Nick Weiler and Nick Steinmetz noticed something unusual in their first year as neuroscience grad students.

“Grad school can be sort of isolating and fragmented,” Weiler said.

“All your time is spent in a lab,” Steinmetz added. “If you don’t have an explicit reason to go around and meet people, you won’t.”

Weiler and Steinmetz, roommates in Rains and acquaintances since their Ph.D. interviews, decided to do something about the lack of a thriving graduate social community. They received a $5,000 grant to foster discussion and build community from Stanford’s Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education. The office awarded seven grants to students in different departments. The awards are known as SPICE, Student Projects for Intellectual Community Enhancement.

The SPICE grants are not just about chatting up other grad students, Steinmetz explained. He said that the nature of grad school necessitates collaboration.

“As an undergrad, you take all these classes and do the homework, and you learn what you’re supposed to learn,” he said. “As a grad student, it’s a much different ballgame. You have to figure out what you need to know, what kinds of questions to ask and what kinds of hypotheses to make. One of the best strategies is not just reading books, but discussing science with other people.”

As an example, Weiler mentioned a course he is taking with neuroscience students from a variety of different subfields.

“It’s good seeing their point of view and hearing the types of questions they ask, [since they have] a different sort of background and do different types of experiments,” he said of his classmates.

To foster this kind of discussion outside of the classroom, Weiler and Steinmetz sent out a survey to learn what sorts of activities interested their fellow grad students. The survey got responses from a third of the 90 neuroscience graduate students, and the most popular option was a series of lunchtime talks at which students could discuss their own research.

The schedule of the lunchtime talks is still in the works, but discussions “will encourage discussion of the ideas behind the research,” said Steinmetz. “They’ll be less focused on the data and the experimental protocol and more focused on the concepts and how they designed the experiment and came up with hypotheses.”

The research talks will also include snacks. Ninety percent of the $5,000 grant will pay for catered lunches, Steinmetz said.

“Grad students are notorious for enjoying free food,” he explained. “It’s not a misplaced stereotype.”

Other planned activities include a book club and movie showings — “fun get-togethers with a neuroscience flavor,” Weiler explained.

The book club will start in the summer, and the first books are still being chosen.

“It could be a hard science book, or a book by Oliver Sacks, or neuro-science fiction like Neuromancer,” Weiner said.

Grad students will not have to wait until summer for the movie showings — the kickoff event was last Friday.

“We watched ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’” Steinmetz said. “It’s my favorite neuroscience movie.”