In Spring 2024, the Graduate Student Government Association (Grad SGA) welcomed new leadership with Kiera Tran as president and Donglai Yang as executive vice president. As they step into their new roles, they have set their sights on addressing key issues affecting graduate students, including housing, career development, resource accessibility, and support for international students.

Adapting to a Growing Graduate Student Population

“With the new enrollment [growth], we stand to have more students than ever. With this, graduate students are affected the most,” said Tran. “We want to tackle this problem by creating a way for Georgia Tech to adapt to the new population of students.”

International students are a large part of the graduate student enrollment growth.

“More than 50% of graduate students are international students,” said Tran. “To help international students transition to life at Georgia Tech, we talked about creating a buddy program for students to make friends and learn from peers and senior students.”

Engaging the Graduate Student Community

“We are just two people, and with the cabinet, we have around 20 students to represent the entire student body of over 30,000 students,” said Tran.

Engaging with such a large and diverse student body presents a communication challenge.

“I think particularly for graduate students, there’s always the challenge of how to reach out to them–how to make sure that what we’re doing here is being seen and heard by the graduate students,” said Yang. "It is a very difficult challenge because it requires that we set up communications not only to the entire campus staff, but also at the department and graduate program coordinators level." 

To obtain the voice of the student population, Grad SGA plans to continue sending out surveys when they want student feedback. They are also going to schedule a town hall for students to attend, which will happen at the end of every semester. 

Strengthening Relationships with Administration

“The population of graduate students is more than undergrad,” said Tran. “Grad students tend to get neglected because we are not as involved on campus. This is a two-way street. Our goal is to encourage more graduate student involvement in campus activities, while also working with the admins and Institute to prioritize grad student needs.”

According to Tran, last year they worked on establishing connections with admins, from Pres. Cabrera’s cabinet to admins across campus within each department.

“All of the admins at Georgia Tech are very supportive of grad students,” said Tran. “It’s very clear to them that we have different needs, so they want to help us. It’s going to be a very fun year working with all the admins.”

Grad SGA is currently looking for senate candidates. Applications are open through August 26. Online and in-person students can access the application here.

Kiera Tran is a Ph.D. student studying geophysical glaciology in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. She began her journey at Georgia Tech in her junior year of college. It was at Tech where Tran discovered her passion for earth sciences and the desire to make an impact on global issues. She has been involved in Grad SGA for the past two years.

Donglai Yang is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences studying the consequences of climate change to the polar regions with radar observations, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence. This is Yang’s first year serving in Grad SGA.