Graduate student information/brainstorming pizza lunch

• Creating a WordPress blog, where graduate students could perhaps rotate posting thoughts on research and current affairs connecting that student’s work and MDS. It could facilitate intellectual community building by offering something for the broader MDS community to engage with in comments on the blog, and sharing/disseminating through various social media.
• Informal gatherings aimed at introducing MDS to broader graduate student research community. Could take the form of monthly meet ups at Mike’s for a pint, or perhaps done as a fundraiser for a worthy MDS-related cause in the community.
• MDS-themed Human Library project. Could take the form of plugging into the Carleton Human Library project, or we could start our own. The basic premise being that a person is “checked out” like a library book for a short conversation, as a way of spreading the word.
• Formal establishment of an MDS Student Society.
• Peer Mentorship connections, between junior grad students and senior grad students, as well as grad students and undergraduate students.
• Possibility of students going into High Schools to talk about the MDS stream of BGInS
• Possible connections with other relevant organizations on the Carleton and UOttawa campuses, notable World University Services Canada (WUSC), Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL), Ontario Public Interest Research Group?
• Technical Professional Development Workshops – these could take the form of
  • clear, jargon free interdisciplinary grant writing aimed at SSHRC, OGS.
  • writing for journalism, with a view to publishing Op Eds and magazine articles
  • featuring Carleton alumni working “in the field” that might want to find ways of staying connected to the research community and providing valuable professional insights and networking opportunities

The meeting also encouraged students to stay in touch via Facebook and Twitter , subscribe to the MDS listserv , and build their MDS student profile.