Graduate Students and Postdocs Want Community—So Why Is It So Hard to Build?

Graduate students and postdocs are constantly surrounded by people. Across long hours in labs, classrooms, meetings, and seminars, we collaborate with mentors, troubleshoot experiments with colleagues, and share the challenges that come with rigorous training. In many ways, universities can appear deeply interconnected and interdisciplinary. Yet many trainees at Duke still feel disconnected from the broader university community and struggle to form personal and professional relationships outside of their immediate departments.

As part of the Emerging Leaders Institute (ELI), our team set out to better understand how graduate students and postdocs experience connection across campus. We initially thought we might uncover a lack of interest in interdisciplinary events or broader engagement opportunities. Instead, we found something very different: the desire for connection exists, but a variety of barriers deter students and postdocs from entering spaces where community building is possible.

To better understand connectedness among graduate students and postdocs at Duke University, we leveraged a mixed-methods assessment that included surveys and qualitative interviews with trainees across career stages. We explored how connected trainees feel beyond their labs or departments, what types of engagement opportunities they value, and what prevents them from participating more fully in the broader Duke community.

One finding stood out immediately: while only around 30% of trainees reported feeling connected beyond their departments, more than 80% expressed a desire to feel more connected across Duke. Many participants believed that stronger interdisciplinary connection would improve their sense of belonging and their professional development and opportunities for collaboration. But there are many events hosted on Duke’s campus—cultural celebrations, mixers, visiting speakers from politics, academia, and the community— so why don’t trainees feel like there are spaces to connect?

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Our conversations suggested that even though trainees desire connection and there are events being offered, there are several barriers that inhibit them from showing up. As we analyzed survey responses and interviews, it became clear that the biggest barrier to participation was scheduling and time availability. More than half of respondents who described why they did not attend events cited conflicts with research, coursework, experiments, deadlines, or work hours. For many trainees, events they were genuinely interested in attending simply did not fit within the realities of graduate or postdoctoral life. 

This was important because it challenged a common assumption that low participation in campus events reflects a lack of interest. The students we talked to indicated that this was not the case; interest is strong, but the demands of work and life get in the way. This finding resonated strongly with us because it reflected something many trainees experience daily: balancing intellectual curiosity and community events with demanding and often unpredictable schedules. 

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Communication challenges also impact trainees' engagement across campus. Between the plethora of newsletters and department emails, many trainees described feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of university emails. Even when the emails aren’t lost in their inboxes, most trainees don’t have the time and energy to scroll through pages of events to identify those that are relevant to them. Some trainees reported that they more often discovered opportunities through peers rather than official university channels, despite the number of official events being held. To address this problem, several participants suggested that Duke would benefit from a centralized graduate-level event calendar with options to filter by event type, which would make it easier for trainees to find events relevant to them. They also recommended more streamlined communication that clearly highlights the purpose and audience of events.

There is also a disconnect between events being offered and the events trainees are seeking. Among the students and postdocs we engaged with, we heard interest in a variety of events. Some desired social events, others hobby spaces, and others sought more professional networking and topic-based meetings. In interviews, participants emphasized that they preferred structured, purpose-driven engagement and a clear focus: interdisciplinary conversations, collaborative activities, career development opportunities, or smaller social spaces that felt intentional and welcoming. Some specifically suggested mid-week gatherings with food, graduate-only socials, and opportunities to connect across departments in ways that felt natural rather than forced. This nuance became one of the most meaningful lessons of the project. Community is not created simply by placing people in the same room; people are more likely to engage when events feel comfortable, purposeful, accessible, and designed with their needs in mind.

Ultimately, our findings suggest graduate students and postdocs at Duke are eager for connection, but fragmented communication systems, scheduling constraints, and decentralized programming create friction that makes participation difficult. To enhance community, small but intentional infrastructure changes — such as improving discoverability, reducing scheduling barriers, and designing more structured engagement opportunities—can help trainees feel connected beyond their immediate environments.

To ensure that these findings are accessible, we compiled the efforts of these conversations, interviews, and survey results in a white paper. This document outlines the goals of the project, key themes and findings, and suggestions from our participants and our team for ways to make Duke a more cohesive community. We have shared this document with Associate Dean of Students Genille Anderson of Graduate and Professional Student Services so these lessons can be incorporated into future programming. Our hope is that these efforts will support intentional changes that enhance trainees’ participation in the Duke community and strengthen connection across campus.

Working on this project changed the way we think about leadership and institutional change. At the beginning, we approached the project assuming that we knew both what wasn’t working and how to fix it. But after initial conversations with leaders and trainees across Duke, we realized that the barriers to connection were more nuanced and we’d need to know more before suggesting solutions. So, rather than rushing in to tackle the problem head-on, we decided to step back and listen, which ultimately helped us better understand why trainees are struggling. It reminded us that leadership is not only about generating ideas or initiatives but listening carefully enough to identify the barriers that people experience every day but may not have the opportunity to articulate.

The process itself was deeply collaborative. Our team conducted outreach across departments, student organizations, newsletters, and campus spaces to gather perspectives from trainees with different experiences and backgrounds. We expanded our own networks and heard from people we may have never met otherwise. Through both quantitative and qualitative data, we saw how common these feelings were, even among trainees in very different disciplines and career stages.

Graduate education can often feel highly specialized and departmentalized, but many trainees want opportunities to build broader intellectual and personal communities. Our ELI project reinforced the idea that connection matters deeply—not only for belonging, but also for collaboration, professional growth, and the overall trainee experience. Sometimes the challenge is not convincing people to engage. It is making engagement easier to find, easier to access, and easier to sustain.

Acknowledgment: Our team wishes to thank Emma Mew, Ph.D., M.P.H., former postdoctoral associate at the Center for Global Mental Health at the Duke Global Health Institute, who was a valued team member on this project!

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Project team members (L-R) Emma Mew, Luz Saavedra-Sanchez, Josette McLean, and Natasha Barahona

AUTHORS

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Luz Saavedra-Sanchez

Ph.D. candidate, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology

Luz Saavedra-Sanchez is a Peruvian microbiologist and final-year Ph.D. candidate in molecular genetics and microbiology who completed an internship at Eli Lilly during summer 2026. Her research focuses on host-pathogen interactions in Shigella infection, integrating fluorescence microscopy and quantitative image analysis, and has been published in eLife. Luz is deeply committed to mentorship, leadership, and advancing equity in science. She serves as executive co-director of the nonprofit Research Experience for Peruvian Undergraduates (REPU), which connects Peruvian students with international research opportunities. Her professional interests lie at the intersection of translational and clinical research, global health, and building inclusive scientific communities.

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Natasha Barahona

M.S. student, Global Health

Natasha Barahona is starting her second year of the master’s degree in global health, where she is conducting her thesis work on increasing access to neurosurgical care in Uganda through development of a mobile neurological clinic. She is passionate about building equitable collaborations for research and clinical practice to improve medical care for communities worldwide. Following completion of her degree, she intends to pursue medical school and a career in global neurosurgery. Outside of academics, she enjoys reading (and is making her way through Stephen King’s collection of horror), hiking and camping, travel, taiji, and spending time with her husband and pets. 

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Josette McLean

Ph.D. candidate, Marine Science and Conservation

Josette McLean is a Duke University Ph.D. candidate in the marine science and conservation program, where she is also completing a certificate in entrepreneurship and innovation. Her current research focuses on enhancing the resilience of global ecosystems to environmental stressors, with an emphasis on coral reef ecosystems. Josette has also held a variety of leadership roles in leading professional organizations, including the Ecological Society of America, and The Oceanography Society. In the future, she aspires to merge her expertise in environmental science with her passion for business and technology to make meaningful contributions to the climate technology and sustainability sectors.