e Date: 16 October 2013
Location: Brody School of Medicine 2E-100
Subject: General Assembly Meeting
Meeting Called By: Thom Croskery, President
Time Keeper: Diana Wright, Vice President
Minutes: Jason Franklin, Executive Associate
· Call to Order at 7:30 PMo Verification of Quorum. All groups were present
· Information from the Chancellor’s Round Table
o Affordable Care Act and GS Contracts
§ Dean Gemperline Q&A – email
§ Personal and employer mandate for the ACA. Employer mandate is 01/01/2015 that any employer of 50 or more individuals is required to provide subsidized health insurance to employees that work 30 hours or more a week.
§ There is a mandated “look back” period where the school can get fined $2000/total employees if one person is incorrectly insured.
§ Contracts have been limited now in order to meet this standard.
§ The student insurance plan meets ACA requirements.
§ Q: research contracts – work for pay but not all work is towards degree process
If someone is working more than contract hours, contact Dean Gemperline confidentially – honest, student evaluation, go above PI to resolve issues
§ Q: tutoring of medical students – working on issue– was not even aware
o Federal Shutdown & Grant Funded Research
§ Impacts mainly on research not on students – grants already awarded can be spent down, but new grants won’t be processed for 6-8 months post ending of the shutdown
§ PIs should not use shut down as an excuse to delay degree progress
§ We won’t feel the hit of a lack of new awards for another year.
§ It is estimated that 25-30% of funding will be cut across the board.
o MPH Clinical Assessment Fee
§ The main issue is whether this is a fee where students have the option not to use it or if this is a fee where they should have the option to do clinical work.
§ This is being looked into; let Thom know if there are other fees you feel you shouldn’t be paying.
§ Fees are going to be reviewed and these concerns are on all of the administration’s radar.
· Emergency Funding Request: PTC
o Olivia Ratcliffe and the PTC were awarded $500 to go to her conference in Las Vegas. This was a unanimous vote of yes with no abstentions.
· Finance Committee Report
o The notes from the meeting are included.
o Main discussion points were undergraduate participation and the “Dead Zone” of non-funding
· Partnership with Joyner & Browzine
o ECU Libraries now subscribes to BrowZine – the new iPad and Android tablet app for Libraries that lets you browse, read and monitor scholarly journals right on your tablet! Choose from thousands of scholarly journal titles. Save articles and export citations to RefWorks and Zotero. Obtain the app in Google Play or Apple Store
o This is monitored and shows GPSS direct impact since we are on the advertising campaign.
· Information from the Student Athletics Council
o We can sponsor teams, meaning groups can show up to events en masse with club shirts.
· Impact Report: State Budget &Graduate Education
o Have passed on the letters to the NC General Assembly to the Dean, Vice Chancellors and Chancellors. We also passed on the statement about the BGA conference to Germany. We hope to make a compelling case.
o Increases in the tuition and fees, but even with increases tuition will still be in the lower quartile of the UNC system. Increases are justified.
· Outcome Report: BGA Conference
o Brought back new technique, interacted with top people directly, form collaborations
· Leadership Vignette Series
o Chose to discuss leadership skills on CV/Resume next meeting. A recorded lecture series is preferred so graduate students can access it at any time and the numbers can be monitored.
· General Announcements
o Lauren from PHO wants to know about interest/volunteers for NC Legal Aid to help with enrollment for the ACA. 20 hour time commitment plus one event date. Email for more information.
o Lalage suggested starting a poster template on the GPSS site for conferences.
o PTE will have a Chic-Fil-A fundraiser tomorrow from 5-8PM. They are at the University Commons location near Target.
· Adjourn at 9:21 PM
Finance Committee Discussion points
Points Discussed
Read through the Bill Adopting a Funding Rubric to Aid Annual and Emergency Funding Allocations.
The whole point of the rubric is a way to give funds to everyone and to be fair. We have less of a voice with the administration due to spending cuts.
1.Are we still going to give funding annually?- There was a suggestion to allocate funding bi-annually. The consensus was to do it once a year and the following points were raised:
a.-Difficult to do every semester.
b.-Take a lot of stress off of the GPSS to do it once a year
c.–Most organizations select officers at the beginning of the academic year, and since GPSS funding is allocated at the end of the calendar year there should be no problems with continuity
d.It would be easier for organizations to plan annual operations if they know how much funding has been allocated for the whole year.
2.What constitutes a charity?- this question was raised in reference to variety of charities that are supported by organizations, the concern was that some “charities” are less obvious as forms of service. The following suggestions were made:
a.-Would be less confusing if we changed the word “charity” to community outreach.
b.-Defining charity as a nonprofit organization
c.-Keeping the “OR” is beneficial
3.How to count hours- There is a lot of concern as to how hours will be counted and how this will be adjusted for smaller organization that have smaller rosters. The following resolutions were made:
a.Hours are to be calculated byperson- hours.This is a concept adopted from epidemiology studies where the total number of hours is divided by total # of people on the roster.
i.E.g take 2 organizations:
1.Org Athere are 2 individuals who participate event for 8 hours total hours =16 , this is divided by the total # of people on the roster 10, so org A has 1.6 person hours
2.Org Bthere are 2 individuals who participate event for 8 hours total hours= 16 , this is divided by the total # of people on the roster 20, so org A has 0.8 person hours
ii.As a result all hours are weighted as overall organizational participation and groups will not be penalized for having small rosters & this will discourage roster padding
4.How are food drives to be assessed? There was some concern as to whether food drive hours were to be valued at the same rate as other more labor intensive/ participatory activities. The consensus was to place a cap on hours that can be attained from food drives.
i.E.g If the food drive hours vs. house building should be equal to the same hours
ii.Cap can give a % of total person hours that can be from food drives for the year e.g. 20%?
5.Should travel to a particular location to perform service be included as time involved in particular service?
a.There should be a cap or a reduced rate e.g. 30%
6.What constitutes a university sponsored event
a.Something with ECU’s name on it.
b.Events should be non-mandatory e.g can not be a journal club
c.Organization needs to go as a group and show their presence as a group at an event e.g if an organization decided to support a university team.
7.Dead Zone
a.-If there’s a way to give the department the money to hold and then let us use it during the dead zone.
Overlap, Roster padding and double dipping of funds between organizations and members
8.Graduate students can only seek travel funding from one organization however if they participate in the activities of more than one organization their hours can count towards multiple organizations for other purposes e.g. funding for meeting food etc
9.Organizations that have a large number of distance education students
a.Organizations can introduce latent vs active members
i.Latent members are individuals are not eligible for funding, since they do not participate in activities, as a result they are not to be included in the denominator for the calculation of person years
10.Undergraduate Members
a.-Their time cane count for their organization, but they’re not eligible for funding.
b.-Talk to the Dean about organizations that hold both graduate and undergraduate membership
Implementation
11.Self-report
a.-Faculty advisers/ Department Chair- sign off sheets to confirm event participation similar to the honor code
12.Report following a PowerPoint template should be submitted 5 days before the next GPSS meeting.
a.Include details about event who attended, times, pictures
13.All reports will be presented in the last 15mins of GPSS meeting
a.The goal of this is to encourage transparency and so if there any discrepancies they are addressed as soon as the event has occurred.
14.At the end of semester there will be a large finance meetingpoints are allotted based on funding rubric and ppt slides presented & approved
15.We acknowledge that since we are already half way through this semester some allowances will be made.