Meeting Minutes- 05 August 2013

Welcome-Oat

GSASC Website (Ben):

Email going out in the next week asking reps to review the new website

Committee Updates:

Research (Crystal):

  • Recruiting volunteers to help with research funding advocacy
  • Also looking to recruit new members

Social (Jake):

  • Happy hour at wild wing café, joint with GSEC
  • 9/6 at 7:30 PM
  • Oat: this is the first time a restaurant owner has approached us about holding a happy hour there

Pro Dev (Katie):

  • Nominating a new co-chair: Jef Pierce
  • Elected unanimously

Initiatives (Amy):

  • Parental leave policy update:
  • In the fall submitted this policy, it has made it through the VPR office, needs to pass a few more hoops
  • Goal is to have it passed by the end of the academic year and implemented the next year
  • Unfortunately it was changed to a maternity leave policy (faculty doesn’t even get parental leave)
  • On-grounds housing:
  • Proposals have been brought to Dean Laushway, shared survey results with him
  • Has agreed to review all the info, and has scheduled a meeting with us and Vicky Hawes and Dean Perez to address these issues
  • Dean Laushway is on board to help with this
  • Orientation Revamp:
  • Dean Barnaby has agreed to implement many of our suggestions
  • August 26th
  • Tentative Schedule: Opening Talks, broken down by discipline for talks (responsible conduct, univ. Resources, what I wish I had known as a 1st year), lunch, closing remarks and wine and cheese
  • GSASC will be there to socialize, interact with new students

Budget (Nivi):

  • Proposed budget:
  • $19100 for the year
  • volunteering category eliminated
  • added $1000 to external request budget
  • Huskey $2100
  • GradDays $3000
  • Grad Life Enrichment (Social, IM) $6000
  • External requests $4500
  • Administrative Costs $2000
  • Discretionary $2000
  • Regarding Food:
  • General body meetings traditionally have food, but we drastically overspent last year. Allocation has been increased for this year, but general body meeting food has been cut to 5/9 meetings per school year
  • Motion to approve the budget, with the condition the it will be circulated to members and can reevaluate later
  • Majority voted to approve, one against

Funding Requests:

  • Welcome back to school, welcome to UVa happy hour
  • Recommend funding at $400, approved at $400

Update on GSAS website, brainstorming session (Trish):

  • Dean Barnaby has recently revamped the GSAS website and asked for our feedback
  • Email sent to reps asking for input
  • Feedback:
  • Health care- would like a link to uvastudenthealth.com
  • TA/RA/Adjunct requirements- existing documents are difficult to understand, would like to make this more accessible
  • Also need to clarify health care for adjuncts
  • Continuous enrollment requirements, etc… difficult to find, understand
  • Taxes- what funding is taxable, etc…
  • Extra-curricular activities- link to VPR site?
  • Please look over the website and give feedback ASAP

Next Meeting: 9/2 hopefully in Newcomb

Bring people from your departments to join!