Diversity Ambassador

The diversity ambassador role includes recruiting, retaining and fostering talented students from historically underrepresented groups in PhD programs in Informatics and Software Engineering. This position is held by PhD students, who are trying to provide information to prospective graduate students. While our campus has nominated as one of the top colleges doing the most to achieve the American Dream by NYT, our department understands that the work of access and inclusion is an ongoing process. The diversity ambassador works with the Office of Access and Inclusion (OAI) to help get more talented underrepresented students into the fold and also to be an encouraging force in your application. The work of graduate diversity ambassador is about providing you with information about graduate school. This information includes how to begin, what to do, what resources are available, what programs are around to help you begin your career in academic research.

Activities in Informatics

Each fall quarter, we begin Peer Mentorship where a PhD student from our program will be paired with you. The mentors will help talk to you about all things research, what is their process, applications and how they got there. If you are interested, you can fill the form here (https://forms.gle/BrMZ29jj7sqDPqQ38) and also contact the graduate diversity ambassador with an email in the contact info, so that they can get you paired. Aside from that, the diversity ambassador conducts webinars about our PhD programs and also PhD Application Workshops. We typically organize them during the school year and especially when the graduate application deadline approaches. If you are an undergraduate thinking about graduate school as an option, we will also provide resources to undergraduate research opportunities that you can apply to.

University Resources

We have built a rough checklist to help orient you about the prospect of graduate school and the materials that you would need to apply to schools (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mV5-df1CFd4QFLs51vJbv6Bc-kBd6mTC4YT-yyznJPM/edit). This list also includes information about Research Experiences for Undergraduates and also opportunities for campus visits through programs like GO-UCI.

Contact information

The current diversity ambassador is Sarah Ng. You can reach Sarah at: diverseinformatics@ics.uci.edu. Please send us an email if you want to be included in our listserv.