Graduate Peer Advisors (GPA) Program

Mission

The GPA Program encourages Stanford's diversity undergraduate students to pursue careers in engineering and science by providing them with an academic and professional support network.

Purpose

As a proactive way to strengthen Stanford's support network for undergraduate diversity students in engineering, the Office of Student Affairs and Diversity Programs in the School of Engineering created the GPA Program in January 1998, and revised it recently to meet the needs of the Dean’s Office. With interest and funding from the corporate sector, a professional luncheon and dinner series were made possible.

Process

(1) Frosh and sophomore undergraduate students are formally assigned to junior and senior Stanford engineering students, while (2) junior and senior students are assigned to a masters or Ph.D. engineering graduate peer advisor according to their academic interest within engineering.

Program

The graduate peer advisors are expected to make themselves available to discuss academic and professional concerns via personal encounters, email, and telephone. Occasional lunch meetings (1 per quarter) are suggested. While one-on-one meetings are preferable, an upper-class student or a graduate student advisor with more than two advisees may wish to meet with all advisees together. GPA advisors are not expected to have all of the answers; they are expected to merely serve as a resource for their students. The GPA discussions will focus on course selection, internship, summer research experiences, and graduate school advising.

Note that in certain circumstances, the Dean’s Office will assign graduate peer advisors to undergraduates as academic tutors.

Periodically, all undergraduate students with interest in a similar major (e.g. Aero, BioE, CS, CEE, ChemE, EE, ME, MS&E, MSE, etc.) will meet for lunch with their peer advisors, a faculty member from their department, an alumnus of their program, one of the Deans of Student Affairs, and a corporate representative. The purpose of this lunch will be to learn more about options for engineers in both academia and industry.

On special occasions, “a Dinner and a Talk” meeting will be scheduled with a key faculty, alumni, or corporate sponsors on a topic of interest. Moreover, the GPA Program will offer tours of facilities as well as an opportunity to talk with employees who are recent Stanford graduates.

Register for GPA

For further information, please contact Marta Espinoza (Terman 201, mespin@stanford.edu) or Noe Lozano (Terman 202, noe@stanford.edu).