President Welcomes Graduate Students to CMU

Incoming graduate students are arriving at Carnegie Mellon University at an unprecedented time when the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world around us.

"I remain extremely proud of the way this community has come together to meet the challenges of this moment," said CMU President Farnam Jahanian during a livestream event for graduate students. "I am also inspired by the CMU innovators who continue to respond to the evolving needs of a world reeling from such a seismic shift. I remain very hopeful about the future.

"We're about to begin a new academic year that promises to be one of hope and progress, as well as one of transition and continued resilience," Jahanian said.

Of this year's new 3,800 graduate students, some 65% are international and more than 40% are women.

Joining the president during the welcome event were James H. Garrett, Jr., provost and chief academic officer; Amy Burkert, vice provost for education; Wanda Heading-Grant, vice provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and chief diversity officer; Gina Casalegno, vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students and Divyansh Kaushik, president of the Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) and a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Language Technologies Institute, who reflected on when he arrived in Pittsburgh.

"As an international student from India, I really looked forward to the opportunity to experience life in a new country. I was excited for the world-class education I was going to receive and the new doors that would potentially open for me in my professional career," Kaushik said. "But my graduate experience has been so much more than that. In this experience there is a lot of room for growth. And a lot of room to form relationships with your fellow graduate students. No one will understand this experience like those around you now."