Giving Back:
Faculty, Alumni Asked to Help Support
Graduate Student Travel

By Chantal Breedlove
Journalism senior

Department Ph.D. student Rebecca Meisenbach once drove 12 hours to a Communication conference in New York, missing part of the conference, because it was too expensive to fly. She's spent many a conference night asleep on a floor, crammed into a regular hotel room with seven other graduate students whose tight budgets didn't allow them the luxury of their own hotel beds.

Even with such cost-cutting moves, attending academic conferences can still mean running up a huge debt on a graduate student's credit card.

Now, department faculty, friends and alumni are being asked to help out. A small donation to the department's Faculty-Alumni Fund can help to make the department an even more recognized name in the field of Communication by helping graduate students with an integral part of their education.

The following alumni have contributed as least $100 to the Faculty-Alumni Fund: William Cash    Robert Denton Steven Wilson    Diane Grimes Timothy Edgar    Eugenia Peck

The money raised will go to help defer the costs graduate students encounter in their professional development at Purdue. Most of those costs are incurred when traveling to conferences to present research papers and participate in panels.

Steve Wilson, professor and director of graduate studies, said the average conference expense can range from $800 to $1,000, and that's if the conference attendee is frugal.

"Grad students spend a fair amount of their own money out of pocket," he said. "That includes four or five nights at a motel, conference fees and travel costs. Some of those travel costs can be high, especially to some of the national conventions."

New Orleans hosted the National Communication Association 2002 conference, where graduate students Curt Gilstrap and Terri Russ each earned an award. Next year, the conference will be held in Miami, Fla., more than 1,300 miles from Purdue's campus.

"Our department currently offers $50 a year to students for conference participation, but as you can imagine, that does not go very far," said Meisenbach, the graduate student representative on the department's Graduate Committee. "It barely covers the round trip from your hotel to the airport."

Meisenbach, who earned a Top 5 paper award this year, said funding for graduate student travel is the top issue with graduate students currently.

"Lack of travel funds sometimes leads grad students to forgo attending important conferences," she said. "When this happens, our graduate students miss out on a valuable part of their education and socialization into the professional aspects of the discipline. Furthermore, Purdue is not as well represented at conferences when students make these choices."

Beyond building on Purdue's reputation, Meisenbach and Wilson said a traveling fund also can be a recruitment tool, giving Purdue a more competitive Communication program.

Other peer institutions, such as Michigan State, offer far more travel money to graduate students, said Meisenbach. While Purdue may set aside the same amount as other institutions, its larger number of graduate students means the pot is divided by larger numbers. "We seem to be lagging behind other programs in this area. Falling behind could hurt the program's ability to continue attracting the strongest caliber of graduate students."

Department head Howard Sypher praised faculty for having "stepped up to the plate" and making the first contributions to the fund. "Our students are deserving of this effort," he said.

Such support makes graduate students feel very important, said Meisenbach. "We are very grateful."