GSA council minutes from May 19, 05

 

Attendance

Officers: Kai Pommerenke (President); Lisa Downward (Internal Vice President); Allison Luengen (Secretary); Ian Dobbs-Dixon (External Vice President); Meredith Armstrong (Treasurer); Marina Sarran (Committee on Planning and Budget)

Department Reps:  Abhijit Sen Gupta (ECON); Brian Dowd (ENVS); Alexis Shotwell (HISCON); Gerardo Palafox (EDU); Jesse Saba Kirchner (linguistics); Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (ASTRO); Brooke Crowley (earth sciences); Brian Gerstenberger (CHEM); Ignacio Solis (computer eng); Berra Yazar (MCDB); Amy Dexter (psych)

Others: Avik Chandhuri (computer sciences); Susi Altermann (EEB)

 

Agenda approved

Minutes from May 5 and April 21 approved.

 

Announcements

1.  The graduate division is hosting The Minority Experience in Academia Roundtable.  It will take place Monday, May 23rd from 2-4pm in Bay Tree Conference Room D.  RSVP if you plan to attend.  From the perspective of being a “minority” in one’s field (e.g., a woman, a person of color, etc.), panelists will discuss a variety of topics including survival tips for successfully navigating graduate school, landing an academic position, excelling as a faculty member, and finding a balance between work and personal life. This roundtable will focus on the experience of being a “minority” in one’s field, but all students are encouraged to take part in the discussion.

 

New Business

1.  Elections.  The following officers were elected:

Ian Dobbs-Dixon - President

Allison Luengen - IVP

Chanda Prescod-Weinsten - EVP

Berra Yazar - Treasurer

Marina Sarran - Committee on Planning and Budget, providing that she is enrolled next year.

Amy Dexter- Secretary.

 

2.  Budget.  We set Wednesday May 25 at 7 PM as the date for the budget discussion.  All new/old officers should plan on attending, and all will be welcome.

 

3.  UCSA Budget Change (Ian).

Changes to the UCSA budget were made at San Francisco.  These changes included:  1) updating the UCI enrollment numbers; 2) decreasing salaries; 3) increasing off-site copies; 4) decreasing staff travel from 3 to 2 visits to campuses every year; and 4) increasing the budget for the beginning of the year congress.  These changes would increase the surplus from $38 in the last budget to $1500 in this budget.  Ian thought these were good changes.   We unanimously approved these changes.

 

 

 

4.  Strike (Alexis).

Next Thursday, May 26th, UPTE has scheduled a strike.  UPTE represents the technical workers.  CUE, the clerical workers, will sympathy strike.  CUE is also likely to schedule its own strike the following week.  The issue for UPTE is that they make far less than what those who have comparable positions at other educational institutions.  Chanda pointed out that supporting UPTE ensures that these services are available for grads.  Many of the UPTE services are critical for graduate student research.  Shawn said that low salaries may make it hard to retain well-qualified technical people. 

            Chanda motioned that the GSA support strike, and send two emails out to grads.  The first will be a letter of support for the UPTE strike.  Alexis will spearhead it, and Chanda will help.  The second letter will be sent out in support of CUE, once they announce the date of their strike.  The motion passed, 12 in favor, 0 opposed, 2 abstained.

 

Officer and Committee Reports

1.  President’s report (Kai).  The officers met with Chancellor Denton on May 11.  They discussed the following:

a.  GHSIP- Allison presented the current GSHIP priorities (see below).

b.  Housing- The Chancellor approved $725 rent in grad housing.  The Chancellor will work on the issue over the summer.  She agrees with us on 2 points: 1) grad housing should be filled by graduate students only and 2) filling it is important.  She won’t have time to make corrections before the rates for the 2005/206 school year go out, but she is opened to trying to correct the rates mid-year if she can find a way to do that.

c.  Parking- The Chancellor will work with the grad division on this.  She sees that the issue is that the parking people are stretched monetarily and they need to be self-sustaining.  Lisa Sloan is still pushing for some sort of exemption for graduate students.

d.  Ethical Treatment of Grads- The Chancellor suggested a proactive approach to improving mentoring relationships between faculty and grad students.  Such an approach could include a graduate mentor award for an excellent faculty mentor.  This could help put peer pressure on faculty.  The Chancellor thinks we can adopt policies from UW.  She says that there is currently an NRC handbook on mentoring.  Workshops could be put on for faculty on how to mentor. 

e.  Dean Miller is interested in the idea of having an ombudsperson just for graduate students, and would like to know how many hours per week a professional would be needed to work on grad issues.  Lisa Downward also raised the idea of peer advocates/councilors. 

 

Discussion followed from Kai’s report:

We agreed to put the topic of “will an ombudsperson be good” on the agenda for next meeting, after several council members raised the issue that we didn’t want the grad division to just hand us an ombudsperson and consider the issue solved.  Departmental reps should check with their departments about how much use an ombudsperson would be.

 

Susi commented that training the department chairs on how to elegantly handle situations of questionable treatment of grads is critical, because the department chairs play a crucial role in solving or escalating graduate problems.  Perhaps a graduate advising committee would help.

 

2.  Report to Academic Senate (Kai).

Kai sought feedback on issues to present in his next meeting before the Academic Senate. He will talk about the Committee for Ethical Treatment of Graduate Students. Alexis brought up the issue that it is getting increasing hard for students to get TAships. There are fewer TA positions, and those that remain have seen their teaching load double. This then becomes a problem with the workload limit. It is increasingly hard for faculty to find funding for students. Someone else said that in psychology, it is cheaper to hire graduate students than lecturers to teach classes. However, later Beth Daniels from psychology, said that was not the case. She said that because the university has to pay fees for teaching fellows (advanced graduate students teaching a course during the year) plus a salary, grads actually cost more. The added expense is something like $2,000 -- in psychology at least. This issue was recently raised in a psych faculty meeting that Beth attended. The psych department will have 2 teaching fellows in the next academic year.

 

3.  GSHIP (Allison).

Allison presented the following priorities for health care in 2005-2006 to the Chancellor:

a)  Maintain existing health coverage by increasing premium from $423 per quarter to $472 per quarter.  After 3 years of holding steady, the premium needs to increase to cover medical inflation. 

b)  Maintain existing dental coverage by increasing premium to $89.92 per quarter (see attached dental sheet).  The current premium is $66 per quarter.  The increase in the costs of the plan reflects grads using it more.  Also, additional benefits were added last year.  Having some basic coverage for wisdom teeth, crowns, and non-mercury fillings was a critical issue for grads last school year.  

c)  Improve the vision coverage.  Under the current plan, the out-of pocket costs to graduate students are very high.  The attached new plan will decrease the materials co-pay, increase the contact lens benefit, and add out-of network benefits.  To do this, the premium would have to increase from $24 per quarter currently to $28 per quarter.

d)  Decrease the medical out-of pocket maximum.  This would make the cost of the plan $486 per quarter.

 

4.  The Campus Welfare Committee (Jesse).  The Committee met on April 21. Several things were discussed, generally of little interest to grads:

a. Housing in Ranch View Terrace -- all for faculty or possibly staff.

b. Children in the workplace -- we are drafting a policy on this.

c. Meeting with the Chancellor -- we might do this in the future.

Anyone with concerns, particularly about children in the workplace for us (as TAs or GSRs or in some other capacity), should contact Jesse: kirchner@ucsc.edu.

 

Adjourn.