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March 2023 GSO Meeting Minutes

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!

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