November 2022 - General Body Meeting

November 7, 2022, 6:00-7:30 PM

Newcomb South Meeting Room

1. Call to Order and Welcome (5min)

a. Thank you for everyone who turned out for the Halloween party.

i. Pictures in a Google doc

2. Ice Breaker (8min)

3. Large Group Discussion: Q&A with Dean China Scherz (30min)

a. Formerly a DGS, in that role, she restructured finances to allow for 6 x 30k for grad students in a fiscally neutral way

b. Research work focuses on questions of care, thinks about this in the role as Assoc. Dean

c. Care defined by Annemarie Moll in The Logic of Care: tinkering with technical things, working with many Excel spreadsheets to help make grad school a humane, fruitful, fulfilling time in life for us to focus on work, focus on relationships with people and go off to have great careers.

d. In a few weeks, we will have a new assistant Dean Hawthorn (sp?) from the University of FL, who can meet us. Will work with faculty in departments on mentoring, advising

e. Q: What is the current thing you are working on?

A: Living support. 1. helping depts reallocate current resources to better support students who are here.

2. work with dean to advocate with the central University for more support from president and provosts’ office.

3. Spending time with the college foundation, doing fundraising, showing them materials about cost of living, alumni have said the figures are very powerful. Moving forward, would like to work with depts on mentoring, setting clearer relationships on relationships between faculty and GTAs at the outset,

f. Q: would like a better sense of the budgeting process that each department faces. How are revenues allocated to each department? Activity-based (enrollment, class sizes, etc)? And then how are budgets made at department level, how do they determine whether to go above that minimum? How do departments determine the contract structure: could we centralize anthropology’s improvement of having 6 years of contracts?

A: allocation is at the school level, rather than at the department level (so not based on activities of departments). The following applies to arts & humanities, math and econ (mostly not funded by grants, funding is mostly TA-ships and fellowships): looking at the amount of resources that A&S has historically dedicated to departments, negotiating with different departments to say hey, this is where we are at, we would like to improve the stipend (problem in terms of attrition, time to degree, students can’t make rent, recruiting issue). Is this a five year program or is this actually a six-year program? If it’s truly six, let’s fund it for six. Have been trying to push those decisions into departments, recognizing that departments have different needs. Dean Acampora is committed to grad student support and this is one of the main issues that is important to her. Hoping for the changes to go into effect within this academic year. Departments are more ready to move than she expected.

g. Q: fundraising with alumni. Sustainability?

A: Focused on endowment fundraising, rather than current use giving. Raising money for endowed grad fellowships that would provide support in perpetuity for more fellowship semesters. Allows them to provide fellowships for departments that have very little fellowship support. Contracting departments and focusing on supporting the students we do have, and then using endowed funding to help build those spots back up.

h. Q: Have you thought about taking action about the fact that university housing is only guaranteed for four years but most programs are five? Any news of what graduate housing offers look like?

A: new dean is really interested in that question and trying to figure out whether we might be able to build more grad housing. What we actually need is more housing, guaranteeing it for five years without increasing units may mean that fewer people may be able to take advantage.

i. Q: Timeline?

A: hoping that we may be ready to implement things for this coming academic year. Not done yet.

Q: Worst case scenario?

A: coming academic year. Budget deadline is Friday, if it happens by then, it will happen in the next academic year.

Q: What do you need from us?

A: graphs from chemistry. At this point, the case has been made powerfully. Every single department understands that this is a key issue. Provost and president (hopefully) understand, donors definitely understand. Dean China is working with a lot of chairs and DGS’s, you can let them know that you appreciate them. The pushes that you already have all made, for drawing this up as an issue that matters, and showing that it matters, has all been SO helpful for making the case. How do we basically squeeze 3 million dollars out of a flat budget? There’s now pillowcase of money.

j. Q: what is the progress on childcare support?

A: something that is currently being considered at the university level, actively being discussed and debated and people are trying to figure it out. People have made the case, case has been received positively, people are trying to figure out how it can be done, probably in the form of actual cash subsidies.

k. Q: Is it at the dept level that it is decided what amount of funding goes towards payment during the semesters and what goes towards the summer?

A: In current work, trying to bring all of the GSAS students that are currently here into whatever new model. That is a big difference from previous hikes. Trying right now to get things evened out as much as possible. Might be that we end up with a little more $ in the academic year than in the summer in the next iteration, maybe in the next iteration it looks different. Actually, another thing you all can do: none of this will be totally perfect. Helping each other to understand that this is not going to be totally perfect, being able to receive that and figure out how to make it work as we ork towards the next iterations. One of the scary things about this work: trying to do a really hard thing and to do it as well as you can, knowing that in the end you are going to feel like you failed because it’s not as perfect as it could be. Analogy about resting on the bench for a second during a hike, even though we can see the path forward, without feeling like we are stuck on the bench.

4. GSAS Business (27min)

a. Funding Requests, Intramurals Funding, Fund Advertising (10min) - Max

i. Request for Fall Research grants; $2500 for Research committee. Coming from the University directly, specifically earmarked for research grants. Motion passes.

ii. Q: can graduate council students apply?

Yes. Well, anyone except Eric.

How can we avoid bias?

Eric: all names are removed from each of the grants. Grants are split up by discipline (Natural Sci, Social Sci, Humanities). Judges are instructed to recuse themselves if they think they might know who has written a document. 3-4 judges per specialization.

 iii. Trivia Night between Environmental and Chemistry departments, $600 requested for food drinks, compostable dishware. Money will come from finance committee. Motion for funding passes.

iv. Committee is currently in the process of discussing ways to get this money out to more people. Take a look at intramurals funding, expanding access for people who want to expand in intramurals.

v. Looking at migrating the funding form from squarespace account and bringing it in-house. Expect updates in December.

vi. Action items for reps: personally inform leadership of clubs that funds are available from the finance.

b. The University 403(b) Investment Program, Research Committee Update: Fall Grants! (7min) - Eric

i. Thanks for sending grant applications to departments. Already getting some questions! Deadline is Nov. 21. Tell your departments, don’t hesitate to contact Eric with any questions! Heads up: Eric will also ask for 3 to 4 reviewers. If you want to be a judge and you are not on the research committee, please reach out to Eric. Time commitment: reading typically 7-15 applications over 2 weeks (Tuesday 11/22 until Dec. 12 but we don’t want people to stress about this especially over Thanksgiving and finals.) It’s not that much work, about 3-4 hours to read the grants, plus maybe 1 more hour exchanging emails.

ii. Update on Huskey (1-day event): anyone in GSAS can also apply to be a Huskey presenter. Calls for applicatiosn will come up some time in Nov. Tentative date is March 17th. We got funding for Huskey, Dean Scherz was very generous with how much money she gave us for Huskey $3500 from China and $3500 from the Provost.

iii. University 403(b) Investment Program: investment plan open to us and employees of the university at large. Effectively an academic 401(k). We are the only people who can be a part of 403(b) but we are not matched. Typically employees will be matched. Maybe in the long-term (small issue compared to what Dean’s office is working on) we can fix the fact that every other employee except grad students are cash-matched. The reason we cannot get matched is because we are technically part-time.

c. Social budget cut and general role of social chair- (8min) Brielle

i. Some misunderstanding of Social’s budget between Social Chair and Finance Committee

ii. In general, don’t count on it but it’s possible to get more money in the new semester, funding is not constant, might be some lulls and finance might have more money near the end of the year

iii. Helped plan orientation event at NA Sake, tried to plan for October event, in the past we have done something at a brewery, after talking to other grad students, thought it would be a good idea to do something that isn’t necessary at a bar.

iv. More generally: would like to do something people can bring their families to, not just at a bar. Would like to try to be able to do events where we can have our own people come and not have to limit people from our own graduate school. However that is difficult with the budget we are given, feels it’s impossible to put out an event on your own

v. Feels as though the hard work she did to make the event just got vetoed.

vi. Response: For the sake of context: issues with the request that was put in, and not enough time to fix it.

vii. Brielle: Counterpoint: many of the reasons were matters of opinions, rather than things that are not allowed.

viii. Kylor: the issue about timing has been resolved, in the sense

ix. Noah: we should do a better job of focusing on financials and not evaluating events on other characteristics or matters of opinion.

x. Kylor: just because we have a tradition of doing something, does not mean we have to keep doing it. You are doing one of the harder jobs and you should feel appreciated in what you are doing. There are both easy fixes, and there are matters of decorum we can work on.

xi. Finance committee: does consider things such as whether the location is going to be accessible to all students. If there is an issue that is going to affect attendance, that becomes a problem.

xii. Beatriz: question about if there are specific guidelines for this process. Kylor: constitution has language, but let’s look at it and see if there is room for improvement.

5. For the Good of the Order/Old Business (5min)

a. Thank you all for participating and asking such good questions to China! Any last comments

i. Eric: a lot on your DGS and Chair’s plates, and China’s as well. Something that deserves to be emphasized perhaps more that she did earlier this evening.

ii. Kylor: we should feel optimistic in that everyone who is newly hired and working with her are all goal-oriented and in support of increasing our stipends. We have momentum.

iii. As much as we can, trying to get back to our departments and letting them know that this is happening. Get word out, because there are probably a lot of people who feel like nothing is happening.

b. GPC had a townhall for all students (received email from Annie). We will have another in the spring if you have any interest. Open to everyone, feel free to attend in the future!

c. Working on connecting bridge students with GSASC

d. Any interest in working with honor and developing the new sanction system? Contact Kylor if you or anyone you know is interested.

e. Any feedback for the grad convocation and things you would like to see in the future. GPC is hoping to make this a new tradition. Feel free to send feedback to Kylor via email.

f. Upcoming budget meeting with Student Tuition & Fees BOV Committee. Email Kylor if there is anything you would like her to bring up with them.

6. Breakout into Committees to touch base and discuss rest of fall plans (10 min)