The Astronomy Graduate Student Congress was started by a small group of astronomy grads who attended the recent dotAstro conference in NYC. We noticed that most positive changes to graduate programs tend to come from external pressure rather than internal effort. This motivated us to create some sort of common platform from which we could gain a broader perspective on issues regarding graduate education in astronomy.

The goal is to bring together astronomy graduate students from across the United States to promote interdepartmental discourse. We plan on discussing anything and everything relevant to graduate student life with the hope of creating a supportive and collaborative environment that allows departments to exchange best practices and lessons learned. We think this will help expedite positive change and facilitate the implementation of new policies in graduate programs. Your department's participation will not only benefit your graduate students but will also contribute to a shared pool of knowledge. We are also hoping this congress can serve as a channel to communicate with professional societies (like the AAS) to deliver feedback and guidance to departments, thereby lessening the burden on early career scientists.

Cheers, Lou Baya Ould Rouis (Boston University), Yasmeen Asali (Yale), Sebastian Monzon (Yale), Lindsay House (UT Austin), and Charlotte Olsen (City Tech)