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Graduate students hit hard by shutdown

Photo courtesy of Adewale Adesanya With campus closed and no office away from his young children, MTU Graduate Student Adewale Adesanya conducts a research proposal defense in his car.

HOUGHTON — In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Michigan Technological University has suspended in-person instruction and closed the residence halls. Undergraduate students have all gone home. For graduate students, things are more complicated.

“We’re grown-ups, and we live here. This is like a factory shutting down, but no one is eligible for unemployment,” Jennifer Rachels, a doctoral student in environmental engineering and policy, said in an interview over Zoom.

Rachels also co-authored a recent letter-to-the-editor about the precarious situation of grad students. “A lot of people, I don’t think know we’re students. We live and work in the community; they maybe think we teach at Tech.”

Graduate students, like most populations, face uncertainty in the face of the impact that the coronavirus has had on society. Almost all of them work on campus in some capacity. International students are actually not allowed to have jobs off-campus unless in their field of study.

Like people in other careers have seen their work change rather than disappear, some grad students are able to do their research remotely.

“It’s a lifestyle change but it’s not a work change,” Walker Nelson, a master’s student in Mechanical Engineering said from the deck of his off-campus apartment. Nelson’s research primarily involves computer coding, so for the time being he has been able to take his work with him. “Eventually, I’m going to run out of things that I can do from here, but I haven’t reached that point yet.”

Even though Nelson is confident that he’ll be on track to graduate in November, he has no idea what the Fall semester might look like. No one does.

“Some schools, and I think ours is included in this, are waiting to see what the other kids do, and they’re being very quiet in the meantime,” said Rachels. “There’s been no memo out from the administration saying ‘this is what we’re going to do.'”

MTU has a special page on its website regarding its coronavirus response. The page is divided into resources for students, faculty, and staff. An “FAQs for graduate students” page has some original information for grad students, like how to schedule a thesis defense over zoom. Most of the links on the grad students page loop back to the students, faculty, and staff pages, or to general guidelines like the university’s March 24 “COVID-19 Stay at Home Protocol.”

Part of the communication problem comes from the unique situation of each grad student. Grad student funding – which can pay for tuition as well as things like rent and food – is usually sourced by the individual students or handled through their academic advisors rather than through the university directly.

“There’s no one-stop-shop at this time where it might make sense to coordinate information,” said Rachels. “There’s no one to call, and no information.”

The most immediate point-of-contact for most graduate students is the Graduate Student Government.

“This is an unprecedented situation. No one was prepared for it. Not the University, not grad students, not the GSG,” PhD student Shardul Tiwari said in a Zoom interview. Tiwari is also the president of the Indian Students Association, and a GSG representative to the Social Sciences department. “So far, the communication has been slow at best, and very limited.”

In addition to being one of the key liaisons between graduate students and the university, the GSG also has its own emergency fund, however, the amount in the fund has a cap that limits its utility, according to doctoral candidate and letter co-author William Lytle.

“That program exists, but it’s in a very small capacity. Almost all of our graduate student safety nets have increased over the last five years none of them are near where they could be or should be,” Lytle said in a Zoom interview. “The University has some tools to help students but they have not made clear how or when they will make those tools available.”

International students are entirely reliant on these funds to maintain their status because they are barred from accessing other financial safety nets offered through United States governmental organizations. Further, while the University cannot legally remove on-campus residents due to their inability to pay rent, their status as on-campus residents is closely linked to their academic standing, which leaves many of them concerned about what might happen when the bill comes due.

“You have fresh minds sitting at home where they don’t have work and they don’t have study. They’re still buying food and they still have to pay rent but they have no work,” said Tiwari.

Lytle clarifies that, if nothing else, this is a potential crisis for the local economy.

“All of these students have skills. All of these students are going to survive,” said Lytle. “But if they have to leave, they’re going to leave … and the region will lose them.”

For more information about how MTU is handling the coronavirus situation, visit mtu.edu/covid-19/.

For MTU students looking for resources, visit mtu.edu/deanofstudents/students/emergency-resources/.

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