Doctoral students Lutecia Medina and Rodrigo Gonçalves Dias are the new student representatives of the Graduate Program in Agricultural Microbiology. The pair took up their position this June and will remain in office for one year. Among the duties of the student representatives is to work with the coordinating committee to make decisions and draw up strategies for the development of the program.

“During my master’s degree, I had already thought about representation, and now I thought it was time to live this experience, get closer to the students and contribute to the program not only in the research environment,” says Lutecia, a researcher at the Applied Environmental Microbiology Laboratory (LAMAP), coordinated by Professor Cynthia Canêdo da Silva.

“I’ve been here since my master’s degree, and over time I’ve noticed that I’ve matured within the PPG. As a representative, I want to break the taboo that still exists in the relationship between students and professors. There are many demands that students bring that are real, that need space, and this requires dialog. I want to make this exchange, help the students and break down this distance between student and teacher,” says Rodrigo, who is supervised by Professor Wendel Batista da Silveira in the Laboratory of Microorganism Physiology.

One of the duo’s first bets is to increase information about their work. “We want to increase the transparency of our work, and we’re thinking of using our weekly seminar, when everyone gets together, to deal with important issues and to listen to the students,” says Lutecia. The representatives also plan to take a proposal to the commission to study adjustments to the curriculum and some subjects, in order to diversify activities and promote more moments of practice and experimentation. “We feel, for example, that there is a lack of knowledge in statistics, and as much as other departments bring this subject, it would be interesting to build a syllabus that meets the demands of the program’s experiments. Who knows, maybe we can have this subject here? It’s a demand we want to try to meet,” says Rodrigo.