The Astro Grad Congress held its December General Body Meeting on December 3rd, 2025, with 19 graduate representatives in attendance.

Meeting Highlights

We opened with updates from the steering committee and a look ahead to our next GBM, which will take place in Spring 2025. We also discussed exciting plans to collaborate with the AAS on survey distribution and future meeting events—stay tuned!

Subcommittee Updates

Each of the four AGC subcommittees shared progress and next steps:

• Unionization is distributing a survey to assess the current state of graduate unions across astronomy departments.
• Faculty Hiring is collecting input on how graduate students are (or aren’t) included in faculty hiring processes across institutions.
• Community Building shared updates on department-level programs and student involvement in broader outreach and representation efforts.
• Outreach Database has received 20+ responses to their survey on public engagement initiatives and is continuing to build a central resource.

What’s Next

Subcommittees met in breakout rooms to outline their goals and action items for the coming months. These efforts will be shared in an upcoming blog post to keep the broader community in the loop.

As always, all subcommittees are open to new members—you’re welcome to join any that interest you, even if you don’t have time to contribute regularly. You can also propose new initiatives anytime!