Dear Colleague,
We’re writing to invite you again to complete the Survey of Graduate Communication Support by November 3, 2026. We have re-opened the survey to gather additional data. If you’ve already completed the survey, there’s no need to complete it again. The findings of the survey will expand the groundbreaking work of Nigel Caplan and Michelle Crow in 2016 and will allow us to better understand the services and programs that support graduate students’ communication development. With this survey revision, we also aim to longitudinally track the ways that graduate communication support changes over time.
We are three scholars who have been providing communication support for graduate students at our institutions for more than a decade. We have also been heavily involved in the creation and development of the Consortium on Graduate Communication (CGC). We believe strongly in the importance of communication support for (post)graduate students’ success and want to facilitate sharing knowledge about the best ways to do that work. We invite you to help us by completing the survey.
Who can participate?
Any person who directly provides communication support to (post)graduate or professional students is invited to complete the survey, as is anyone who directs or supervises such a program, unit, or initiative (e.g., a dean of a graduate school). Multiple people from a single institution may complete the survey and we hope that at least one person from each program will complete it if an institution has multiple programs. While some questions may be best answered by a program director, others focus on individuals–their educational backgrounds, expertise, and the structure of their positions–thus we aim to collect responses from anyone who directly provides graduate communication support and/or from anyone who can report about an institution’s support services for graduate students.
Please note: If you are currently residing in – or are “ordinarily resident” – in any of the following
countries/territories you are unfortunately NOT eligible for participation in this survey due to U.S.
sanctions: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea region of Ukraine, Luhansk People’s Republic
(LNR), Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), Russia, Belarus, and Venezuela. (“Ordinarily
Resident” applies to you if you spend six months or more out of the year residing in any of the
above locations or if you own property there.) If one or both of these apply to you, please
disregard this request as we are prohibited from soliciting your input at this time.
What does participation involve?
The survey asks for contextual information about your institution, the kinds of graduate communication support offered across your institution and within your program/unit, and information about the structure of your position and professional background. The time it takes to complete the survey will scale with the scope of your program, but we estimate it to take between 15-60 minutes. The survey also allows you to pause it and complete it later (within one month).
The survey will remain open until November 3, 2026.
More Study Information
If you have any questions about the survey or this study, feel free to contact any of the research team or review our Study Information Sheet.
Learn Our Results
We have submitted a proposal for the CCCC 2026 and will be submitting a proposal to share our results at the CGC’s 2026 Virtual Summer Institute. We encourage you to join us at these conferences. We also plan to share a report of our results through open-access and eventually through peer-reviewed publications.
Sincerely,
Dr. Michelle Crow | Cornell University
Director of the English Language Support Office| Founding Co-Chair of the Consortium on Graduate Communication
Dr. Marilyn Gray | UCLA
Director of the Graduate Writing Center | 2021-23 Co-Chair of the Consortium on Graduate Communication
Dr. Talinn Phillips | Ohio University
Director of Composition | 2021-23 Co-Chair of the Consortium on Graduate Communication