Welcome Letters to Families of New Graduate Students

Families can be a key source of support for graduate students, particularly for students with minoritized identities such as first-generation college students.Yet, many graduate programs do not actively encourage family support.Our goal was to promote family support for new graduate students in our program through a "Welcome Letter" sent home during orientation.We created a letter that highlighted university and departmental resources, introduced the idea of graduate students joining a research lab, and emphasized that all families can support their students by listening to their concerns, reminding them that they care for them, and just staying connected.The letter also included a brief glossary for families who wanted to learn more about graduate school.The glossary defined words that students are likely to use in describing their graduate school experiences, but which may be unfamiliar to their families, such as "abstract," "fellowship," and "teaching assistant."During orientation, students were encouraged to address envelopes for welcome letters to family members of their choice.We emphasized that students could send more than one letter and that both domestic and international addresses were expected.After orientation, postage was provided, and the letters were posted on the students' behalf.The letter was formatted to allow for space for the student to handwrite a personalized message to the recipient.Both English and Spanish versions of the letter were available to the students.In addition, students were offered stickers to include with the letter.The stickers consisted of an official and widely recognized logo of the university along with the word "family" in either English, Spanish, Chinese, or Korean.As short-term measures of this project, we collected data on the number of letters sent, the geographic distribution of recipients, the rate of usage of the English vs Spanish versions of the letter, and the rate of usage of the stickers in different languages.