The Graduate School has selected the winners of the 2008/2009 Community Building Proposals to stem the isolation that graduate students often experience in their laboratories and libraries. For the most complete information about Community Building events, please subscribe to our Google Calendar. 

Funding was granted to 20 proposals in 2007/2008 and eight proposals in 2006/2007 that brought together groups of students who ordinarily would not come into contact with each other. We hope that you have participated in some of these events and will continue to attend the 2008/2009 Community Building events next year. 

Dean Andrew Wachtel initiated Community Building Proposals at Northwestern University in the spring of 2006, inspired by a successful community building program at MIT that has been in operation for the last six years. For details on the kinds of projects MIT has sponsored, see http://web.mit.edu/gso/community/rollcall.html.

In an article from the "Dean's Column" written for the Winter Quarter 2006 newsletter, Dean Wachtel stated that graduate school can be an isolated and isolating experience, "particularly true in those fields where research is produced by individuals thinking and writing alone (most humanities fields, a good portion of the social sciences, and mathematics). Even in fields where most research is collaborative, the atmosphere of an individual laboratory, no matter how well managed, can become claustrophobic."

Community Building Program Goals
The NU program is designed to:

- Integrate academic and social aspects of graduate life
- Bring people together in a social context
- Improve communications and outreach
- Encourage creative expression through the arts
- Serve as models for community building

This program is specifically not meant to enhance social and academic interactions within individual departments or programs (or within closely linked departments and programs). It is our belief that such activities, while extremely important, should be and in many cases are already carried out by the departments and programs themselves.

While we wish to encourage projects with a broad scope, we are also willing to fund proposals that focus on specific constituencies as long as they cut across existing departmental and programmatic lines. We plan to fund as many proposals as possible, no matter how big or small. We will normally make up to $3000 available for such initiatives, but two-year initiatives may request up to $5000. We welcome proposals from independent groups of students, our officially sponsored associations, and unsponsored associations.

"This work is closely modeled after MIT's Graduate Student Life Grants process (http://web.mit.edu/gso/community/grants.html)."