MechSE graduate students launch GraMS group

GraMS brought its first semester to a close with a barbecue in the Mechanical Engineering Building courtyard on May 4.

“I’ve always wanted more of a social aspect of my time here at Illinois, so I stepped up and spearheaded our efforts,” Hibbeler said.

Hibbeler is the president of the newly formed Graduate MechSE Students (GraMS) organization, which hosted its first general meeting in January. The group seeks to provide opportunities for graduate students to connect through social and service opportunities, but Hibbeler admits that research is a favorite conversation topic.

“When you get two grad students together in a room, they’re just going to talk about research, that’s what’s going to happen,” Hibbeler said. “Even if they’re not in your exact field, you can bounce questions off other people, you can have meaningful conversations about work in a lower stress environment.”

Tim Deppen, vice-president of GraMS, said he and other students had been looking for a way to connect graduate students in MechSE for a while. He said the foundation for GraMS began to take shape through Professor Harley Johnson, MechSE’s associate head for graduate programs. Johnson encouraged the students to find a way to better integrate and communicate.

Deppen said he thought department-sponsored events in the past, including monthly graduate student mixers, were not strongly attended because students either went with people they already knew or chose not to attend at all because they were unsure whether anyone they knew was going.

“I think having [GraMS] be a student-led initiative means that there are people that other graduate students can identify as, ‘Oh, I know this student and he’s going to be there and he’s involved,’ so that maybe makes them more inclined to go,” Deppen said.

GraMS meets every other Friday, usually in John Deere Pavilion, followed by a happy hour at Murphy’s on Green Street.

Hibbeler and Deppen said they have tried to bring more to the group than just social events, such as getting graduate students involved in the faculty recruiting process or having faculty give presentations about their hobbies or interests at the general meetings. Hibbeler said the most popular presentation so far was a talk Emeritus Professor Jon Dantzig gave about applying engineering principles to racecar driving.

Deppen said the group is also planning a service project at the sustainable student farm in the near future. It also co-sponsored the MechSE Volleyball Tournament with Pi Tau Sigma in April.

Hibbeler said that the group has helped him and other active members become better acquainted with their MechSE peers.

“I recognize people in the hall, just walking around…I know a lot more (students),” Hibbeler said. “It’s made the department a lot more social in that regard.”