Graduate Student Government

Senate Meeting

10/30/2013

Noon

Curry Student Center 348

I.  Call to Order at 12:07pm

a.  Senator Attendance

i.  D’Amore-McKim School of Business (1)

  1. Laura Valerio Fortuna

ii.  College of Engineering (15)

  1. Adedokun Adedoyin
  2. Adedayo Adeniran-Catlett
  3. Tarun Reddy Aleti
  4. Kledio Bacci
  5. Hari Chauhan
  6. Yao Liu
  7. Mitasvil Patel
  8. Pooja Prabhu
  9. Theja Putta

iii.  Bouvé College of Health Sciences (3)

  1. Courtland James
  2. Jack Korpob

iv.  School of Law (2)

  1. Cory Lamz

v.  College of Science (1)

  1. Lara Lewis

vi.  College of Social Sciences & Humanities (2)

  1. Rini Ghosh
  2. Jessica Hubbard

b.  Non-Senator Attendance

i.  College of Engineering (1)

  1. Farimah Mapar

ii.  School of Law (1)

  1. Yinbang Lin

iii.  College of Social Sciences & Humanities (2)

  1. Dana Horton
  2. Vijayeta Singh

iv.  College of Professional Studies (1)

  1. Billy Zukauskas

v.  Advisors (2)

  1. Dan Volchok
  2. Gail Olyha

II.  Establish Quorum:

  1. Established, Can vote on business

III.  Review of Minutes

  1. Fix Dan and Dayo’s names on minutes
  2. Pass unanimously

IV.  Officers Report

  1. President
  2. NAGPS National Conference
  3. Kledio and Courtland are attending
  4. Will come back and report about what they learned, improvements to be made
  5. Tufts will host the regional conference
  6. We will fund several officers and senators to attend that conference
  7. Be on the look out for that in the future
  8. Office Supplies/promotional materials
  9. Furnishing
  10. Re-Branding
  11. Looking to do office supplies and give aways (hand sanitizers, pens, post its, book marks, highlighters, etc)
  12. If you have suggestions to the list, let us know if there’s anything you would like for us to order
  13. Jack has 2 catalogs for ideas on promotional items
  14. Winter Leadership Retreat for Officers and Senators
  15. Be on the look out
  16. It will happen beginning of next semester (January)
  17. Looking at some dates on how to put that together
  18. Half day event, possibly
  19. If you have ideas for this retreat, please reach out! It’s brand new and it’s a great opportunity for giving input and getting what you want included in terms of leadership development, etc.
  20. VP Student Affairs (apologized for missing last meeting, felt sick)
  21. College Councils
  22. Start to have general meeting for students
  23. Talking to College of Science
  24. Starting to set up meeting with Bouve
  25. If you want to be part of this committee, let Rini know! Not a lot of work
  26. Helps to get causes brought up higher
  27. Collaboration between departments/colleges, etc
  28. Tentative recognized groups
  29. Person from the GSG that goes over constitution after a tentative recognition from CSI Office
  30. Now, working with two groups to go to final approval from CSI and presenting to GSG for final recognition status so they can operate as a regular student group
  31. Data Mining Event
  32. Info night for students in the works
  33. Too late to have a successful event this semester
  34. VP Academic Affairs
  35. Library
  36. Town Hall Today (6-7pm) 90 Snell (basement)
  37. Food will be provided
  38. Meeting with Phil He (Vice Provost of Graduate Studies)
  39. Progress made by Co-Op
  40. Designated to increase the amount of information available to graduate students
  41. Put together a new look for the graduate research website
  42. Should launch now-next few weeks
  43. Six internal opportunities for fellowships!
  44. These have been hidden and can’t be found! This will help to consolidate the information!
  45. Links to external funding sites
  46. Increase number of winners per year
  47. Increase overall prestige and will decrease amount of money we are asking for to help students if they win money
  48. Graduate Survey
  49. Surveyed 3,000 students (about 30% of grad students)
  50. Used the results to the address to the Provost, Vice Provost, VP of Student Affairs, etc.
  51. Presentation of challenges we are facing
  52. How do we focus our resources
  53. 10 year master plan
  54. Focus Areas (last year)
  55. Financial Assistance
  56. Lounge Space/More Space
  57. Overall lack of grad student housing
  58. Career Development (reach out to students on advisement roles)
  59. Increase support for RA/TA
  60. Revisions to survey (to make it better!) this year
  61. Conference funding by college. Who is getting conference funding from your department? How else can they pay for conferences?
  62. RA/TA stipend number and amount by college – who has been denied, and how much do the stipends pay?
  63. Where are students looking for information on grants/fellowships, and where do they seek help developing their applications?
  64. How confident do students feel in their ability to get a job after graduation, and where are they looking for open positions?
  65. What kind of housing style (studio, 1 BR, etc) would you be interested in and how much would you be willing to pay?
  66. What were your reservations in attending Northeastern, and why did you ultimately decide to attend?
  67. VP Finance
  68. Budget report
  69. Reserved
  70. Operating
  71. As an org, $4,300 approx
  72. Conference and programs (3 funding periods, Nov 15th is approaching (Dec/January)
  73. Individual
  74. Allocated just a little under $38,000
  75. Period 1 – 31 approved
  76. Period 2 – 10 approved
  77. Period 3 – 80 approved
  78. Make sure you apply by deadlines - $375 for the entire year
  79. Group
  80. 10 groups – less than $7,000 spent
  81. VP Media & Membership
  82. Committee Overview/sign-ups
  83. Sign up for one (you can join multiple)
  84. Jack will check in with you to confirm
  85. Senator Number Updates
  86. 24 Right now, One is pending and will be approved, 25
  87. OrgSync
  88. Add yourself as a member!
  89. VP Programs
  90. Programs Committee has kicked off
  91. Will discuss and priorotize
  92. Hockey Game
  93. Getting a bunch of tickets for Nov 15th with UNH
  94. Varsity Club (bar that’s open during game times and operated through Chartwell’s)
  95. Can rent the place ourselves and reserve space
  96. Will make “fake” grad hockey game and won’t have to pay and will get them immediately and will be able to track how many people are coming!
  97. Bar Review
  98. Talked with the Law School (had one last Thursday)
  99. Needed to have discussion with Steph Pierce
  100. We can say the Law School is going, but we can’t say “the GSG is going” because it would mean we would be sponsoring the event
  101. Would need to be 4-6 weeks in advance
  102. Can only be done on a casual impromptu basis at this moment (where people “show” up)

V.  Unfinished Business

VI.  New Business (Quorum was not met)

VII.  Graduate Activity Fee

  1. Each year SABO (student activities business office) asks if we want to keep our activity feed the same, increase (from $0.01 - $1.00), or raise past the dollar but we need to do a referendum (need signatures from graduate student body and vote…we need 38% of the grad population to vote and majority to say yes)
  2. We all pay into this and GSG operates from this!
  3. $26 right now, or increase up to $27, or we can go higher with student signatures ($13 per semester)
  4. Usually the discussion is if we want to increase it? And usually we say to increase it.
  5. Next week, we can have documents to show how we raised it.
  6. Will be move up on agenda next meeting (we need to have it done by the 15th but the 25th is the FINAL day)

VIII.  Advisor Confirmation (Quorum was not met)

  1. Need two
  2. Will move this up on the agenda next time!

IX.  Announcements

  1. Dana (Adjunct Action)
  2. Fighting for fair pay/benefits for those as adjunct
  3. English Dept, voted yesterday and send something to support Adjunct Action
  4. Will send Jack a blurb to
  5. Meeting yesterday in SSH
  6. Most are teaching for the love of it
  7. No research goals to meet
  8. There are teaching jobs but they are better than adjunct faculty jobs and they have benefits
  9. There needs to be better opportunities for adjunct
  10. Meeting for Finance Committee (8pm) TONIGHT in GSG Office

X.  Adjourned meeting at 1:16pm