Dear Fellow Graduate Students,

We would like to offer a warm welcome to all of you – both new and returning
graduate students - to SSSP. We are in the midst of preparing for what is
guaranteed to be an excellent conference.
We are your graduate student representatives and it is our distinct pleasure
to welcome you and to do our best to keep you informed about graduate
student events and opportunities at SSSP. Should you have any questions
please do not hesitate to write and we will do our best to offer whatever we
can in terms of answers or advice.

First off and most importantly, if you have not yet done so, please register for
the conference,
http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/483/fuseaction/ssspconf.portal!! The
deadline for program participants to pre-register for the meeting was May 31.
You cannot have a voice if you are not there!! We recognize that funding is a
limitation that many graduate students face. The roommate-matching program
helps make it more affordable to stay in the conference hotel. This must be
requested on the registration form by June 29. If you are not looking for
a ‘roomie’ but would like to be paired up with an experienced voice in SSSP,
please apply to the meeting mentor program. More information on the
mentoring program can be found at
http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/312/Mentoring_Program/. The deadline to
do so is June 30.

SSSP offers many wonderful opportunities for graduate students to become
more involved. There are a number of graduate student specific events hosted
throughout the conference. The preliminary program has already been posted
on the SSSP website and it includes information about a new member
breakfast (new student members are especially invited); the Graduate student
meeting which will give all graduate student members a voice and space to be
heard and taken seriously, and the graduate student social. The social is
another space to connect with fellow graduate student members. There are
additional networking opportunities in the welcoming reception and the
division-sponsored reception. You can find the 2012 Annual Meeting page at
http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/459/2012_Annual_Meeting/.

We are very excited about this year’s conference and hope that we have a
chance to meet all of you in Denver. SSSP takes the voice of its graduate
student body very seriously and so this is a fantastic opportunity to make
sure that yours is heard. Again, should you wish to contact us for any reason,
please do not hesitate!!

All the best!!

Mandy Frake-Mistak Patrick O’Brien
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