MSU PLS wins the 2025 University Outstanding Graduate Program Community Award

May 7, 2025 - Karessa Weir

The MSU PLS PhD program was selected by MSU's Graduate School as the winner of the 2025 Outstanding Graduate Program Community Award.  
 
According to MSU Graduate School Associate Dean Kirsten Tollefson, the program stood out for several reasons, including supporting their PhD students with a lounge and lending library, as well as providing professionalization opportunities. 
 
“The Graduate Student Association (GSA) plays a core role within the department by serving on many departmental committees, including climate and access, strategic planning and the Graduate Committee,” she wrote. 
 
“The department has recently created a new lounge space for the graduate students that includes a lending library with many of the first-year textbooks and reference materials.  
 
“The program is committed to career and professional development. For example, they recently turned a teaching professionalization workshop into a semester course. They have instituted peer mentoring in the form of "Methods Fellows" with experienced students helping the first-year students through their initial coursework. To foster networking opportunities and career placement after the pandemic the program hosted a student-alumni conference, that they hope to continue,” she wrote. 
 
Graduate Program Director Dr. Ian Ostrander nominated the department as an embodiment of MSU’s foundational values in graduate training.  
 
“I am particularly proud of what our community has been able to achieve, creating an intellectual and supportive climate even in an era of diminished resources,” Ostrander wrote.  
 
PhD students Alexandra Stinson-Swartout, president of the GSA; Bailey Oates and Matthew Cota wrote a letter in support of the department award, saying that “PLS is a place where students and faculty thrive because of our commitment to our work and to each other.” 
 
The award comes with a grant of $5,000, which the department plans to use to subsidize our PLS PhD Alumni conference in fall 2025, as well as a plaque for in the graduate lounge.