Departmental Service & Administration
Departmental Service & Administration
See below for expounded details regarding the administration and service I performed while a graduate member of the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering at Michigan State University.
I was the first graduate representative to the department's advisory committee, and served on that role for the 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 academic years. During that time, I served an important role in the committee's business, including increasing transparency within the department and emphasizing the role of the graduate student in CMSE. Other accomplishments included:
Stressing the important of increasing visibility and recruitment activities for CMSE's graduate program.
The need:
The Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering is a unique blend of the intersection of algorithm development and high performance computing to the application of scientific modelling and data science. Combining that with the graduate program starting in 2016, prospective students who are interested in the kinds of research CMSE does may not necessarily look at the department for potential advisors, and instead browse more established departments such as math, physics, or biomedical engineering for graduate programs.
The proposal:
Create and distribute advertising materials such as pamphlets and announcements to current graduate students, and get them to advertise to their former undergraduate institution. This will be more powerful and meaningful to prospective graduate students from alumni of their department or program, who they may even know personally. This has been done in-person or virtually through LinkedIn groups, Slack workspaces, Discord servers, etc.
From there, the department may choose to provide funding for an event at the alumni's undergraduate department ran by the alum. This may done through a proposal call to current graduate students.
The introduction of firmer, quantitative expectations for graduate teaching assistants to protect both parties.
The need:
Over the past few years, there has been some clashes between graduate teaching assistants and their course section lead. Whereas this was unavoidable to a certain extent, it reached an apex that reverberated through both the faculty and graduate student communities within the department due to severely misaligned expectations. The department has some qualitative expectations written and partially distributed, but they are not well-suited for the non-introductory courses.
The proposal:
Create a fill-in rubric of expectations that quantified as much areas as possible. This included all possible areas of explicit time commitments (class time, office hours, logistical meetings) and the grading of different types of assignments (frequency of them, turnaround expectations, etc.). Breaking these stratifications down per student enrolled, you can then quantify the average time spending on the grading of a given assignment. This is quite important as there might be a disconnect in realistic levels of a feedback within a given timeframe. This form also covered flexibility and communication preferences, as well as detailing the authority and responsibility the GTA may or may not have.
Overseeing the appointment processes and requests of internal university faculty.
The CMSE Department is incredibly interdisciplinary, with the majority of the department's faculty (~75%) have a dual-appointment, regardless of majority. Accordingly, it's relatively common for the department to get a few requests from faculty in other departments for an appointment within CMSE. We would weigh their caliber of research and whether it fits within CMSE, as well as the benefit that they give CMSE, whether it's administrative, teaching, research, etc. to determine if we go forward and propose it to the rest of the faculty during a faculty meeting.
In the academic year of 2024/2025, we had one request where I learned a lot about academic politics. A professor requested an appointment, whose research is great and aligned with CMSE and they had a great reputation, but they had administrative duties for the next several years that prevented them from having any legitimate immediate impact for CMSE. That professor ended up getting an appointment within CMSE because it wasn't wise or proper to tell them to reapply in a few years even though that would've been better for the department's budget in avoiding overhead costs without any benefit.
Encouraging better oversight of other departmental committees to ensure more established institutional knowledge.
The need:
CMSE is a young department with growing pains. As soon as the kinks were mostly ironed out, the COVID-19 pandemic quelched all momentum, and they didn't have the tradition to keep everything moving consistently. Accordingly, departmental committees will make progress and have a few agenda items prepared and planned on the docket, only for none of the faculty to be reassigned to that committee and the agenda item slips through. The previous system is trying to keep at least some of the faculty on the same committee from year to year. This is flawed for several reasons: burnout for one, but primarily keeping one or two professors in common from year to year is nontrivial when handling sabbaticals and administrative duties rotating departments for each faculty who's jointly appointed (the vast majority of them). Additionally, for the professors with a minority appointment in CMSE, it could be years since their last rotation in CMSE and it takes them months to relearn the processes in place (if there are any).
The proposal:
The Advisory Committee is the only committee that is elected by the faculty, with four out of five representatives being elected to alternating two-year terms. Accordingly, the Advisory Committee is the only committee with built-in institutional knowledge. Since most committees are meeting monthly, the plan is to initiate a regular form for the chair of the committee to submit every month. This form includes agenda items covered, action items, agenda for next meeting, and if anything needs attention at an Advisory Committee meeting or a faculty meeting.
Coordinating with the faculty representatives of the committee and senior faculty within the department to develop the long term plan for the department.
The need:
With the timing of the establishing of the department and the COVID-19 pandemic, the CMSE department was drifting without much guidance for several years; they've had an interim chair for going on 6 years and two failed chair searches. Furthermore, since CMSE belongs to two colleges, Natural Sciences and Engineering, there is an administrative headache abiding by both guidelines, as well as a reduced sense of ownership from the deans. Accordingly, the established faculty in the department and myself worked with the interim chair to create a five-year plan to solidify CMSE's place in the colleges and the university.
The proposal:
The central idea is to highlight the anticipated main research areas in five years in which CMSE would be poised to be the leader at MSU. This entailed subjects such as AI education, AI applications, and research into AI. Feedback would be gathered from all faculty initially via a form I helped create, and then there would be a meeting with the Advisory Committee and all full tenured professors. During this meeting, the feedback would be whittled down and grouped into a coherent message to relay to both deans.
Mandating graduate student representation on faculty search committees.
In a young, growing department, there are frequent search committees for new faculty. I insisted in graduate student representation on all tenure-stream search committees to ensure their opinion was heard and valued, as well as providing the graduate student with the professional development of seeing what the search process would look like.
Assisting in the amending of departmental bylaws.
The need:
Unfortunately, the departmental bylaws were rarely followed when it comes to delineating responsibilities and procedures within the department. Plenty of the administrative faculty were not eligible to hold the position that they have. Accordingly, for the sake of healthy transparency, there was a desperate need to reevaluate and amend the existing bylaws and policies to reflect both what the department is doing and what the department should be doing.
The proposal:
The Advisory Committee reviewed and amended a majority of the bylaws that were previously being ignored and violated. This was done in grouped segments to ease the flow of the vote for adoption in the faculty meetings. However, some of the violated bylaws reminded the committee of the initial thinking, which they agreed with, and corrective measures were made in order to uphold them.
Proposing a restructuring of the departmental colloquia series.
The need:
There are three primary levels of scholarly talks within the preexisting system of the department: Colloquia, Seminar, and Brown Bag. Colloquia was supposed to be an external speaker once a week; Seminar was supposed to be MSU faculty external to CMSE, and Brown Bag a talk during lunch of internal CMSE graduate students and postdocs, and Seminar and Brown Bag would alternate weeks. This system was fatiguing, expensive, and poorly attended.
The proposal:
My proposal to the Advisory Committee was to cut-back the talks to one a week and to make sure to have them at a regular, predictable time. Additionally, in order to save time and money, only host an external speaker once or twice a semester. The other speakers should be CMSE faculty, and this would have a few advantages. First, it would advertise CMSE's research since CMSE colloquia is open to and attended by the public. Secondly, it would severely decrease the expenses which is even more important with the 2025/2026 budget cuts in academia. Thirdly, it would help unify the department and form a sense of community and identity; plenty of the faculty's members' primary office spaces are not connected to CMSE, which leads to upper-level, involved graduate students never seeing several faculty. The rest of the committee seconded my sentiment in wanting to hear about the research within the diverse department. Additionally, it would help younger graduate students identify which faculty members would make informed, advantageous dissertation committee members.
Led the only graduate student organization for the department.
This was the first year after restructuring and merging of departmental committees which resulted in one graduate student organization, the GSO. Every graduate student enrolled in a CMSE graduate program (~75 students) was automatically a member of the GSO. This included CMSE PhD students, dual-PhD students with a primary affiliation with CMSE, and those with a secondary PhD affiliation in CMSE.
Oversaw a cabinet of ten officers.
As president, I worked with ten other graduate students in various roles. These roles were vice president, secretary, treasurer, and first-year liaison(s) as well as representatives to the following departmental committees: DEI (2), graduate curriculum, awards, and admissions. My job was to listen to feedback and then act on it through departmental advocacy and events. I stressed efficient and transparent communication and the minutes of executive board meetings were public to all members of GSO.
Developed a strong sense of community within the graduate students of CMSE.
When I joined the department in the fall of 2022, there was no sense of community. The vast majority of students didn't come into the office, and those that did would barely make eye contact. Through extremely intentional, gradual effort, we were able to drastically change the culture of the department. Now, most graduate students, and some of the postdocs, will socialize after work, eat lunch together, and say hello to each other upon entering the office. These graduate students are spread across research groups and cohorts. This energy shift has been felt among the faculty as they now see a more lively collective of graduate students, which in turn has resulted in community events on their end as well and including themselves in some GSO events.
Organized events
We organized informal events, monthly socials, several professional development events and DEI events.
Informal Events:
I created the "Weekly Lunch Space" where I reserved the conference room for two hours around lunch time one day a week to create an environment (slightly) more conducive to socializing. This was targeted at graduate students, but eventually postdocs, faculty, and staff joined on occasion. This was extremely important in changing the culture of the department.
Monthly Socials:
This was a social event with more structure (and funding) designed to get more and different graduate students involved.
Professional Development Events:
We organized two structured PD events. The first of which, we invited the university ombudsperson to give a talk about their office and resources preemptively. Secondly, we organized a panel of targeted faculty across MSU to serve as a career panel representing different "tracks" in industry, academia, and national labs.
We also invited current CMSE graduate students to give a short talk on what their internship was experience was like; what they learned, how they applied, and if they would do it again. This was tacked on to the end of the Weekly Lunch Space about once a month.
DEI Events:
Coffee Connect was a biweekly coffee hour I designed to create a safe environment for those with gender identities and expressions generally marginalized in academia, open to graduate students, postdocs, staff, and faculty. This was our biggest budget item for the smallest group of people, but it was important to make sure all are included and welcome in the workspace. Attendance slowly increased and then those in attendance slowly trickled into other GSO events. Due to the political climate, this was unfortunately shut down during the spring semester.
Tiny Desk Convos took the place of Coffee Connect and was designed to educate members of the CMSE community in how federal policy affected us, both immediately and long-term. We would invite an educated faculty member to give digestible bullet talks and then moderate a discussion and Q&A.
Saw a drastic increase in attendance to official GSO events.
Through targeting recruiting and adapting to feedback, attendance soared at GSO events. Eventually, we had ~50% of graduate students attend the formal social events, ~40% for PD events, ~30% for weekly informal events such as the weekly lunch space, and 18% for DEI audience-targeted events.
Initiated and oversaw the development of the CMSE-GSO Website.
This is the one-stop-shop for all GSO resources, events, and communications which was launched in August 2025. It has since been revised and updated under new leadership.
Created and maintained three resource documents.
CMSE Grad Student Resources
This was a shared Google Doc that served as a TLDR digestible version of the Grad Handbook, helpful university and college resources, and tips and guidelines learned by students who've been here longer. This includes apartment recommendations, how to use the printer, course guidelines, suggested elective courses outside of CMSE, and more.
First Year Survival Guide
A subset of the Grad Student Resources specifically catered to first-year students. This included helpful preliminary review material for the courses, tips for surviving the Michigan winter, and what older students learned the hard way and wished they learned earlier.
International Student Survival Guide
Through feedback from current international students, we compiled resources from other academic units to make it easier for incoming international students. This included university tax help, orientation help, and a idiom thesaurus.
Assisted the president
Conducted the duties of the president in their absence and helped create more officer positions
Developed a sense of community
Focused on developing a sense of identity and community within a young department through targeted events and interactions.
Achieved increase transparency in departmental policy through advocacy
Implemented an increase in officers and representatives in GSO
Oversaw the creation of four new positions at the beginning including secretary, first-year liaison, and admissions and recruitment representative. Prior to this, I split the duties of what would become the description of the secretary with the president by developing the CMSE Grad Student Resources document and the GSO Event Calendar.
The first-year liaison was my creation to accomplish two targeted goals:
Get continued buy-in from all cohorts as this position would only be open to first-years. This would prevent GSO declining when a few of the officers graduated.
Help gather targeted feedback on the transition to grad school and the quality and condition of the core classes.
Created the CMSE Grad Student Resources document
Developed the first drafts of the Resources document, containing all of the information that older graduate students have learned the hard way. This document has been complimented by faculty and staff, and honestly should've been created long before I enrolled in CMSE.
Assisted with the creation of the graduate student weekly newsletter
Primarily the effort of the president, this was a way to disseminate information and announcements to our fellow graduate students in a compact form. I assisted with the content and template creation as well as streamlining of the material.
This has been complimented by faculty and staff. The interim chair now does his own monthly newsletter for departmental news and announcements.
Created the Weekly Lunch Space.
This initiative is one of my prouder accomplishments while being the vice president. This served as a way to make the leadership team more approachable and more visible as well as create a social atmosphere among graduate students.
Received training to create an holistic admissions rubric for the department.
Enacted that training to devise a framework to review the applications to the CMSE PhD program.
The program received a historic number of applications, 40% more than usual, which I helped to review in our multi-reviewer process standardized our reviews and provided multiple perspectives.
Also helped organize the prospective student visit day, managing logistics and presentations.
Held through the Inclusive Graduate Education Network and hosted by Dr. Casey W. Miller (Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs in the College of Science at Rochester Institute of Technology), this workshop focused on the delicate balance between identifying applicants with strong potential while ensuring fairness and equity.
We discussed the nuances of rubric design and revision cycle, connecting rubric elements to our program's mission and values, and how to build the foundation for implementing, assessing, and refining the rubric over time.
The framework for holistic review contains three aspects:
Comprehensive
Using multiple, diverse, and independent criteria that reflect achievements, competencies, and potential for success in your program.
Contextualized
Evaluating applicants in light of their opportunities, challenges, and experiences, and how they align with your program's mission and goals.
Systematic
Applying structured reviews to reduce bias to improve efficiency, consistency, and accountability.
A rubric like this ensures stronger equity, mitigates bias, and increases the reliability, efficiency, and consistency of the review process. A good basis contains the criteria (perhaps under different names):
Academic Preparation
Has the applicant taken courses to be able to enter the graduate curriculum in stride?
Scholarly Potential
Does the applicant display qualities to succeed in the field?
Alignment with Program Needs
Does the applicant align with the research interests of the department, geography, and faculty needs?
Alignment with Mission
Does the applicant align with the goals of the institution and department?
Socio-Emotional Competencies
Does the applicant display the personality statements that frequently emerge on successful graduate students?
These criteria are then split into a small set of levels of quality; a larger set makes it harder to be consistent and clear cut, so a set of "High-Medium-Low" should be sufficient, but care should be taken to not privilege opportunity over potential. Notes should be taken to assist in consistency as to what qualifies as which level.
To implement the admission rubric, align the application and the rubric to each other, help applicants help reviewers by having clear and available information to encourage the applicants provide the necessary details, and continue to review after each admission cycle. An additional technique to to norm the process by having all of the review committee independently rate a few applications, and then discuss to calibrate rubric usage; additionally, having at least two people review each application assists in better statistics and more meaningful scores.
Starting in the spring of 2026, I participated in a special committee to reflect and revise the current learning objectives for the CMSE PhD core courses, as they were out of date, no longer followed, and the courses varied drastically from year to year.
This committee was subsequently divided into four subcommittees, one for each course. I was the lone graduate student on the CMSE 821: Numerical Methods for Differential Equations subcommittee, and I ended up being the facilitator for it.
Adhering to best principles such as backward design, and ensuring that the learning objectives were observable and measurable, I led four faculty members, including the founding chair and graduate director, in brainstorming our individual ideas for the what the course should be asynchronously, and then following up with a synchronous discussion to hone in our collective vision.
In order to ensure pacing and staying on topic, I created a presentation summarizing each member's ideas for this follow-up discussion.
I created and organized the CMSE Graduate Student PD Book Club, which has been active for since 2024. We covered A PhD Is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science in 2024 and How to Tame Your PhD in 2025, as well as actively covering Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis in 2026.
This club is open to all interested students, and participants take turns facilitating the conversation of that specific meeting's chapter(s). I secured funding for the purchasing of the books which are able to be checked out by all students, and students who didn't participate at the time have continued to check them out after the book clubs have ended.