September General Body Meeting

September 5th, 2022,  6:00-7:30 PM
Newcomb South Meeting Room

      1.            Call to Order and Welcome (5min)

a.      Thank you to anyone who came out to our social events and helped with orientation

b.      Structure of GSASC

                                                              i.      We meet first Monday of every month, generally in South Meeting room, always in Newcomb

                                                            ii.      Introduce Exec, committees, committee chairs

                                                          iii.      Website: gradcouncil.com with calendar, social events, etc.

                                                           iv.      Twitter: (at)UvaGradCouncil

                                                             v.      Dept reps: can submit agenda items, represent your unique department and its concerns

      2.            Ice Breaker, meet the new representatives (8min)

      3.            Voting in New Reps (5min)

a.      Brielle and Karl voted in (social chair and student council reps, respectively)

      4.            Committee Reports

a.      Finance Committee (Max, 10min)- Budgets & new reimbursement system

                                                              i.      Up to 300 for a single event, up to 600 for an interdisciplinary committee

                                                             ii.      $3600 to research, $3600 to social, $3600 allocated to finance at the moment.

                                                           iii.      Reimbursements: UVa has overhauled reimbursement system, everything has to go through workday. Finance committee cannot process reimbursements directly, individual requesters must fill out the reimbursement paperwork on their own. Finance chairs will teach committee members how this process works so they can serve as point people for requesters when they have questions.

                                                           iv.      Requesters still send copy of receipts, description of what the money was used for, etc. Finance committee will let the graduate school know that the event has been deemed worth funding.

b.      Research: Huskey (Shalmi) and Research grants (Eric)

                                                              i.      Huskey: 10-15 students selected to present their research in 10 mins for an audience of non-specialists, presenters get honoraria

                                                             ii.      Dept reps: pls remember to forward Huskey info to departments. Has been an issue in the past!

                                                           iii.      Tentative date for Huskey: March 17th

      5.            GSAS Business

a.      Aaron Thompson (10min) - joint research/work with Eric Donarski, working on a proposal to admin (starting with provosts offfice) petitioning for resources for parents who are grad students (broader than just GSAS, any UVA grad student).

                                                              i.      Department rep roles: help gather as much information from student parents in your departments as possible. Stay tuned for a survey from the committee.

                                                            ii.      At this point asking for: a couple thousand $ per child per term, and some in-kind resources to make parenthood while in grad school easier.

                                                          iii.      At this point, focusing on grad students (not faculty, postodcs, adjuncts, etc.)

                                                          iv.      Looking for signatures of support from chairs and DGS’s. Reps: keep this on your radar, consider talking to them when the proposal surfaces.

b.      Karl: stipend increases?

                                                              i.      Working with Dean China on this for us to have a pay increase within the next year. She is working on getting us an increase soon due to inflation

                                                            ii.      In the last email we had, there was a mention of a bigger raise, but there’s some confusion about when/how

                                                          iii.      There is confusion about what/how often these increases are happening

c.       Beatriz Silva da Costa (5min) - Mentor/mentee contracts

                                                              i.      Former rep has been working on contracts for politics department. There is a draft, but any other depts doing this?

                                                            ii.      Mary: Env. Sci contracts are in the works but not finalized. Kylor: DEI committee was working on it, important to have agreements in writing

                                                          iii.      Jesse: Stats is also interested in doing this, wants to see what other depts are doing

                                                          iv.      MJ: Econ nothing formal

                                                            v.      History: GHSA tries to pair up people, but also happens organically sometimes but we have had people slip through the cracks (student-student pairs, not student-faculty pairs)

d.      Aaron Thompson (5min) - Subcommittee to reform By-laws

                                                              i.      Proposes creation of subcommittee/working group in order to review constitution & bylaws, solicit suggestions, make a draft, carry out institutionalization.

      6.            Large Group Discussion

a.      Tyler Barnes, Grad Survey Results, TA hours (30min)

                                                              i.      Tentative changes to meeting format: monthly newsletter to provide basic info & free up time in meetings for members to interact and deliberate more. Ex: bylaws, working groups.

                                                            ii.      Presented main results from Grad Education Survey (slides posted somewhere in Teams?)

                                                          iii.      Tyler thinks it’s important to get GTA responsibilities in writing for each department

                                                          iv.      3 challenges: stipends, GTA hours, and DEI

                                                            v.      Activity: takeaways from each table

1.      English has a document formal expectations of TA hours, Chemistry has this in the works. Other tables/departments expressed interest in this. Thanks to Shalmi for sending the English dept’s policy, now available in the Graduate Education committee channel of teams.

2.      DEI: psych department has a DEI committee with subcommittees, active but mostly driven by grad students, just a handful of faculty who are especially motivated. Psych requires everyone to demonstrate involvement in DEI efforts in their annual report, not sure about the results of that. Tyler mentions Env Sci has also done this, not sure if It's university-wide or at the dept. level

3.      Lack of transparency around pay, funding, TA responsibilities, but also lack of transparency more generally about how things in the grad program work

      7.            For the Good of the Order/Old Business

      8.            Meet with Committees, exchange contact information