Social Networking Hours
GPSO Social Hours build community within the graduate student community and are frequently departmentally sponsored.
See our Calendar of Activities for upcoming Social Networking Hours.
How to Sponsor a Social Hour
Use the following information to inform your department on how to sponsor a graduate student Social Networking Hour.
The Graduate and Professional Student Organization represents over 8,000 students at IUB and focuses on advocacy and mediation for graduate student policy issues and provision of professional development and community building services. In this endeavor, we try to work together with existing graduate student organizations and facilitate networking among departments.
Social events, such as the monthly GPSO Happy Hours are focused on strengthening the graduate student community in Bloomington and increasing awareness of resources available across campus. Sponsorships from various departments help advertising each department and its programs through graduate students acting as informal promoters.
It has been our experience that a department sponsoring an event increases the attendance from that particular department, and that these students keep attending future events as well. Even if happy hours are social events, discussions revolve mostly around academics, so we find them as great arenas for inter-departmental networking.
Previous sponsorships ranged from $150 to $350 and we use the funds only for food items. Attendance ranges from 40 to 60. The sponsoring departments have the choice of the location. Sponsoring at Nick's English Hut seems more costly than at Crazy Horse. At either place we reserve a special area for the event.
