Alison Kraigsley
Alison Kraigsley, a Ph.D. candidate in molecular biology from Vancouver, Canada, brings her experiences as the academic affairs chair of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) to her current role as the organization's vice president.
"I really enjoy working with the GPSS committees and helping them to achieve their stated goals," says Alison. She oversees all 13 GPSS committees, including academic affairs, alumni relations, campus safety, finance, graduate programming, graduate student of color network, Health Sciences campus concerns, international scholars, judiciary, lesbian gay bisexual transgender and allies, publicity and recruitment, student life and women's concerns. According to GPSS staff member Cynthia Brass, Alison is “a dedicated student and a hard worker who demonstrates her excellent leadership skills in the various projects she oversees.”
Alison believes that students should work closely with university administrators in order to ensure that students may share their views in a constructive manner. She formed an academic integrity roundtable to bring together administrators and undergraduate and graduate students to discuss how they could better work together and support each other’s goals. Alison has also sat on numerous university-wide committees and the Board of Trustees for the past two years. Her role continues as the liaison to both the undergraduate and the graduate student governments at other universities.
Alison was drawn to USC because of its research opportunities and the chance to work with faculty who share her interests in extended space exploration and science research. As a master's student at USC, Alison studied aerospace engineering as a merit scholar. "It was a great experience that helped me develop skills in the lab. I really enjoyed working with undergraduate students," she says.