CBE Grad Peer Mentoring

The CBE Graduate Peer Mentors are part of the Graduate Peer Mentoring Collaborative, an initiative supported by The Graduate School and four colleges at NC State. The Collaborative provides one-year fellowships to a small group of Ph.D. student leaders in each college, providing these students with opportunities to receive training in key skills for peer mentoring and to serve as mentors to their fellow graduate students.

Rewards	Responsibilities
Become a trained peer-mentor with a $1000 award for the academic year	Attend ~30 hours of virtual and in-person mentorship training
Make and strengthen connections with student within and across departments	Serve as your department’s or program’s peer mentor for the academic year
Contribute to the well-being of fellow graduate students	Meet informally with first-year Ph.D. students on a weekly or biweekly basis

Zach Hetzler

• Zach is a 5th year Ph.D. student in Dr. Wei’s lab, and his research largely focuses on developing sensors for point-of-care pathogen detection. He is also using similar development principles to make devices for biopharmaceutical process monitoring that are easier and faster than the current gold standard methods.
• He attributes connecting with senior grad students when he first started his Ph.D. with making grad school feel more attainable and gaining needed perspective.
• Zach says, “Now, as a senior grad student myself, I’m excited to do the same and contribute to making our department a supportive environment for new Ph.D. students.”

Syed Ahmed Jaseem

• Syed is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in Dr. Dickey’s lab, and his research focuses on fabricating soft, stretchable hydrogel-based energy harvesting devices incorporating liquid metal particles. Their goal is to use this technology to capture wave and ocean energy.
• Syed credits his past mentors as motivation for becoming one himself.
• “I have consistently signed up for the alumni mentoring program in our department and had exceptional mentors during my stay at NCSU,” he said, “I am eager to give back by sharing my experience and helping students navigate their paths.

Hannah Margavio

• Hannah is a 5th year Ph.D. student in Dr. Parson’s lab, and her research is focused on developing integrated thin film deposition and etching processes for future microelectronic device architectures.
• She decided to become a mentor because she deeply values the community of grad students within the department. Hannah is grateful for the opportunity to be active in the department and has also served as the 711 TA for three years.
• She knows graduate school can be extremely difficult and “wants to use her experience of hardship, growth, and success to inspire the first-years to persist.”