Call to order: 6:08 pm
Guest Speaker: Dean of School of A&S Meredith Woo
* In her remarks, Dean Woo emphasized the importance of Graduate Students at a school like UVA. She hopes to create better funding packages for GSAS students including 5 years of funding (2 teaching and 3 researching/writing) with better pay. She described her plan to revamp and beef up the GSAS by monitoring program curricula (across the board) more closely, monitoring student progress more closely by completing written progress reports after at least their first year, making sure that preliminary exams are appropriate, working on dissertation mentoring by faculty and by keeping better records of job placement in order to check progress and continue recruiting good students.
* She asked that we (and the students we represent) help by letting her know what changes we see that should be made and also by reporting on what is working now.
Old Business
* We unanimously approved the minutes from the Nov meeting.
Reports
Pres. (John Burke)
* John spoke with Dean of Students Al Groves about space (which he will look into) and other issues and began a conversation with Pat Lambkin
* Dean Groves mentioned that International Graduate Students sometimes have a hard time acclimating and asked if we had any ideas about how to reach out to them and help them to feel at home at UVA.
1st VP (Isaah Vincent)
2nd VP (Elizabeth Head)
* The funding request forms on the website have been fixed
Treasurer (Matt Rannals)
Stud-Co (David Hondula)
Judiciary and Social Committee (Alex Garcia)
Honor (Heather Mastapeter)
Research Committee (Ken Price)
New Business
* Budget Allocations:
* First Harmonics:
* Graduate Science and Engineers a-capella group.
* Voted unanimously to fund in full at $350.
* Money for rental of sound equipment.
* Feb Happy Hour (date not yet set):
* Voted unanimously to fund in full at $500 (in budget).
* Lighting of the lawn
* In Pavillion 8 with A&S council on Thursday December 4, 6pm till 9pm.
* Voted unanimously to fund in full at $300 (A&S chipping in $630).
* German Colloquia
* Request 2000, recommend to fund at 500, if expected attendance is over 50 people (should know by this meeting).
* Voted to provisionally fund at $250, which will be raised to $500 if the attendance is expected to be at least 50 people (we requested that Brett check the expected attendance with his department).
* Wine tour for Saturday, March 21, 2009
* Voted unanimously to fund in full at $100 .
* This money was needed to cover deposit on fall event which had to be cancelled.
* St. Patrick's Day Party (party on Saturday, March 14th, actual holiday is Tuesday, March 17th)
* Voted unanimously to fund in full at $2500.
* Expectation of only needing $1100 (just like Halloween).
* Foxfield (April 25th)
* Recommend to discuss
* Note social committee has saved/planned to save $2500 from budget
* Tent + 50 tickets + 25 parking passes = 3500
* Expect to sell tickets at 40 and parking at 40 for $3000 leaving $500 (for council to pay)
* $1000 for bus and sell those seats at cost
* $400 in food
* Best case scenario then is $1275, worst case could be $2300 or more
* An individual takes on majority of risk
* We discussed multiple plans of funding at different levels.
* Voted 7 for and 2 against funding at $2500 with the expectation of cancelling March and April Happy Hours (saving $1000) if Council is left with the whole cost.
* We also voted to fund the Biological Sciences Conference at $500. The funding request came in late and was not discussed at the budget committee meeting.
