Outgoing co-presidents, Corrine Smolen and Alenka Hafner, welcome new co-presidents, Jessica Walnut and Avery Sicher
Image credit: Keith Hickey (Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences)
Do you have any advice for the incoming co-chairs?
Corrine: Serving the Huck graduate community as HGSAC co-chairs is an incredibly rewarding experience and we know Avery and Jess will enjoy it just as much as we did. Our first big piece of advice is to listen to keep listening to the community so we can continue to provide workshops and seminars that will help Huck students as they progress through their graduate careers.
Alenka: Our second piece of advice would be to focus on their priorities. One of our priorities this past year was addressing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in the life sciences, so we brought new events to the HGSAC roster in the form of the Towards a More Inclusive Science (TaMIS) – Life Sciences initiative in collaboration with other ECoS departments. Corrine and I also made sure to highlight this point at existing HGSAC events with the inclusion of a “Breaking Barriers to Diversity in STEM” panel at HGSAC’s yearly Life Sciences Symposium, which had record-breaking attendance!
Corrine: While JEDI initiatives were our focus during the year, Alenka and I just want Jess and Avery to focus on the aspects of HGSAC that are the most important to them. HGSAC does a lot of incredible work, from the two aspects we already mentioned (TaMIS and the Life Sciences Symposium), to organizing career seminars to highlight the wide variety of career paths open to Huck graduate students, to our Skill Workshops which provide instruction on a range of career, professional, and academic skills, and to our social events which bring the Huck graduate student community together. You really can’t go wrong no matter what you want to focus on!
How have your previous roles in HGSAC prepared you for your new roles as co-chairs?
Jessica: My role as part of the social media committee was to maintain the website. I believe this experience provided useful insight into the importance of reaching Huck students through social media. During our tenure as Co-presidents, we would like to expand HGSAC’s social media presence to help better serve the Huck student body.
Avery: One particular strength of Jess and I is that we are very well-equipped to expand HGSAC’s online presence to reach even more Huck students this year. We want to capitalize on the momentum that Corrine and Alenka have started. We hope to see lots of Huck students at all of our events, including our career exposure seminars, workshops, and social events. Every year, our events have gotten bigger and more successful. To raise the bar even further this year, we are starting earlier than usual. I am grateful for them and for the hard work of the whole committee, and I am looking forward to a great year.
Do you plan to stay on HGSAC?
Corrine: I don’t think they could kick us out of HGSAC if they tried!
Alenka: We will definitely both be staying on the committee during the next year, but in a more supporting role. We really want to take a step back and let Avery and Jess run HGSAC their way. We know they will do a great job, taking on the challenge in their stride. They have both been a part of HGSAC for a while and we can’t wait to see them thrive in their new role!
Check-out the full Huck news story here
HGSAC member, Venky Zambare, spoke with Chinmay Sankhe about his experience presenting at the Life Sciences Symposium. Chinmay is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Penn State whose work focuses on the epigenetic regulation of Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), a process involved in cancer progression.