Dean's Corner

by Mary Nisbet, Associate Dean

I always look forward to Spring Quarter since it is the culmination of our academic year. Many students look forward to Commencement and the opportunity it provides to provide a happy closure to their time at UCSB. Students who are not yet ready to graduate plan for summer activities that often involve research or internship that will help identify their future careers. Spring Quarter is a busy and exciting time for our office. As well as all the activities associated with Commencement, we organize the Annual Undergraduate Research Colloquium on Thursday, May 15.

As in previous years, the core of the Colloquium will be the Poster Presentations in Corwin Pavilion. This event will be held over lunch time (from 11:30 am to 2:00 pm) and we hope that many of you will drop in on your way to lunch. This year we have (again!) a record number of presenters and have almost every discipline in the university represented, so you are guaranteed to find something of interest in the more than one hundred presentations. We hope that you will come to hear and see what undergraduates at UCSB have achieved and that, if you are not already doing so, you will be inspired to get involved in research yourself.

I also want to encourage you to think about applying for the many scholarship opportunities that are available, and in particular the Rhodes, Mitchell and Goldwater Scholarships. These prestigious scholarships provide funding for students to spend a year or more studying at a British or Irish university. The applications are due at the start of October and therefore students who are interested in applying should prepare their applications over the summer. If you are interested in applying, you can find more information on the URCA website (http://www.ltsc.ucsb.edu/urca/scholarships_and_awards.php) and you should contact Nan Anderson, our URCA coordinator (nanderson@ltsc.ucsb.edu) as soon as possible.

I wish you well for the rest of the quarter and hope you will have a happy, fun and productive summer.

Mary

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