Graduate school is an exciting time during which you can follow your passions as you pursue advanced study and research. Like with just about any human endeavor, there are some rules, guidelines, and activities that will shape your path towards your degree and professional development.
Our main expectation is that our graduate students view and conduct themselves as professionals, so it's your responsibility to be aware of degree requirements, advisor and departmental expectations, and University, College, and departmental policies. Here you'll find some help in accomplishing that.
Departmental resources
You can seek help from a range of people. Within EES our office staff (Jillian Jacoby, Department Coordinator or Libby Seyfried, Business Manager) can help with scheduling and general procedures like reimbursements. Learn to work with your advisor and go to them for information about expectations, lab policies, and academic and career strategies. Bring any grievances or questions about EES policies to either the head of the Graduate Instruction Committee (currently Jill McDermott), your representative to that committee, or the department Chair (currently Gray https://cas.lehigh.edu/content/graduate-management-assistant ).
EES maintains a graduate handbook (link) that outlines requirements and graduate-student expectations. We also have a Coursesite page (login required) that enrolls EES faculty and graduate students, and this page will provide more detailed information about policies and EES operations (look for it in your list of pages; it's called "EES Graduate Program Information - 0914"; the shortname is EESGRADINFO).
Other resources
There are also important and helpful resources available outside the department. Kathleen Hutnik and her staff at the Graduate Education and Life Office coordinate a range of activities and support programs for graduate students. (Link to website here: https://grad.lehigh.edu/welcome-lehigh-graduate-education-graduate-life ) An absolutely essential resource to take advantage of is the expertise held in the CAS graduate office by Mandy Fraley (610-758-5837), Mandi Alford (610-758-4294) and Daniel Gooneardene (610-758-4281), about degree requirements and policies: neither your advisor nor the GIC will always be up-to-date on all the details, so don't hesitate to seek help from Mandy, Daniel and Mandi - they're just next to STEPS in room 490 of Maginnes Hall. Check out the Graduate Management Assistant on their website here: https://cas.lehigh.edu/content/graduate-management-assistant
