GSG Assembly meeting Wednesday May 9, 2007
Agenda
I.
Call to Order and Assembly Business
A.
Seating of New Assembly Members - Silvia Newell/Dan Raburn
II.
New Business
A.
Vacating Inactive Voting Seats
B.
Motion for Voting by Email
III.
Special Guest President Shirley Tilghman
IV.
Office Reports
A.
Chair - Shin-Yi Lin
V.
Decision Items
A. GSG Events Board/D-bar request -- Alex Ntelekos
B. CPUC PriComm Elections -- Shin-Yi Lin
VI.
Discussion Items
A.
DCE Discussion -- Charles Butcosk, Bart Bonikowski
Attendance for GSG
Assembly Meeting May 9, 2007
PRESENT Representatives & voting delegates present: Charles Butcosk (ART), Khee-Gan Lee (AST, new rep), Zhenhua Sun (CEE, proxy for Juan Nogues), Robert Scogna (CHE), Christopher Crutchfield (CHM), Tom Zanker (CLA), Clara Tuan (EAS), Stephanie Wang (ECO), Ryan A. Chisholm (EEB), Ilias Tagkopoulos (ELE), Silvia Newell (GEO), Robert Harron (MAT), Praveena Joseph-de Saram (MOL), Ekaterina Jager (ORF, new rep), Kevin Collins (POL), Susan Robinson (PSY), Aryeh Amihay (REL), Cori Anderson (SLA), Bart Bonikowski (SOC), Nicole Brunda (WWS), Emanuel Lazar (ACM, new rep), Neven Fuckar (AOS), Robert MacGregor (HOS), David Potere (OPR, new rep), Daniel Raburn (PPL), Victor Marsh (BGC) Non-voting delegates present: Jeff Dwoskin (BUT, proxy for Dante Ricci), Neven Fuckar (GCO), Lisa M. Schreyer (RLC), Tara Kitley (CPC) Officers present: Shin-Yi Lin (chair), Silvia Newell (ParSec), Robert MacGregor (CorrSec), Marina Paul (RecSec), Daniel Raburn (PressSec), Alexandros Ntelekos (Treas), Jenny He (SocCh) Councilors present: Shin-Yi Lin (CPUC, EXE), Kellam Conover (CPUC), Jeff Dwoskin (CPUC, PRI, Facilities), Daniel Raburn (CPUC), Aaron Levine (RRR), Donna Sy (CampRel) Others present: Grace Wang (CPUC 07-08), Chris Said (CPUC 07-08), Piper Harris (DBar), Eliz Bakanic (CPUC 07-08), Ryan Harper (CPUC 07-08) ABSENT Representatives & voting delegates absent: Ricky Martin (ANT, inactive, vacated during Assembly), Christian Bienia (COS), Petra Spies (GER), Zachary Chitwood (HIS), Yaron Ayalon (NES), Steve Hassani (PHY, inactive, vacated during Assembly) Non-voting delegates absent: - Officers absent: - Councilors absent: Karin Sigloch (CPUC, EXE, RRR, H&L), Benjamin McKean (CPUC, RES), Jesse Salazar (CPUC), Joy Sinderbrand (GOV), Sharon Bzostek (JUD), Christian Bienia (PRI) VACANCIES Representatives & voting delegate vacancies: ANT and PHY were vacated during Assembly Non-voting delegate vacancies: HIB, LAW, MIL, OFF, ACSS, CIGS, APGA Councilor vacancies: AcadAff Officer vacancies: -
I. Call to
Order and Assembly Business
Meeting started at 6:07pm.
A. Seating of New Assembly Members
Four new department representatives were introduced at this assembly meeting: David Potere (OPR), Ekaterina Jager (ORF), Emanuel Lazar (ACM), Khee-gan (KG) Lee (AST).
II. New Business
A. Vacating Inactive Voting Seats
Dan Raburn (Press Secretary) mentioned that when representatives for a specific department have not attended the three Assembly meetings in a row, their seats become inactive. He announced that the following seats are now left vacant for representatives: Anthropology (formerly represented by Ricky Martin) and Physics (formerly represented by Steve Hassani).
B. Motion for Voting by Email
A motion was made to allow votes by e-mail for the months of this summer (the months of June, July, August of 2007) if quorum is not met. The motion was passed.
III. Special Guest
President Tilghman attends one Assembly meeting a year to give an update of graduate student life and answer any questions posed by members of the audience.
To give a starting point for her visit to Assembly, Shin-Yi Lin (Chair) asked Dr. Tilghman what role she sees for graduate students in the University community. This is an issue that is great interest to the graduate community and we would be interested if she has anything to say regarding trends, improvements, and challenges surrounding this issue: How do we fit into the social life of the campus? How do faculty and graduate students work together to fulfill the teaching commitment of Princeton? How are graduate alumni connected to Princeton?
Dr. Tilghman began by saying that she believes that graduate students are important for both aspects of the dual mission of Princeton University (research and teaching). Graduate students are also critical to PrincetonÕs ability to recruit faculty, as graduate students are integral to their scholarly existence. There is no question of the value of graduate students to this university. However, perception needs to catch up with reality.
Dr. Tilghman acknowledged that there is a perception to the graduate students of being second-class citizens. This may be historic: undergraduate education began earlier in the history of the University (the Graduate School is only 105 years old), and the large undergraduate to graduate student ratio (approximately 2:1) has been fairly constant. She said that this perception, while common, doesnÕt represent the University or represent reality well.
Dr. Tilghman stated that there are several projects/attempts to ensure that the place of graduate students is understood at a deep level, and mentioned the following as evidence of results that the relationship between graduate student community and the University is improving:
1. Educating the Board of Trustees
The Board of Trustees currently consists of mostly undergraduate alumni but does also have a handful of graduate alumni. Also, Dean Russell talks about the graduate school and its importance to the University at one of their five annual meetings.
2. Encouraging Graduate Alumni participation in the Alumni council
There has been little to no attention paid to the graduate alumni, until 5 years ago. There is now a member solely devoted to graduate alumni affairs on the Alumni Council. The Alumni Council, with the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni, is also trying to convey to graduate alumni that their relationship to the University is important to us. During the town meetings for alumni, held in 9 cities a year, Dean Russell sometimes attends them with the President (often holding special dinners for graduate alumni in the area).
3. Graduate alumni have been breaking Annual Giving records, giving more and more to the University.
4. Improved graduate alumni attendance at Alumni Reunions
The presence of graduate alumni has dramatically increased with the past 5 years.
5. Graduate and Undergraduate student relations
Dr. Tilghman wants to move away from former Dean WestÕs vision of a more cloistered graduate student community, and towards Woodrow WilsonÕs ideal community: living and doing research together as a Òvertically integrated communityÓ.
To this end, Dr. Tilghman said, ÒIt will be very interesting to see how Campus Club plays out – there was a recent CPUC meeting that included discussion of how to include graduate students.Ó She is also interested in how the graduate students-in-residence program will work out for the 4-year residential college system.
Dr. Tilghman said, ÒHaving said all that, graduate students are different from undergraduate students.Ó She stated that she believes that graduate students do not want to recreate their undergraduate lives, and the challenge is figuring out how to make graduate student life more productive.
The floor was then opened up for discussion and questions for President Tilghman.
Shin-Yi Lin asked Dr. Tilghman what she thought about the undergraduate negative perception of graduate students as teachers and mentors. Is it possible for undergraduates to sell the Princeton experience as an ÒandÓ scenario, because they have access to BOTH faculty and graduate student teachers. Tilghman reiterated that we should be talking about ÒandÓ, not Òeither/orÓ. The graduate studentÕs role in the teaching hierarchy is integral and critical. When the decision was made to have an undergraduate-only curriculum in performing arts, the faculty complained of no young role models, leading to the creation of fellows program. This would help fill the need for graduate student-like positions in the new curriculum.
Kevin Collins (POL) asked Dr. Tilghman about resources available to graduate students to attend conferences and workshops. Does she see this as a priority? Dr. Tilghman responded that this is important of course. Unfortunately, the financial structure of this kind of support varies from department to department because it arises as an accident of history (e.g., alumni providing investments in the form of gifts). Some departments have more money for this than they can reasonably spend, others donÕt. Political Science is one of the poorer departments [in that respect].
Dan Raburn (Press Secretary) asked Dr. Tilghman to comment on the apathy among graduate students to get involved in student government and asked for advice on how we can improve student involvement. Dr. Tilghman responded that this may be related to how graduate students have a different Òcenter of gravityÓ: graduate students are more focused around their departments. She joked that graduate student involvement seems to be large where students are being abused (for example, graduate student unions at peer institutions). ÒI take your apathy as a good thing.Ó Since the University maintains good relationships with the GSG and tries to take care of graduate student issues as they arise, perhaps there isnÕt a need for a high level of involvement.
Silvia Newell (Parliamentary Secretary) asked Dr. Tilghman whether she knew of any graduate student abuse in recent history, such as not faculty allowing their students graduate, or not crediting them for authorship. Dr. Tilghman responded that unlike many universities, we regulate the graduate program at the University level. As a result, Princeton students are protected somewhat from these kinds of abuses. She continued by stating that the Graduate School controls the number of graduate students admitted to the University. We do this because:
Regarding the UniversityÕs regulation of time-to-degree:
Stephanie Wang (ECO) remarked that putting this cap [on time to degree] may have adverse effects, such as reporting a shorter time to degree than their really is. Dr. Tilghman acknowledged this and responded – Òthere is no system that canÕt be gamedÓ.
Jenny He (Social Chair) asked Dr. Tilghman to expand on the importance of Annual Giving. Graduate alumni are historically less likely to give back to the University. How would she respond to this tendency and how would she go about educating graduate students about the purpose of Annual Giving? Dr. Tilghman responded that Annual Giving dollars are spent that same year and cannot come in with restrictions. As a result, the Provost has flexibility to allocate the funds to meet the highest needs of the University. The following are a few examples of Annual Giving achievements:
1. The Health Center has had a large increase in attendance especially in counseling for both undergrad and graduate students. In 3-4 years, U. was able to employ additional counselors immediately.
2. 1st year fellowships were possible because of alumni giving many, many years ago
3. Childcare benefits
Dr. Tilghman than said, ÒWhy give? Somebody contributed to the quality of your education. Now, itÕs your turn to make someone elseÕs [education] possibleÓ.
Returning to the time-to-degree issue, Clara Tuan (EAS) mentioned that faculty need to become aware of conflicting messages sent to students, such as the pushing to improve time to degree while at the same time pushing to supplement dissertations with coursework. Dr. Tilghman acknowledged this tension and mentioned that some departments are working at clarifying their goals. She is in favor of developing best practices across departments. For example, the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) of the Department of History has tried to solve a similar problem by reorganizing the post-generals timeline with a 6-week seminar for post-generals students to help them come up with dissertation proposals.
Neven Fuckar (AOS) asked whether the dental plan options available to faculty/staff would be available to graduate students. Dr. Tilghman said that she was not aware of the limitations or differences in dental plans.
Charles Butcosk (ART) asked whether Princeton has a plan for expanding DCE fellowships, aside from teaching assistantships, or teaching/writing fellowships. Dr. Tilghman said that she worries that teaching a whole class would get in the way. Charles pointed out that precepting five or six classes may be more work than teaching one lecture.
Susan Robinson (PSY)
commented that there is a common perception related to grad/undergrad
relation, about orthogonal choices made for career decisions intellectual vs.
financial reasons. Dr. Tilghman mentioned that our informal motto is Princeton
in the nationÕs service. ÒYou have a responsibility to go out in the world and
make it a better place, and I am
agnostic about how you make the world a better place.Ó She said that something that is not ok is for someone to go
out and lead a truly narcissistic life. She also isnÕt so worried about this
negative perception dissuading students from entering graduate studies because,
in her experience, the best undergraduate students are the ones pursuing
graduate studies. When the prizes are given to the students at the end of the
year – those students are going to graduate school.
Alex Ntelekos (Treasurer) told Dr. Tilghman that pushing for an improvement in the way graduate students are perceived at Princeton is priority for the current GSG Executive Committee. He asked for her support in our work this year towards that goal and also thanked her for all her efforts on behalf of graduate students.
IV. Officer Reports
A. ChairÕs Report
A direct quote from Shin-Yi Lin (Chair):
Exec has met once since the last Assembly meeting.
Dan is working on our Furniture Drive for early June.
Jenny is beginning to plan the summer GSG event; we are
working with Frist to coordinate an event sometime in June.
Bob and Dan have been working on finalizing the updates
to the online constitution and by-laws that we mentioned in April. We'd like to
thank Lior Silberman, Josh Friess, and Jack Tinsley for checking the text of
the changes.
Exec has been having discussions with administrators this
month on the following issues:
1) Firestone library -- Along with other Assembly
representatives, Bob and I met with Dottie Pearson, Associate University
Librarian for Administrative Services, to discuss the issues that Yaron brought
up in our May meeting.
2) Child care discussion -- Karin Sigloch, our Health and
Life Committee Chair, has been moderating discussions among Joan Girgus,
graduate student parents, and student spouses about the new child care program.
This is a continuation of the conversation at the February Assembly meeting.
Karin will be giving an update report in June.
3) Alumni relations -- Alex, Bob, Jenny and I met with
some graduate alumni, Carol Barash and Wil Wong, to discuss how to help
graduate students feel more connected to Princeton. Carol mentioned that the
next Alumni Council chair is a graduate alumni -- for the first time ever in
their history!
4) Campus Club -- The Campus Club working group recently
gave a report at the April CPUC meeting. This report outlined the current
working plans for Campus Club. The former undergraduate eating club is becoming
a new social space for both graduate and undergraduate students. There was an
open town hall meeting earlier today between the working group and graduate students.
We would like to thank Kellam Conover and Bart Bonikowski for their work on the
working group. This fall, we will be electing the representatives for the
Campus Club Advisory Board, who will continue the planning work in time for the
clubÕs opening in fall 2008.
At a recent Princeton Sustainability Committee, Jeff
Domanski (WWS) was elected as our new graduate student representative on the
committee during the 2007-2008 year. This committee is led by Shana Weber, the
UniversityÕs Sustainability Manager, and discusses various initiatives relating
to sustainable practices.
We would like to thank Karin Sigloch, Praveena de Joseph
Saram, Dante Ricci and Kohlia Sadeghi for their work with the APGA on the
Sciences Division Career Mixer in early May. This mixer turned out to be much
more successful than the earlier one for the Humanities in early March.
Shin-Yi Lin mentioned that there are several upcoming events and some still require volunteers:
She also wanted to promote the upcoming ÒPermeable boundariesÓ Reunions Career Conference organized by graduate alumni.
V. Decision Items
A. GSG Events Board/D-bar request
Representatives for the D-bar explained that the D-Bar is a
non-profit organization, and is currently running at a loss and is requesting
money from the GSG Events Board to help cover events. Alex Ntelekos explained the complications of the specific
case, in that explicit rules require that GSG funded events must be open to all
graduate students, but events at the D-Bar currently exclude four under-age
graduate students and all-non D-bar members, due to NJ state laws. Currently,
approximately 800 of ~2000 graduate students are members of the D-Bar. Non-members are permitted to attend
when signed in by a member. Dan
Raburn mentioned the possibility of a friendly amendment, to include all
events. A hand-vote approved the
eligibility of the D-Bar to request funds to organize events. This applies for one year only, where
requests made next year would need to be approved before the GSG (The motion to
approve passed with 19 yays, 2 nays, 3
abstains). Assembly also authorized
the Events Board to handle the
D-Bar requests directly.
B. CPUC Priorities Committee (Pri-Comm) Elections
At the April meeting, the graduate representatives to the CPUC were elected. However, there was an issue with the Priorities Committee election: At that time, both Jeff Dwoskin and Ryan Harper were present to run for the 2 seats we have on the Priorities Committee.
Unfortunately, Shin-Yi Lin (Chair) forgot to mention that Lachlyn Soper was also interested in running. Lachlyn had sent a statement to the gsg@ email but was unable to attend the meeting. So, we had planned to re-run the election at the May meeting. However, prior to the May Assembly meeting, Lachlyn Soper (WWS) emailed to say that she withdrew from the Priorities Committee election. Therefore, the previous election results stand: Jeff Dwoskin and Ryan Harper are the graduate student representatives to the Priorities Committee.
VI. Discussion
Items
A. DCE
Discussion
Second- year DCE students are ineligible for certain university fellowships, including renewal of fellowships obtained the year before. This was initially brought up at an earlier GSG Assembly meeting by students in the departments of Art and Archaeology and Sociology.
Anecdotal evidence includes:
Possible recommendations include:
1. Extending eligibility of fellowships to all years of DCE
2. Shin-Yi Lin suggested the need for a greater transparency of information on eligibility for fellowships
3. Stephanie Wang (ECO) suggested making these fellowships eligible to all students, and allowing the selection committee to factor in DCE status in the application process
[Minutes did not note when the meeting was adjourned.]
Minutes completed by Marina Paul.
Minutes approved on Wednesday 9/19/07 at Assembly meeting.