Achievement

Our program held its second annual 'Winter Storm', a 2-week intensive workshop held during the U of Maryland's winter session. This year's version of Winter Storm incorporated many changes that emerged from a student-run assessment process the previous year. In particular, this year's Winter Storm was primarily student-led, leading to a greater sense of cooperation and shared ownership of the event. Students from collaborated in leading hands-on training sessions that showed how their own technical tools could be applied to data from a student from another department. Student-led research planning groups met more regularly and in smaller, more focused clusters, yielding more projects that were sustained beyond Winter Storm. Other activities included a very well-received professional development talk by a recent PhD who now holds a faculty position in an interdisciplinary setting, social events, and a 1-day thematic workshop that brought together participants from 3 IGERT programs.