GSC Leadership Earns Top National Award

The Graying of Graduate Studies

Diversity Advocate Opens Doors at Ole Miss

A Message from the Dean

Distinctions

Dateline: Oxford

Alumni Notes

Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

As Carl Rebman, president of the Graduate Student Council, explains it, the GSC officers set a goal of being one of the best graduate student organizations in the United States. After a busy year of working toward this goal, the GSC was recognized as the Graduate/Professional Student Organization of the Year by its national organization, the National Association of Graduate/Professional Students, during its November 1999 meeting in Columbus, Ohio.

This achievement is particularly noteworthy when you consider that the GSC rose from the ashes just a couple of years ago. Formerly known as the Associated Graduate Student Body (AGSB), the organization had foundered and was not holding regular meetings. With a little guidance from the Graduate School, a group of student leaders emerged and the renamed GSC began meeting again in 1997.

In just three years, the accomplishments of the GSC are so evident that they have won this national award. The University of Mississippi GSC was recognized by NAGPS for its "outstanding service at the local and national level." The GSC's service activities to date have included a Village Clean-Up Project (to help spiff up the married student housing apartments), an effort to improve insurance options for graduate students, participation in blood drives, our fall orientation and picnic for new students, and our evening graduate student workshops.

What is particularly pleasing is that this award puts our GSC in the company of some very prestigious universities. "Most major universities have a graduate student organization like our GSC," says Rebman. "I think that this award makes an impressive statement about Ole Miss by indicating that we are on the same level with Duke, Stanford, and other larger and more established universities." NAGPS includes about 360 member universities, ranging from Ivy Leage to major state universities.