I am so excited to bring you the first quarterly GSADC blog of the 2019/20 academic year! It has been a whirlwind of a few months but I am so proud and extremely happy to serve as an advocate for graduate students across the UC Davis Campus. Rather than elaborate about what my day-to-day activities as the GSADC has been like thus far (to put it simply: meetings, meetings, and more meetings!

Welcome to the Graduate Student Assistant to the Dean and Chancellor (GSADC) blog for the 2018/2019 academic year. My goal for this blog is to share what I have been doing in this role in an effort to promote communication and transparency, and to provide a looking glass into my schedule, my goals, and my hopes for the graduate and professional student community. You will also get a glimpse into my academic life and fun things that happen to me during the year.

For Karin Albornoz — a Ph.D. student studying Horticulture and Agronomy who works in a UC Davis lab on molecular biology of tomato postharvest chilling injury — that means getting out into the world to work directly with small-scale farmers.

Let’s face it - writing is hard! Writing your thesis/dissertation is a lot like long-distance running; it requires isolation, endurance, time, and motivation.  Most doctoral students are long-distance running for about three years.  Here are seven quick tips to help you put things in order well before your final deadline.

1. Keep your thesis/dissertation committee up-to-date on your progress.

Some of you may be wondering what exactly is a Graduate Student Assistant to the Dean and Chancellor (GSADC), and what is it that they do?