September 9, 1998
6:10pm: Call to order.
Secretary's Report:
Amanda asked for volunteers to take minutes, Chris Palma agreed and was appointed secretary.
President's Report:
(Note: the President's report was pushed ahead of the Treasurer's report since Rich was not present at the start of the meeting.)
Amanda French, President, read from the agenda, elaborating on each point as she read it:
Discussion:Jordi asked if NAGPS offers a supplemental health insurance plan, no one knew for sure, and it was agreed that this may be something grads would be interested in.
Amanda gave everyone the link to the GSC web page http://scs.student.Virginia.EDU/~gsasc/. Todd mentioned that it is difficult to find our page from the main UVa site, and volunteered to find out if the UVa webmaster would add a button along the bottom (Under of Special Interest to...) for graduate students which would then have links which included the GSC's page.
Oliver brought up a point from last year; Dean Husky told him that he was disappointed in how the Arts & Sciences Research Administration Office was being run. This office keeps information on funding opportunities, including offering access to on-line funding search engines from Stanford and Notre Dame(?). Unfortunately this office is underutilized by grads due to the lack of publicization. Please inform your fellow grads about this office. Chris mentioned that the NAGPS website also includes access to on-line funding databases.
Chris mentioned that he was told at the Faculty Senate retreat that input from grads on improving Faculty/Student communication is still being solicited. Richard DeMong (Comm School) is the head of the Faculty Senate committee which is in charge of implementing the suggestions discussed at the retreat. He asked that any grad wishing to make a suggestion email him at rfd@virginia.edu. Jordi raised a point that was discussed at the retreat, there is little incentive for faculty to improve communication with grads. Oliver said that the incentive is that increased communication between faculty and grads can improve the status of a department.
Todd and Amanda also mentioned that the Faculty Senate is now keeping a website including all events around UVa. It is located at http://www.virginia.edu/Calendar.
Treasurer's Report:
Rich Pierce, Treasurer, distributed the following report:
The GSAS Fee account received a preliminary budget load of $3600.00 for the Fall semester. The month of August had two expenditures: $85.00 meals (reimbursement) to Amanda French on 08/03 and $140.00 reservations (reimbursement to account #4-65130). There was a previous charge of $4.85 for reproduction. All of this adds up to a current balance of $3370.15. Note: The budget folks tend not to carry forward balances from one year to the next and may need to be reminded if you have significant carry over funds.
Here are the Expenditures from this past year:
This amount of carry-over is pretty typical, however, there are a few caveats that we need to consider:
a. I've included the 4/98 Centropa appropriation in this report even though it will be spent over the course of the next academic year (which is I guess why last's year's was carried throughout this year's budget).
b. Our appropriations don't necessarily reflect actual expenditures, as many of the groups don't wind up using all the money we appropriate to them. Thus, Dean Huskey has our YTD expenditures as being only $7,274 (as of 4/30/98), which puts us about $3,580 ahead of my $12,165 estimate, even when we account for the $1,300 to Centropa, which would not have been included in DH's total.
c. In other words, if we take DH's expenditure estimate, tag on Centropa, and subtract this from our "real" money, we get:
$17,150 - ($7,274 + $1,300) = $8,576 that will carry over to next year.
Thus, we should have either $4985+$3600 = $8585 or $8576+$3600=$12176 that should start us out for this year.
Discussion:
Oliver suggested that each rep contact their fellow grads and publicize the availability of GSC funds. While we did a good job last year funding many interdisciplinary graduate program events, many grads still do not know they can come to us with proposals. Both Rich and Jordi mentioned that due to the rolling nature of our funding request acceptance, if we get a large increase in the number of proposals we may use of much of our budget very quickly.
Amanda also mentioned that it may be helpful if on the funding request form we list the average and range of money we've given to various groups in each funding category (e.g. on average we gave $300 with a range of $0 - $1200 for publicity to various groups last year (I made these numbers up --Chris)). Rich will work on this.
Funding Request:
Tiffany Hamm came to request $1250 for "Shaking the Academic Tree", an interdisciplinary workshop for biomedical scientists.
The web page with the program is available at the following URL: http://hsc.virginia.edu/medicine/inter-dis/bbcc/event/career.html.
Discussion:
After discussion, Jordi moves to fund for the full amount with a second by Chris. Vote: unanimous (Rich abstained)
Chris asked if that the GSC could (in its official capacity) ask OCPP to make this type of event (information on alternative careers outside of academia) an annual occurence run by OCPP. Amanda agreed to draft an email and send it to John Portman (portmann@virginia.edu).
Old Business:
The GSC has begun investigating alternatives to Qualchoice. Amanda has anecdotal evidence from many grads expressing dissatisfaction with Qualchoice. Over the summer, we drafted an email which was delivered to each GSAS dept. secretary asking them if their departments include health insurance as part of grad student support. We also mention that we are looking into alternatives to Qualchoice due to the large (~50%) increase in the cost since last year.
Amanda pointed out that Qualchoice is news right now, having had negative articles appear in both the Daily Progress and Cav Daily. She proposed that the GSC send out a press release critical of the plan.
Oliver, Todd, Jordi, Elena, and Chris stayed past adjournment to draft such a statement which would mention that GSC was not endorsing Qualchoice and was in fact encouraging grads to look into alternatives such as the NAGPS plan, and those offered by professional societies. The draft of the statement will be distributed on the GSC listserver.
New Business:
Todd stated that he was asked to mention the following point during our meeting by a fellow grad: In the past year, parking has increased by 33%, on-grounds laundry has increased by 33%, family housing has increased 20-30%, and of course Qualchoice was increased by 50%. These increases are clearly not matched by a corresponding cost of living increase in grad student salaries.
7:30 pm: Meeting adjourned.