Our graduate students play an active role in shaping their community, the department, and the campus at large. One of the primary ways they do this is through various student organizations, including:
The Graduate Student Executive Council (GradCo) is an elected body of computer science graduate students, which plans activities and addresses issues of concern to the student body. The council also allocates funds from the graduate student activities budget. Sponsored activities typically include a departmental picnic, seminars and forums, a very popular weekly coffee hour, hikes, and parties.
The Graduate Student Government is a campus-wide organization of graduate students for the purpose of improving the quality of graduate student life. Some of the recent activities organized by this organization include protest rallies against taxation of scholarships and assistantships, a campus-wide research conference for Graduate Students, setting up a legal aid service for Graduate Students, distributing a newsletter with information for all Graduate Students, and organizing social events such as dances and weekly happy hours.
ACM student chapter: The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the principal professional society for computer scientists. Membership is important for maintaining contact with current developments through journal publications, meetings and conferences. Our department has a student chapter of the ACM. Student members receive many of the benefits at a reduced rate: journals, conference registration, etc. Membership becomes extremely important as students move into the final stages of their study and begin submitting papers to conferences and ACM journals.
The Maryland Center for Women in Computing (MCWIC) works to increase diversity in all fields of computing by providing opportunities for individuals who identify as women to engage and contribute to the technical community through research, education, outreach, and partnerships.
MCWIC supports the Association of Women in Computing at UMD, Technica, and the Grad Women student organizations. Graduate Women are invited to engage with these groups.
The Department Council advises the Chair on issues affecting the department. It is composed primarily of faculty, but two graduate student representatives attend the meetings to provide graduate student input and to keep the graduate students informed of relevant issues.
The Education Committee is responsible for the undergraduate and graduate academic programs of the department. Composed primarily of faculty, the committee has two voting graduate student representatives and two voting undergraduate student representatives.