I'm Will Barclay, I'm a fourth-year Ph.D.
candidate in the Department of Immunology.
My name is Amy Hafez and I'm
a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University's molecular
genetics and microbiology
department.I'm Hannah Brown, I'm a third year
Ph.D. candidate at Duke University.
I am in the department of molecular genetics
and microbiology.
I am
Rashmi Joglekar, I'm a fourth year Ph.D. student
in the Nicholas School of the
Environment at Duke and I'm here on behalf
of the Graduate Professional
Student Council to advocate for Title IX issues
on college campuses.
So we wanted to make sure that they
understood the graduate student perspective
on a handful of issues.
I
mentioned Title IX.
We also talked about increased research funding,
we talked
about the Higher Education Act and we wanted
to make sure that we were
standing up for some issues that really pertain
to graduate student education.
So, one of the highlights that we're talking
about is biomedical research funding.
We're really focusing on protecting the budget
for the NIH as well as the NSF to
ensure that research funds are available to
both biomedical labs as well as
fundamental science labs.
Without federal funding, I would not be
able to do my research as a graduate student
and any lab at Duke would not be
able to function or discover what they do.
Personally I think that we need to
advocate for any and all of our students I
think that the ones that are most
often the most affected by a lot of the policies
are also the ones that are
least able to speak or at least willing to
speak and so I think it's very
important that we need to do that on behalf
of them.
