GSO Meeting Minutes
[03/08/23]
Attendance: Ashley, Riley, Aaron, Nageeb, David, Farzaneh, 7 students on Zoom, and 8 students in person
It’s March, but this is the February meeting!
Faculty/GSO Updates (for February and March)
February:
Qual updates
Faculty voted unanimously to accept the changes
Going into effect for August qual
Dr. Singh is new Curriculum chair (taking over from Juhan)
Hopefully will be meeting before the August qual to go over the test bank
New budget stuffs:
Going into effect in July
No decrease in funding ($23k for 9 months)
Will only affect incoming students
Summer will be covered just not sure by what just yet
Health insurance
Graduate College is in negotiations for health insurance for us!!
The new plan looks like it will actually probably have decent coverage
Faculty searches
Astro faculty!
Will be sending out a survey after lunches to ask for opinions on the faculty candidates
March
Budget stuffs for the Summer
Budgeted for 26k over 9 months, haven’t heard back yet on that
Summer support is an additional $5000 for TAs
Will only affect new incoming students
Details are still a bit uncertain at the moment
Idea is that each student would get around $28000 per year, which is now more than some RAs!
May be good to have a conversation at some point about RAs getting paid more in the future
For Summer, TAs might have to go into Workday and clock in 20 hours a week
Bill to remove fees for graduate students may only affect TAs, not RAs…
If grad seminar students get their proposal ‘funded,’ will they still get paid?
Yes!
This funding is kind of a trap, the last person who actually got ‘funded’ was Eklavya, multiple years ago
Everyone will probably TA or tutor, unless they forget to reach out to you for your availability, which can happen
Only for half of the Summer
The wall in Arlo’s closet fell down, and they will start to fix that soon. The people there have begun to relocate.
If you have extra space in your office and you know one of them, it might be nice to offer them the space
We also told the faculty about the issues with the building itself
There is a building report form that we will send out in these minutes. If you see an issue, please fill out the form!
For med-phys students
New budget would not support masters students, the med phys department got a petition approved to get the funding anyway and it was approved!
We will be conducting a general mental health survey at some point for the department
Graduate Student Open House
2 open houses
March 16th and 17th
Looking for volunteers!
If anybody is available, please reach out to Ashley and let her know!
GSO panel on the 17th?
We would need volunteers for this
Trying to plan a social event with Jeff
March 23rd and 24th
Also looking for volunteers
GSO panel for perspectives on the Friday
Free food possibilities
Social event at Tabby’s house March 24th
Party!!! Everyone is invited! There is a pool!
Faculty searches
Two more after Spring break
Dr. Diego Munoz
Dr. Charlie Kilpatrick
Election information
All positions are open!
The first election will be for executive officer positions
President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary
Second election will be for board member positions
Events chair and new!! International student liaison
Nominations for executive officers by March 15th
Accept nominations by March 22nd
Executive officer elections by March 29th
Nominations for Board member positions will be sent by April 5th
Acceptances will be due by April 12th
Board member elections by April 19th
Nomination and voting forms will be sent via email
If you have the time and are interested, we highly recommend running for a position!
Constitution and Bylaw review
No major changes, but there are some poorly-worded sections that we would like to update
Constitution
Article I: Removing “or the Organization” because we do not use that term
Tabled these changes to discuss further
Article IV: Clarifying that we are physics graduate students in the GSO, and removing specific references to undergraduate students
Tabled these changes to discuss further
Officers section: Allow board members (as opposed to executive officers) to maintain a role for 2 years (this is already how we operate, it’s just not explicit)
Vote:
For: 7 on Zoom, 9 in person
Against: 1
Abstaining: 1
Article XIII: Fixed some of the language, changing ‘executive board member’ to ‘officer’ throughout
Vote:
For: 8 on Zoom, 8 in person
Against: 0
Abstaining: 1
Adding “within the p&a department”
Vote:
For: 8 on Zoom, 9 in person
Against: 0
Abstaining: 0
Bylaws
Removing position of academic events chair and social events chair, then adding Event chair and International Student Liaison
Note: specific detail of the International Student Liaison position will be determined during the next academic year
Vote: (for removal of academic events chair)
For: 5 on Zoom, 7 in person
Against: 0
Abstaining: 2
Vote: (for removal of social events chair)
For: 5 on Zoom, 8 in person
Against: 0
Abstaining: 1
Vote: (for addition of events chair)
For: 6 on Zoom, 8 in person
Against: 0
Abstaining: 2
Vote: (for addition of International Student Liaison)
For: 6 on Zoom, 9 in person
Against: 0
Abstaining: 1
Thank you to everyone for being here!