Share your advice for fellow grad students in a “Tips for Grads” column!
View this post as an infographic.
Are you an expert in some area of grad student life? Do you have advice to share with fellow grad students about academic or professional development? The UW–Madison Graduate School’s weekly email newsletter, GradConnections Weekly, is looking for guest writers to share their advice, experiences, and sage counsel with fellow grad students through our “Tips for Grads” column.
What this means for you
“Tips for Grads” is written by grad students, and although our in-house graduate student PAs know a lot, we’re looking for advice from a broader range of student experiences.
Guest writers will have their column featured at the top of GradConnections Weekly and be given credit for their work with a byline.
If you have advice you want to share, let us know by emailing gspd@grad.wisc.edu with the subject line “Tips for Grads Guest Writer.”
Editorial guidelines
- Columns should be between 200-350 words in length.
- Topics should fall within one of the eight facets of the DiscoverPD framework:
- Inquiry, discovery, and creation
- Disciplinary expertise and interdisciplinary connections
- Leadership
- Career development
- Managing projects and people
- Communication
- Inclusion and diversity
- Personal and interpersonal effectiveness
- All submissions will be edited to ensure consistency with our standards and editorial practices.
GradConnections Weekly is a publicly distributed document, so content, language, and tone should be appropriate for the UW community and general audiences. For details, consult University Relations’ Guidelines for Social Media.
The writing should be original work, but can be adapted from third-party sources. Be sure to give credit when adapting others’ work (e.g. “This column was adapted from a workshop presented by Person XYZ.”).
Please include your name as you would like it to appear in the byline, your academic status (e.g. PhD student, PhD candidate, MFA student, etc.), and your program(s) or departmental affiliation(s).
Publication timeline
- The newsletter goes out every Tuesday. Guest writers should submit columns two weeks beforehand.
- Editorial staff will review and return the column with recommended edits by the end of the week.
- One week before publication, guest writers should re-submit a final revised version.
Tips for “Tips”
- Keep the tone light and conversational. This is not academic writing so a personal voice is welcome.
- Consider introducing your advice with a framing story, typical grad experience, or other means of connecting to grad daily life.
- Bullet points or numbered lists are helpful for visual organization, but not required.
- The GradConnections Weekly audience is diverse and large. Your advice need not be relevant to everyone, but keep the diversity of experience in mind.
Other helpful resources
- Review the DiscoverPD facets.
- Review past issues of GradConnections Weekly for examples of topics, tone, and formatting.
We look forward to hearing from you!
—Guide written by Matthew Zinsli and updated by the Graduate School Office of Professional Development and Communications. Email gspd@grad.wisc.edu with questions.