Manuel Pasqual Paul is a 5th year Ph.D. student in Physics and Astronomy and has been the Physics Graduate Caucus (PGC) administrator since his first year at UCI. He led the efforts to revive PGC, solidify its structure, and expand the function and reach of the organization. Outside of PGC, Manuel specializes in Astronomy. He became interested in astronomy while he was in undergrad, as he wanted to use his electronics skills in his research. Manuel’s mentor, an astronomy professor, encouraged him to apply to astronomy internships that focused on radio astronomy instrumentation. Since then, Manuel has been working on radio instruments. He currently works with Dr. Steven Barwick on the ARIANNA detector, a radio instrument array that measures neutrinos in Antarctica. In the future, he hopes to continue the path of designing and building instruments. He is interested in teaching as a faculty member, and is leaning towards teaching at a community college.
PGC is a graduate student-run organization within the Department of Physics and Astronomy that seeks to support and improve academic and career success, foster individual and community well-being, and be a voice for graduate students within our department. Prior to Manuel’s involvement in PGC, the organization only centered around creating social gatherings between graduate students. In addition, many of the graduate student leadership had graduated and left, leaving PGC mostly abandoned. Seeing the need and potential PGC had, Manuel and a few other graduate students got together to revive PGC and expand its reach. Now PGC focuses not only on providing social gatherings, but also representing graduate student interests and concerns.
While many are responsible for the success of PGC since 2017, Manuel stepped up to be the first Administrator to lead the newly revived PGC. His goal at that time was to expand the functions of PGC, build a new relationship between the PGC and the Department, and spread awareness to graduate students about PGC to ensure their efforts did not lose momentum. Over 5 years, Manuel oversaw many new initiatives for PGC. In the first year, Manuel gathered other officers to formulate a PGC constitution, which was then formally written-down and defines the structure and operation of PGC to this day. To initiate change, Manuel began to survey potential graduates on their experiences going through the graduate admissions process, which led to the redesign of the department’s prospective visit day and an increase of student acceptances. He pushed for PGC to represent TAs by surveying the graduate students every quarter, ultimately helping understand the trends in TA workload. The reports were used by the department to influence change to the entire TA system and help maint good workloads. In addition to these surveys, Manuel created different officer positions in PGC: TA, Admissions, and Qualifying Exam representative positions; professional development, diversity, and floor representative positions (Plasma rep, Astro rep, etc.); and internal/external organization representative positions (AGS rep, UNITY rep, Blog rep, etc). Under Manuel’s efforts, PGC became a central hub that keeps physics and astronomy graduate students and organizations connected with each other and with the department.
Overall, Manuel says the most rewarding thing about his leadership role in PGC was getting to meet more of the graduate population in the department and to work with others who also want what’s best for their fellow graduates. Manuel says he hopes PGC continues to represent current graduate students by providing social opportunities and continuing to build a community. Manuel says if anyone wants to get involved, to just do it! It not only helps the student professionally, but they can also grow personally. While this is his last year running PGC, Manuel says he can leave the program next year knowing that he helped foster a community and environment for Physics and Astronomy graduates.
When asked about work-life balance, Manuel says that he likes to schedule a whole day where he drives to Los Angeles and watches a Broadway play. He used to participate in Community theater as an actor, so he still seeks it out when he wants to get away from work. He also maintains a detailed calendar, attempts to have a 8am-5/6pm work day, and schedules regular outings that he can look forward to with his partner and his close group of friends that support him.
