Lone Star Graduate Diversity Colloquium
Friday & Saturday March 27th and 28th, 2009
UTSA 1604 Campus UC Building

Mission
The Lone Star Graduate Diversity Colloquium was established in 2006 as one means to further the statewide Closing the Gaps Initiative. It is a collective effort by all colleges and universities in Texas to encourage more underrepresented minorities, women, and first generation college students currently enrolled at Texas colleges and universities to stay in Texas to complete their graduate education.

Background
The Lone Star Graduate Diversity Colloquium was established to assist more Texans from under-represented populations to attend graduate school and to encourage more of them to complete their graduate studies in Texas. Colleges and universities across Texas recognize the value of the Colloquium both for their students, who receive extensive and valuable information to make them more competitive as graduate school applicants, and for their graduate schools, which can recruit, in a single location, the excellent and diverse prospective grad students. The inaugural Colloquium was held at Texas A&M University in 2006. The University of Texas at Austin hosted in 2007, and Texas Tech University hosted in 2008. The event has been held on the last weekend in March each year.

Invitation
The University of Texas at San Antonio administrators and staff welcome all Texas university underrepresented students to attend this annual event in San Antonio, TX. We also welcome all Texas graduate recruiters to participate.

Registration
Will be available in the upcoming months!

Draft of Agenda

Friday afternoon:

3:30 – 5:00 p.m. Pre-registration        
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. - Recruiter roundtable – (For recruiters from graduate programs across Texas to discuss best practices in the field)
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. - Activity for students
5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. - Reception and mixer

Saturday

7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.- Student and recruiter registration
8:30 – 11:15 - Three sets of workshops including topics for students on:

• Funding Graduate Education
• Making the most of a Graduate Fair
• Preparing for entrance exams
• Researching graduate programs
• Developing a competitive application
• Value of undergraduate research
• Distance and non-traditional student options of graduate programs

For recruiters:

• Improving retention of Minority Graduate Students
• Developing a successful recruiting program
• Innovative recruiting techniques

11:30 to 12:45- Lunch and panel of current graduate students and their best piece of advice for success in Graduate School

1 p.m. to 3 p.m. - Graduate recruitment fair

More details to be announced shortly!