000), Silver ($500), and Bronze ($300)
- Three UC Faculty will be selected for: Gold ($1,000), Silver ($500), and Bronze ($300)
- Three UC Students will be selected for: Gold ($1,000), Silver ($500), and Bronze ($300)
Please note that student awards will be coordinated through the Financial Aid office of the winning students. Faculty awards will be in the form of an award to be used towards their research and/or teaching and the award will be transferred to their home academic department. Applicants for lightning talks must register to give a lightning talk by 4/9/2021 at: https://tinyurl.com/
Registration Link for Attendance: https://tinyurl.
Hiring for Graduate Intern for the 2021-22 Academic Year
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Magic Leap University Graduate Program Opportunities Newsletter Pending
Magic Leap is looking for PhD and Masters students to join our team for a 3 month Summer Program for Underrepresented Students in Engineering. In partnership with STEM departments at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Women In Engineering Institutions, and broader universities we are committed to empowering and elevating diversity of thought, experience, and background in our workforce and in our pipeline of future researchers!
More Information: Magic_Leap.pdf
Events
The Uses and Abuses of Data in Higher Education
Event Date and Time: 05/14/2021 8:45 amEvent Location: Zoom
We are excited to announce the upcoming Data Science Day 2021. To register for the event, please RSVP here. For further information on the event schedule and speakers, you can visit our website at https://citl.ucsc.edu/data-
CRES Works in Progress Event
Event Date and Time: 05/05/2021 1:00 pmEvent Location: Zoom
Talk on Recent Advances in Vision-Language Pre-training
Event Date and Time: 05/03/2021 4:00 pmEvent Location: Zoom
Dr. Zhe Gan is giving an invited talk on Recent Advances in Vision-Language Pre-training next Monday (5/3) at 4pm PT. Welcome to join the talk: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/
Abstract: With the advent of models such as OpenAI CLIP and DALL-E, transformer-based vision-language pre-training (VLP) has become an increasingly hot research topic. In this talk, I will first briefly review UNITER, one of the best-performing VLP models, then share some of the most recent works in our team that extend UNITER for better generalization, robustness, and efficiency. In terms of generalization, I will present our NeurIPS 2020 Spotlight paper VILLA that uses adversarial training for performance enhancement on standard vision-language tasks. In terms of robustness, I will present our recent MANGO work that carefully and systematically examines the performance of VLP models on an assemblage of 9 robust VQA benchmarks. In terms of efficiency, I will present our recent work that uses the lottery ticket hypothesis to investigate the parameter redundancy of VLP models. At last, I will also briefly discuss challenges and future directions for vision-language pre-training.
Bio: Dr. Zhe Gan is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft. He received the PhD degree from Duke University in 2018. Before that, he received the Master's and Bachelor's degree from Peking University in 2013 and 2010, respectively. His current research interests include vision-language representation learning, self-supervised pre-training, and adversarial machine learning. He has been regularly serving as an Area Chair for multiple top-tier AI conferences, including NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, ACL, and AAAI.
Stonewall Speaker Series: Ericka Hart
Event Date and Time: 05/06/2021 5:00 pmEvent Location: Zoom
