Approved Minutes from Nov 04, 2004 meeting

 

Approved minutes (from last meeting) and agenda

 

Attendance

Officers: Kai Pommerenke (President); Meredith Armstrong (Treasurer); Allison Luengen (Secretary); Ian Dobbs Dixon (External Vice President); Lisa Downward (Internal Vice president)

Department Reps:  Sina Farsiu (EE), Christian Flacco (physics); Brian Gerstenberger (chem.); Sara Bothwell (ENVS); Amy Dexter (psych); Kelly Holt (lit); Berra Yazar (MCDB); Marina Sarran (Sociology); Nick Konideras (astro); Nathan Whitehead (computer sciences); Cintia Margi (CE)

 

Others:  Takeshi Kaneko (MAT); Gerado Palafox (MAT); Joe Marcelin-Sampson (MAT); Hiroyuki Takeda (EE); Jamus (ECON);  Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (astro); Candace Church (astro); Tamara Belknap (hist); Sean Halle (CE); Karthik Kumar (CSE); Subhash Gopinath (CSE); Gaurav Vijayvargiya (CSE); Susanne Altermann (EEB); Luke Wenstrom (Physics);

 

Officer and Committee Reports

Kai- the officers discussed health care, parking, and the WASC survey with the chancellor and the grad dean.  Grad Dean Robert Miller says his top concern is the increase in grad fees (another 10% increase is likely).  Chancellor Chemers was receptive to our concerns about a possible increase in GSHIP premium to keep pace with medical inflation. The officers also met with Lisa Sloan, Associate Dean for the Graduate Division.  She proposed a research fair for all grads at UCSC.  Lisa Sloan is also interested in knowing what the grad division can do for graduate students and how graduate students feel about a proposed graduate college.

 

Steven Alvarez <stevenaa@ucsc.edu> from the University of California Student Association (UCSA) announced that graduate students are needed on two committees: Informational Technology and Telecommunications Policy and International Education (formally EAP).  If interested, visit http://www.ucsa.org/universityaffairs/sysdes.html

 

Ian- UCSA registered 30,000 people to vote.  UCSA is sending a letter to President Dynes asking him to form a committee to help decide the feasibility of system-wide health care plan for graduate students. 

 

Sina- The beginning of the year party will be Nov. 19th, Friday.  Sina also set up a couple of Monday surfing classes.

 

Marla- Francisco Hernandez is interested in stabilizing funding for student programs.  There will also be a survey to look at student services and ask if they meet student needs, or if some services are missing.  Also, what services are needed over the summer is an important question.  There is a question regarding registration fees- will grads pay the same increase as the undergrads, i.e., will our costs go up by 8% or 10%?  It is possible that the compact with the governor regarding funding for higher education will be affected by the budget deficit.

 

Jamus- The Graduate Commons Governance Board has come up with a policy of checking out a key to the big study room to allow after-hours access.  This policy came about because a trial-run of leaving the study rooms unlocked resulted in someone leaving the windows opened.  The Grad Commons Governance Board is also looking into possibly locking the windows at night so that would not be a problem and the study rooms could be left unlocked.  The Graduate Commons Governance Board is very interested in ensuring that the grad commons is a useable space for graduate students.  Christian <cflacco@physics> is also looking into getting more exhibits: musical acts, jazz, blues, etc.  If you have an idea, send her an email.

 

Nathan- The Committee on Academic Freedom.  Chancellor Chemers vaguely agreed to the Academic Senate’s requests regarding opposition to the Patriot Act.  Making a fuss about the Patriot Act may attract graduate students, but Nathan believes that now is the wrong time for outcry. 

            There is also concern that lecturers for the College 9 and 10 cores courses are having their academic freedom limited because they have to conform to standard curriculum.  In one egregious case, this included having the discussion questions dictated to the lecturers.  The committee decided that they had a valid complaint, but that the issue was best addressed by the Union and the Committee of Educational Policy.

 

Letter to Wes Scott

Ian presented our draft letter and it was approved without us offering any compromises.

 

Department Reps

We approved the following department reps

Marina Sarran              sociology

Courtney Rivard           politics

Berra Yazar                  MCDB

 

Grad College

Tamara presented the LRDP plan to include a graduate college on the Northern Edge of Porter Meadow.  This college could house up to ¼ of graduate students on campus.  There is also a planned expansion of family housing.  Tamara emphasized that the LRDP does not ensure that something will be built; it’s just a way of staking our claim and ensuring that if the money to build it appears, then we will have a place to build it. We then brainstormed some things that we might like to see in a graduate college: café, housing, workshop room with presentations including grant writing, someplace to bring together all of pieces- such as what is teleslug and where’s the bookstore, a central source for information.

Nathan: more housing, grocery store, bar.

Christian: academic, administrative advising, including enrollment help and a new enrollment package.

Allison: graduation ceremonies after the end of every quarter

Overall, we would like to see:

            1) affordable housing

            2) services from grad division centralized

            3) hospitable space, including bar and coffee shop

We requested that departmental representatives get in touch with their departments and bring back other feedback on what grads would like to see in a grad college.  We will then relay this information to Lisa Sloan.

 

Post-Docs

Sina motioned that we invite post-docs to our parties and we agreed to do it.

 

Adjourn.