FreeCSD is an overarching organization designed to represent and support every graduate student in the Computer Science Department.
We largely focus on issues relating to advocacy, as well as community building via social events
(e.g. board games, happy hours, weekly departmental tea, Black Friday TG,
and miscellaneous student-led initiatives), apparel, and maintenance of our 7th-floor lounge space.
These activities are supported by a two-prong structure, wherein GSA Representatives advocate for CSD graduate student interests at the university level
and the PhD Student Council takes responsibility for community-building initiatives (more information below).
We are always looking for more grad students to volunteer for FreeCSD. Let us know if you would like to volunteer! You can reach us at free-csd at cs.
If you are a current CSD PhD student, please join our Slack Workspace to stay in touch and learn about ongoing events!
You must register using your scsid@cs.cmu.edu email address.
You can find out more about our social infrastructure here.
(You might also be interested in Dec/5, which is the grad student social organization for the whole School of Computer Science.)
Current GSA Representatives: Shuqi Dai
Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) is the branch of student government that represents all graduate students at Carnegie Mellon.
We are looking for one or two more grad students to serve as a GSA Rep. Contact us at shuqid@cs.cmu.edu if you have any questions or if you’re interested in becoming a GSA rep.
The roles of the rep are:
1. Attend the monthly GSA meeting on the first Wednesday of every month from 5-7pm (dinner is provide).
2. Forward emails from the GSA to CSD.
3. Volunteer at one GSA event per year (you’ll get free tickets to the event).
4. Help plan events for CSD with the money that comes from the GSA. This means you’ll be part of the FreeCSD group.
5. Serve on one committee (internal or external to the GSA) which meets at most once a month.
Reasons to serve on the GSA:
1. You’re tired of CS folks and want to meet other grad students.
2. You want access to the CSD’s funds so you can plan fun events/buy cool things.
3. You want to get engaged in politics: GSA’s External Affairs committee is very active at all levels of government and is shockingly effective.
4. You’d like to advocate for things on campus that you think might be overlooked, e.g., psychological health services, the cost of health insurance, the availability of shuttles and/or bike paths, academic issues, etc.
5. You think it’s cool to see how ~1 million dollars gets spent by grad students every year.
The FreeCSD PhD Student Council primarily runs on a working group model. Our current working groups include: Lounge Upgrades, Social Events, Mentorship Changes, Apparel, and Transparent Funding for Student-led Initiatives. If you have suggestions for additional working groups / changes you'd like to see in the department, please reach out!
Current Council Members:
President: Pallavi Koppol
Treasurers: Nirav Atre, Alex Wang
Lounge Working Group: David Kahn, Sol Boucher, Nj Mukherjee
Mentorship Working Group: Misha Khodak, Lucio Dery, Anup Agarwal
Social Events Working Group: Shir Maimon, Arjun Lakshmipathy, Nj Mukherjee, Isaac Grosof
Apparel Working Group: Myra Dotzel, Jalani Williams