Ongoing Initiatives

• Grad Game Night
  One of our Community Representatives hosts a monthly game night in the department, designed as a way to build the grad student community and offer safe, sober spaces for grads. This event is organized by GradOPS and supported by the chair Richard Scalettar.
• Peer mentorship program
  The Graduate Liaison runs an annual peer mentorship program for first-year graduate students, helping new grads integrate into the graduate program at UC Davis Physics and Astronomy.
• Coffee Hour
  GradOPS facilitates and funds a regular Coffee Hour where P&A grads across cohorts can meet for a hot beverage and interact socially outside of classes and office spaces. In Winter 2024, Coffee Hour is from 1-2 PM on Thursdays in the Lagrange Lounge.
  GradOPS is also working with the chair Richard Scalettar and Prof. Matthew Citron to organize a monthly department-wide coffee hour event.
• Orientation Grad Panel
  GradOPS assembles a panel of senior graduate students to chat with new graduate students during the orientation at the start of fall quarter.
• Lunch with the Chair
  In the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, GradOPS coordinated with the chair Richard Scalettar to host multiple department-subsidized lunches each quarter where grads could informally share their thoughts, opinions, and questions on department operations directly with the chair.
• Open Forum
  Twice a year (in fall and spring), GradOPS facilitates a meeting with the department chair, vice chair for graduate education, the chief administrative officer, and the graduate coordinator to discuss issues, ideas, and concerns about graduate student life in our department.
• Undergrad Research Spreadsheet
  GradOPS assembles an annual spreadsheet of faculty members willing to work with undergraduate students on research projects and distributes this spreadsheet to current physics undergraduates in order to help connect undergrads with valuable research experiences.
• Committee organization
  GradOPS helps place graduate student representatives on departmental committees and assists representatives with reporting back to the physics and astronomy graduate students at large.

In Progress

• Undergrad-grad events and socials
  Following the Winter 2024 community town hall, GradOPS and the Undergrad Committee (a group of physics undergrads serving on departmental committees) have been working on planning events to bring undergrads and grads together in informal social gatherings to promote department community.
• Inter-department collaborations and socials
  In Fall 2023, GradOPS worked with grads from the Department of Mathematics to host the first joint Math-Physics Tea/Coffee, promoting stronger connections between grad students in our two departments. In Winter 2024, physics grads helped support the Galois Group’s quarterly tutoring fundraiser, with a cut of proceeds going to GradOPS.
• Organizing student meetings with faculty candidates
  GradOPS works with faculty search committees to help coordinate student meetings with prospective faculty hires and providing student feedback to the search committee.
• First-year coursework revisions
  Through our grad curriculum committee representative Matt Staab and direct conversations with the chair, we have started a conversation about how to better integrate math methods content into the core curriculum and manage the workload for our first-year grads.
• Recording Colloquia
  We are in the process of making the Monday colloquia a recorded event that can be accessed online.

Successful Campaigns

• Department Suggestion Box
  The department implemented an anonymous suggestion box for members of our department community to raise comments and concerns about department operations. Currently, this box is department-internal and requires login to submit feedback.
• Graduate Lounge
  Room 434 was designated as a grad lounge for informal interaction and to house our textbook archive (in progress).
• Prelim Site
  GradOPS oversees an archive of past preliminary exams and student-submitted solutions to help grads prepare for their own prelims.
• Prelim Revisions
  With pressure from GradOPS, the department revised its preliminary exam format beginning 2021 from a four-day exam covering first-year graduate content to a two-day exam focusing on topics covered in a typical undergraduate physics curriculum.