At the core of every respected graduate program is the mission to provide students with an education that is comprehensive and relevant while developing the inter-personal skills necessary to be successful in the business and practice of engineering. While there will always be debate as to what technical content should be included in the curriculum, often most subjective is deciding what personal qualities can and should be honed in a graduate school environment. Many graduate programs provide students with opportunities to become comfortable with public speaking. It is also common for students to receive guidance from outside practitioners and academics through seminars and visiting lecturers. But how much attention do graduate programs give to instilling the values of professional solidarity, ethics, and public service? This is a question I faced in January at the first meeting of the Geo-Institute Student Presidential Group (GI-SPG). The GI-SPG is a group formed by G-I President Dr. Jean-Louis Briaud that works to strengthen the student relationship with the Geo-Institute. During this meeting, Dr. Briaud stressed the importance of having a G-I Graduate Student Organization (GSO) as a component to a graduate program. You can learn more about the GSO program by visiting the ‘Students’ section of the G-I website at http://content.geoinstitute.org/student.html. Being unfamiliar myself, I asked Dr. Briaud what was the added benefit to supplementing existing social and professional activities at Virginia Tech with a GSO. In his reply, Dr. Briaud was able to pin down the reason every geotechnical engineering program should have a GSO. In his words: “the main reason why you would want to create a GSO at Virginia Tech is that you must be a part of your professional family. Our profession plays a very important part in our life and we need to do what we can to support it, to defend it, to make it rise to the top of public opinion, to improve it. It is our duty and it ranks at the level of family obligation.” The essence of his response is that graduate students need to go beyond just school pride and feel an obligation to the profession at a national level.