• Representatives present • Katherine Bold, ACM • Alexandros Ntelekos, CEE • Jack Tinsley, proxy for Sasha Meyers, CHE • Kellam Conover, CLA • Christopher DeCoro, COS • Jim Adelman, proxy for Christiane Meyer, EEB • Tarje Nissen-Meyer, GEO • Chin Jou, proxy for Jeris Yruma, HIS • John Greene, proxy for Wei Ho, MAT • Shin-Yi Lin, MOL • Annika Peter, PHY • Daniel Raburn, PPL • Julia Belopolsky, proxy for Cori Anderson, SLA •
• Delegates present • Meredith Safran, OFF •
• Councilors present • Chair Shin-Yi Lin • Recording Secretary Annika Peter, CPUC • Press Secretary Susan Robison • Social Chair Megan Sullivan • Guillaume Sabouret, CPUC • Meredith Safran, CPUC, CPUC Executive Committee & Academic Affairs • Karin Sigloch, Health and Life • Lior Silberman, Facilities • Jack Tinsley, CPUC •
• Others present • Anita Adhitya, GEO • Jimmy Chui, The Game • Shannon Hughes, The Game • Beth McKeown, Community Program Coordinator • Assistant Dean Lisa Schreyer, Graduate School •
• Representatives absent • Neven Fuckar, AOS • Peter Locke, ANT • Tyrel McQueen, CHM • Kevin Amonlirdviman, ECO • Ying Wang, ELE • James Bickford, ENG • Peter Eubanks, FIT • Angela Holzer, GER • Sultana Banulescu, HOS • Weifeng Chen, MAE • Samir Soneji, OPR • Aderemi Artis, PHI • Barbara Buckinx, POL • Louis Lee, PSY • Levi McLaughlin, REL • Steven Shafer, SOC • Daniel Harris, WWS •
• Delegates absent • Chidozie Ugwumba, Black Graduate Caucus • Heather White, Women’s Center (WOC) • Chen Wei, ACSS • Weining Man, CIGS • Josh Friess, BUT • Neven Fuckar, GCO • Marcelline Block, Hibben-Magie (HIB) • Jennifer Jordan, LAW •
• Councilors absent • Parliamentary Secretary Medini Padmanabhan • Corresponding Secretary Danielle Osler • Jeff Dwoskin, Treasurer • James Bickford, CPUC • Newsha Dau, CPUC Priorities Committee • Nicole Esparza, CPUC, CPUC Executive Committee • Josh Friess, CPUC Resources Committee • Christiane Meyer, CPUC Rights and Rules Committee • Sara Nephew, CPUC Governance Committee • Ian Parrish, CPUC Priorities Committee • Lior Silberman, CPUC Rights and Rules Committee, Facilities • Tauna Szymanski, CPUC Judicial Committee •
• Representative seats vacant • ARC• ART• AST• COM• EAS• MUS• NES• ORF• SPO•
• Delegate seats vacant • Millstone Apartments •
Chair Shin-Yi Lin called the meeting to order at 6:07 pm.
Ms. Lin stated that there were two new representatives. Since those two were absent, she decided to introduce the new members at the next meeting.
Ms. Peter reported that the February minutes were not yet ready. Several comments had been received concerning the May minutes, notably some clarifying statements regarding Karin Sigloch's report on her meeting with Public Safety. Assembly could not vote on approval of the minutes because quorum was not present.
Since Treasurer Jeff Dwoskin was not present, Ms. Lin presented the treasurer's report. However, since Assembly lacked quorum, Ms. Lin asked the two groups requesting money, The Game and the Graduate College House Committee, to come to the next meeting.
Mr. Shafer was not present to make his report.
Ms. Peter noted that her department has approximately 120 graduate students. About 10 students each year become post-enrolled, although many spend only one or two months post-enrolled before starting jobs. Ms. Peter stated that, on the whole, graduate students in the department were satisfied with the department. The big change that is coming are changes to the generals structure.
The Physics Department currently has four parts of generals: a preliminary written exam, generally taken after the first semester; a written and oral generals exam, generally completed after the second or third semester; an experimental project, usually defended in October of the second year; and an advanced project, to be defended by the end of the fourth sememster. In addition, there are no required classes. The new generals structure will retain the preliminary exam and the experimental project, but the generals exam will in the future consist of three classes in three separate areas of physics, and the advanced project will be separated from the official generals requirement, and will now be defended in October of the third year of graduate school.
Ms. Peter stated that the one consistent complain that she had received from fellow graduate students upon solicitation of comments was that many students defending their dissertations during the summer were denied summer lease extensions to their university apartments. Students were upset that all of these denials for housing constituted a change in policy from previous years, and that this had not been communicated to the graduate student body. Ms. Peter asked if people in other departments had also been denied lease extensions, and who in the administration one should alert to these problems.
Ms. Safran stated that this policy had affected someone in her department, and that graduate students should contact Dean Montero about their housing situations.
Ms. Mordas was not present to make her report.
Ms. Safran noted that the Academic Affairs Committee had several notable successes throughout the academic year. She noted that in the fall, Academic Affairs had worked with Firestone Library to consider graduate student preferences if Firestone were ever to be renovated. The university hired a consulting firm to run focus students with graduate students in the humanities and social sciences.
In March, the Academic Affairs Committee organized, in conjunction with the APGA and the Alumni Council, a career day for graduate students in the humanities to explore non-academic careers. About fifty graduate students showed up for the event. The Committee is preparing a career day for social sciences students in the fall. Ms. Safran asked if there was interest in a career day for students in the natural sciences. Several graduate students voiced interest in this. Ms. Safran asked that anyone interested in a career day in science should email gsg-acad@.
James Bickford, the Academic Affairs Co-Chair, met with Dean Redman (at the Dean's request) to discuss best practices for post-enrollment (instituted by the former Provost, Amy Gutman). To put the discussion in context, Princeton is one of ten schools that received money from the Graduate Education Initiative of the Mellon Foundation to explore how time to degree could be decreased for humanities students. Mr. Bickford was asked about how the Graduate School could best educate graduate students about non-academic careers. Ms. Safran thought that this was the first time that graduate students had been asked for input on this issue. Ms. Safran stated that the information from the meeting would be communicated to Assembly once notes from the meeting had been prepared.
Ms. Safran then asked for input from the science representatives concerning departmental career counselling. Ms. Lin stated that the Molecular Biology Department does much internal career counselling. Ms. Sigloch stated that the Geosciences Department had an annual mixer with alumni during Reunions. Ms. Peter stated that Physics did not have official guidance for non-academic careers. Anita Adhitya stated that she would like more interaction among the departments in discussion of non-academic careers, so perhaps a career day like the one in the humanities would be a good idea. Ms. Safran suggested the we institutionalize these career days.
Mr. Conover is interested in formalizing mentoring relationships between undergraduates and graduate students. He stated that much informal mentoring was occuring, and that students of color and women in particular were being asked to mentor undergraduates. He was concerned that there was no formal recognition of their effort.
Mr. Conover had asked Assembly in February to poll their departments about mentoring practices, and had received few responses. He entreated the representative and delegates present to poll their departments again. He was hoping to analyze the practices of the various departments in order to develop mentoring programs to suit their needs. His goal was to design a trial program over the summer, and to work with the McGraw Center. He was hoping to set up a trial program next spring. Ms. Safran asked if mentoring in the new programs could be part of the New Jersey state teaching certification program.
Ms. Sullivan made a full
report on the furniture drive. In summary, the furniture drive
collected and sold furniture at two locations on campus (conveniently
located near undergraduate dormitories) on May 31 and June 1. Three
charities picked up extra furniture and $1423. Ms. Sullivan thanked the
graduate student volunteers and read their names:
Greg Reeves
Xiang Zhou
David Xiao
Jane Phillips
Barclay Satterfield
David Shrom
Christine Percheski
Aleksandar Donev
Meredith Safran
Jack Tinsley
Jasmine Zhang
Rebecca Jones
Anita Adhitya
Sarah Halsey
Liyun Xu
Beth McKeown, Community Program Coordinator, was leaving after two years in the position. Ms. Lin thanked her especially for her outreach to spouses and families of graduate students. Assembly clapped as Ms. Lin presented Ms. McKeown with chocolates.
Ms. Lin made the following report:
Since many members of the Exec Committee were out of town for various reasons, we have only met once since the last Assembly meeting. We focused the meeting on coming up with long-term projects this Exec Committee would like to work on during our tenure.
Per Lisa Schreyer's announcement during our last Assembly meeting, we were unable to find a graduate student who was willing and able to serve on the search committee for the PACE Center director on such short notice. Therefore, I sent our regrets that we were unfortunately unable to provide a graduate student representative, but encouraged the PACE center to contact us in the future if they'd like graduate student representation for other projects.
Megan Sullivan and I attended the inaugural meeting of the Frist Campus Center Advisory Board, a group that meets regularly to discuss issues which impact Frist and the University community as a whole. In honor of Frist's fifth anniversary, Frist is planning a big FristFest-like celebration early next fall. Also, Dining Services talked about renovations and menu improvements in the pipeline for the Food Gallery.
I attended a meeting with representatives of Facilities, Frist, and Greening Princeton to discuss energy usage and conservation, specifically in Frist but also generally throughout the university. Since reducing energy is currently a university-wide priority (due to rising energy costs and their effect on our budget), we have an excellent opportunity to get things done right now. This group will continue to meet throughout the summer in hopes of implementing small-scale energy-smart improvements - first in Frist, but perhaps elsewhere as well.
On behalf of Jeff Dwoskin, I have some information to share from the recent Graduate Student Shuttle Advisory Group meeting. This group works regularly with the University on shuttle and parking issues.
1) There will a reduced shuttle schedule for the summer and students will again be able to park in grad lots without hangtags, if you have a housing decal. An e-mail will be sent about this shortly.
2) In general, e-mail announcements will be sent in a more timely fashion from now on. 3) We hope that abandoned cars at housing units will start to be removed soon.
4) We are currently working with the University on plans for next year to improve the routes and schedule. 5) Vehicle registration will be at least partly online for next year.
Finally, I would like to encourage all of Assembly to think about submitting PriComm requests for our consideration in the July meeting. Please also encourage your constituents to bring up any additional PriComm-worthy topics for consideration to us.
To give you some background:
For the past two years, the GSG has written letters to administrators that can make requests to the Priorities Committee. The Priorities Committee is one of the CPUC sub-committees (to which we have two graduate student representatives). PriComm meets with the Provost to put together the following academic year's operating budget and (importantly!) to recommend how any surplus should be spent. Thus, we write these letters in the hopes that some graduate-student friendly requests will be considered for surplus use; alternatively, by bringing these issues to the appropriate administrators, they might be able to resolve the issue on their own.
Our efforts last year were really successful in that most of the recommendations PriComm made, specifically those regarding health and wellness, benefited graduate students.
Let me explain the procedure:
All students can submit requests via gsg@ no later than Friday, July 1. Requests should include a clear description of the problem and what specific budget expenditures would be required to address these problems. For a point of reference, individuals can refer to last July's minutes for a full list of proposals made last year (including the subset of them that was approved for letter writing).
A full list of proposed topics will be sent out to Assembly prior to our July meeting. Assembly will then vote to approve a subset of these topics. Then, the Exec Committee will draft up the letters to the various administrators.
Let me emphasize that since these PriComm requests are really important, all voting representatives should ensure that they - or a proxy in their stead - be present at July's meeting.
Since there was not a quorum at this meeting, there was some concern that quorum could be reached at future summer meetings. Ms. Safran asked if it was feasible to hold an email vote. Mr. Tinsley stated that it was necessary to attain quorum to vote on having an email vote. Ms. Safran also pointed out that there is a budget crisis, so that Assembly should keep that in mind when making PriComm requests.
Ms. Sullivan submitted a report on plans for the Frolic at Frist. This barbeque was scheduled for June 15, 2005, from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. Ms. Sullivan asked for volunteers.
Ms. Sigloch asked that Assembly representatives please ask their constituents about their opinions on Public Safety. Ms. Lin thanked everyone for attending the meeting, especially the many proxies.