Tag Archives: student funding

April DSC Meeting Notes

Bill Kelly

  • Open Meetings
    • Provost calling on all EOs to evaluate compliance with bylaws
    • 5/15 deadline to be compliant
      • not compliant: à Provost OR Structure Committee of Grad Council
      • had not received any complaints in 15 years
    • Especially vis-à-vis student
    • Not honors system but a set of bylaws
      • Own program bylaws must be in compliance
    • Not going to go on “witchunt”/not going to be
    • Can submit complaint anonymously to Grad Council or Provost
    • Current legal opinion: Program Standing Committees not subject to NYS Open Meetings Law
    • Do not necessarily want single specifically spelled out regulations – takes away local control
  • Funding Gap
    • Used to have almost no fellowships, much less valuable fellowships
    • In most years, have increased value or increased work
    • Trying to be like other universities with fellowships
    • “striking breakthrough” this year
    • yes, is still funding gap
    • will try to build, but in meantime…
      • find way to reduce teaching load moving forward
        • doesn’t kick in until 2014
      • adjuncts
        • difficult at universities
        • determined at universities, determined by collective bargaining – not much he can do
      • dissertation fellowships
        • 89 this year
        • try to grow pot every year
      • this spring, money to small grants for research
      • tuition waiver and health insurance for all who work as adjuncts
        • extending beyond 5 years not high on list of things to send money to
        • will “take under consideration” possibility of making it 10 semesters used however you want
  • NYSHIP in Dissertation Fellowships
    • NYSHIP – have to be student employee, but Dissertation Fellowships usually work-free
    • Asked Provost’s Office to look at options over the summer
  • New Chancellor
    • Goldstein leaving as “huge loss” – “remarkable” leadership
      • Has evinced “unstinting” support from Graduate Center
    • Board will name Interim, then national search conducted
      • Probably BoT naming Trustees on committee, then faculty and student representation and an alumni rep
      • Probably asking UFS and USS to delegate someone
  • Maybe potentially CUNY university press
    • Potential partnership with University of Liverpool Press
    • Think it will happen pretty soon

 

Co-Chair for Student Affairs

  • Will figure out way to coordinate governance/meeting concerns
    • Be in contact with DSC
    • 6.4b on DSC Website – direct recommendation to graduate council
      • 10% of students sign on to petition if problems directly to Grad Council
  • elections still open, VOTE
  • OpenCUNY hiring coordinators
  • Looking for new Editor-in-Chief of Advocate

 

Communications

  • Creating Emeritus DSC Leadership Advisory Board
  • Parental Leave Working Group
    • Working Group executive summary of survey results and policy recommendation
      • All full time GC students without gender of method of family forming, without regard to fellowship status
      • Automatic extension of deadlines
      • 1 semester salary at half of GCF with minimum health requirement
      • retain status and tuition remission
      • full health care
    • Draft GC Policy
      • All kinds of parenting
      • Academic accommodation for all GC students
      • Negotiation: work accommodation available only to GC fellowship students, only people working within CUNY, or all GC students
    • Expect in place by September 1
  • Information Technology
    • Email project postponed/all off
    • Migration to CUNYFirst
      • Business End (admin parts of Banner): June
      • More info in fall
    • Student printing data collection: status quo
    • Pursuing GC portal through campuseai.org (open source)
    • Wireless upgrade
  • Institutional Research
    • Received results of Doctoral Students Survey
    • Master Survey underway
  • Auxiliary Enterprise: manage revenue
    • Rentals, dining primary sources of revenue
    • Money held in reserve for student housing
    • Looking at student housing site in Long Island City
  • Meeting with Pres. Kelly
    • Parental leave
    • Condom dispensers in bathrooms
      • Condoms and other barrier forms in bathrooms on 5th floor
  • Student Affairs
    • Update on stipend limits/term limits
  • Robinson will not be pursuing relocation of student center to C level

 

Business

  • Spend money in May
  • DSC Website: “Soft overhaul”
    • Update
    • Navigation and menu problem fixed
    • Aesthetic upgrade
  • Blood Drive coming up in June
    • Balance blood drive v. discriminatory practice

 

USS Delegate

  • FOAI emails received
  • USS continues to be

 

UFS Delegate

  • CUNY 2020 – skeptical
  • UFS passed resolution against extension of Pathways Committee

 

Internet Research Team: Chartered

 

DSC Budget 2013-2014

  • Will continue subsidizing medical tests for uninsured students
  • Small reduction in grants
  • Discretionary down for Steering, Exec
  • Less money for GC Advocate freelancers
  • More money for OpenCUNY, UFS delegate
  • Slightly smaller party budget
  • Slight smaller office supply budget

 

Bylaw Changes

  • Governance Task Force
  • USS Standing Committee
  • Changes to Grants Processes
  • Funding increase for start-up grants

 

Constitution Change

  • Add additional duties to USS Delegate (chair USS Student Advisory Committee)

 

Response to Open Meeting Letter

  • Potential lawsuit to apply Open Meetings Law to program standing committees
    • CUNY never applied OML without lawsuit
    • Push back on claim by CUNY Counsel that program student committees
    • Consultation with attorneys
    • Pretty much all we have left
    • Why do this?
      • Lots of leeway in interpretation of laws
      • Students on Exec have voice on all policy
      • What students allowed to hear and communicate to constituents varies by program and by issue
      • Applying OML would clarify what situations are actually allowed to be kept confidential
        • Which situations would actually be able to kept closed and not communicated
  • Could compile out-of-compliance governance documents
  • Engage in education campaign regarding rights to representation
  • Request to be present OML and governance issues at an all-EO meeting

 

Student Life and Services

  • Survey still open
    • Have reached N
    • Try to get more
    • Average respondent: Level III, not taking clases
  • Comfort stations will be happening
  • Looking for folks to lead meditations
  • Supplies for kitchenettes

 

Outreach

  • Queen College – first week of May
  • International Student Town Hall: April 30
  • Updated CUNY Power chart coming soon!
    • CUNY, GC, DSC, programs

 

Health and Wellness

  • Wellness Festival last week
  • Health posters and flyers available and up
  • Updates to website
    • Added to NYSHIP providers
  • Health and Wellness survey coming soon

 

Governance and Membership

  • Constitution and bylaws up to date on website!
    • each page will include date last updated

 

Funding

  • Grants

Library and Technology

  • Mac Lab on C level library – use it!
    • Can reserve room through IT website
    • In danger of losing it
  • Ideas about what to do with MacLab? Send them to kmoriah AT gc DOT cuny DOT edu
  • IT Student Equipment Loan Program – use them!!!
    • See IT Website: camcorder, flip cap, netbook, webcams, macbooks, recorders
  • Still have grants to disburse: Ad Hoc Committee for Student Tech Workshop Facilitation Grant

Dec. 2012 Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes from 12/7/12 Executive Committee Meeting

(more or less in order of importance)

 

 

Course evaluations: They are happening!

  • We’ve worked on a number of drafts of the evaluations, getting lots of feedback from various faculty
  • The goal is to collect information that will be valuable primarily to students in choosing classes, but also helpful to the EO and faculty
  • There will be evaluations for this past Fall semester, which will be used as somewhat of a trial run to see how well the designed evaluation works, collect preliminary data, etc.
  • The current plan is that the results will be available online, potentially on the Political Science Student Representation website
  • Fall 2012 Course Evaluations were sent out to the student listserv last Friday, and by Margaret earlier today. The link is here.

 

New Fellowship program: will go into effect for incoming Fall 2013 class

  • A fixed number of students: 12, all of whom will receive funding
    • 9 “GC Fellowships”
      • expectation to be full-time students
      • 3 Tuition-only fellowships
        • directed to incoming students who have full-time jobs and/or other sources of funding
      • There was much debate about whether 12 is an absolute cap
        • President’s office and Provost’s Office say yes
        • Questions about whether we could add more if there weren’t fellowships attached, or if there was other money in one way or another
        • If there’s going to be any effort to admit more than 12, it will be on an individual, concrete case-by-case basis
          • More-or-less a consensus among the faculty on not wanting to make hypothetical challenge/request for flexibility
      • Our department has been at the 12 number give or take a few for the past couple of years
  • Process/logistics
    • The GC Fellowships will be a $25,000/year stipend, with NYSHIP, for a 1/1 teaching load (probably can be adjusted to a 0/2 or 2/0 depending on student and campus needs on a case by case basis)
      • Will probably be able to “bank” up to one year leave of absence
      • The Admissions Committee will be ranking all candidates and go down the ranked list to fill the 12 spots
        • MA students applying to the PhD program will apply like everyone else, and will essentially be like “new” people in the applicant pool
      • Will not lose department Grad B’s
      • There will be money (unclear from where?) provided to campuses to hire more adjuncts
      • MA programs will be used to “fill bodies in classes”
  • Concerns and Criticisms
    • Some departments (especially Sociology) has voiced concerns about the cap on the number of students
      • Especially if there is money at the department level to support more students
      • Concern that this will lessen the number of minority students
      • Possibility that this will make it more difficult for international students given visa-related and other restrictions they may be facing
  • We raised the (in our minds completely legitimate) concerns that many of you have voiced regarding the inequities that this creates: in addition to the current funded/no-funded stratification, there will now be another stratification where incoming students will be receiving $7,000/year more than current ECFs for half the work/year, not to mention the inequality created between incoming funded students and people without ECFs. The response was unsympathetic. The common responses included that this benefits us all in the long-run (reasoning: better students and a better reputation) and that isn’t a matter of great concern.
  • From the administration’s perspective, this is  a done deal in all regards.

 

Moving forward: this spring, EO wants to discuss the possibility of more strictly capping enrollment in courses

  • Concerns include too many students in some classes, too many students from other programs, too many MALS students
    • Possibility that non-political science students would have to “apply” to take (all?) (some)? POLSC classes
  • One potential problem is that if the department was to limit the number of non-political science students in POLSC classes, it might make it more difficult for us to enroll in non-POLSC classes.
  • Stay tuned…

 

Archiving of select dissertation proposals: per a request from the DSC, the department will (soon?) be implementing an online archive of select dissertation proposals

  • In attempt to collect only the “good” ones, this will be a decision made by each student’s committee at the send of the Second Exam
  • There was also discussion of adding a central database of titles of those currently working on dissertation
    • Perhaps they get added after passing Second Exam?
    • How to systematically collect for people who have already passed Second Exam?

 

Student Satisfaction Survey

  • We received results from the GC-wide student survey from this past Spring
  • EO and other faculty understood the data very positively (and there are some things to be positive about)
  • Also much to be concerned about in the report, which we plan to bring up at future meetings (discussion was cut off due to time constraints)
  • Data to be used in future professional development workshops and other areas
  • Still a question how public this data is going to be made – our hope is that at the very least all students have access to it
  • EO wants the raw data so that further, more refined analysis can be done to it

 

Career Development Office: A new Career Development Office will be opening in February

  • Will centralize letter-writing services (as opposed to using Interfolio)
  • May help with workshops on the departmental level 

 

Budget: Effect of Hurricane Sandy on budget is unclear

 

 

 

December Grad Council Meeting

by Sarah Kostecki and Kristofer Petersen-Overton

Overview
I. President Kelly
II. Prof. Rollins on curriculum and degree changes
III. University Faculty Senate report
IV. New business

I. President Kelly on the state of the university:

a. No sign of budget cuts that would affect the GC and an attempt to open a new residence hall in Long Island City is in the works. The one in Harlem very popular (there’s a long waiting list) and in the green, much to everyone’s surprise.
b. The GC continues to push for better student funding packages, while simultaneously reducing incoming class size; the goal, according to Kelly is to “make sure each incoming class has better funding than the previous…” They’re also exploring ways to offer greater funding opportunities for current students and those in dissertation phase especially.
c. An emphasis on professional development is set take effect next semester. The GC just hired Jennifer Furlong of the Chronicle of Higher Education to lead the professional development initiative beginning this February (nothing more specific was offered). The idea is to offer greater placement opportunities for graduating students. Furlong recently helped NYU develope a similar focus on professional development.
Also, Kelly announced that new digital signs will replace the easels by the elevators on each floor. New spaces will be made available for posters and fliers.
II. The “dapper” Professor Rollins walked us through curriculum and degree changes. Nothing big here. Sarah and I voted in favor of each item.
Major items:
a. MALS – New track in Sustainability , Science, and Education (Approved)
b. MALS – New course MALS 75600 Sustainability and Human Ecodynamics (Approved)
c. MALS – New course MALS 75700 Field Course in Island Long Term Human Ecodynamics (Approved)
d. MALS – New track in individualized studies (Approved)
e. Ph.D. program in Psychology – LPBA name change (Approved)
f. Ph. D. program in Comparative Literature – Change in language requirement (Approved)
Minor items:
a. MALS 70500 – Repeatable course, change to existing course (Approved)
b. Ph.D. Program in Anthropology – Human anatomy change in course credits, change to existing course (Approved)

III. The University Faculty Senate (UFS) reported on its recent passage (63-3) of a non-binding board resolution to place a moratorium on the infamous Pathways initiative. Though non-binding, the resolution is the strongest rebuke yet to Chancellor Goldstein and his minions — ahem — administration. If you’re interested in the content of the resolution, you can find it here: https://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2012/12/10/pathways-resolution/ Moreover, the UFS is launching an investigation into the possible impact of Pathways. The investigation is slated to begin immediately, though doubts were expressed as to whether or not such an effort could begin so soon.

The UFS also reported that NY state has cut funding in a way that reduces CCNY’s budget for furniture and equipment by $120 million. Chancellor Goldstein has said there is funding set aside for this already, but the UFS rep speculated that there may still be a $90 million shortfall once the money made form the sale of 80th St. is accounted for (~$30 million).

IV. There was no new business to discuss.

DSC Minutes, 9/21 Meeting

from Flan and John (representative report available here).

– Printing: For now, IT is only collecting data on print usage patterns. The 10,000 page quota is a “soft quota” – if you run out, you just have to ask the HelpDesk and they will reset it for you. The expectation, though, is that at some point there will be a “hard” quota/limit on the number of pages you can pring.

–  Free Microsoft Office and other software: If you log in to CUNY Portal and switch your “primary status” to Employee/Faculty (should definitely be an option for anyone teaching at one of the campuses and perhaps for others as well), you can go to the ‘eMall’ and get discounts and some free software, including Microsoft Office. I just tried it out, and downloaded the latest version of Office for Mac free.

– EndNote: if you want EndNote, you have to download it (which you can do for free) by the end of the year; it goes away Jan. 1

– Increased Access to Room Reservations: In the near future, all students should be able to reserve ALL rooms at the GC through the DSC website (until this change, only option were the DSC meeting rooms) – everything from a classroom to the Skylight Room. It remains to be seen how responsive the room reservation folks are to student requests, but in theory students should have good access. Note that this is available ONLY for student-led, student-run events (i.e. Center X cannot use this system for room reservations) – student orgs, study groups, etc.

– Writing Center: They’re in the process of hiring someone to establish a Writing Center, to be used primarily for 1) help revising diss chapters, articles, revise and resubmits, etc. and 2) working on job application docs

– Email: The email system will be changing around Jan. 1 – addresses will probably change. More details forthcoming.

– Blood Drives: DSC is continuing to try to work to get blood drives off-campus until the ban on men who have had sex with men from donating blood is lifted (see this recent GC Advocate story for details)

– $$$ for student events: There are DSC grants available (for up to $750) for student-run, student-led events, conferences, etc. – they are eager to have more applications and provide more support. For the first round of grants, the deadline is Thursday; more info and the application can be found here.

– Health Insurance/NYSHIP: Excellent resources on dealing with NYSHIP, recommended providers, and other health insurance issues are available here.

As always, if you have any questions, or an issue you’d like us to bring up at the next meeting (Oct. 26), please email us.