From owner-info@gso.bu.edu Mon Nov 29 14:07 EST 1999 Received: from gso.bu.edu (GSO.BU.EDU [128.197.60.71]) by cs.bu.edu (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8/(BU-S-10/16/98-v1.0a)) with ESMTP id OAA00062; Mon, 29 Nov 1999 14:07:32 -0500 (EST) Received: (from majordom@localhost) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) id OAA09448 for info-list; Mon, 29 Nov 1999 14:07:24 -0500 (EST) Received: from bu.edu (BU.EDU [128.197.27.7]) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) with ESMTP id OAA09444 for ; Mon, 29 Nov 1999 14:07:18 -0500 (EST) Received: from bu.edu (GOLANT.BU.EDU [128.197.73.78]) by bu.edu ((8.9.3.buoit.v1.0)/8.8.5/(BU-RELAY-07/09/97-b1)) with ESMTP id OAA12006 for ; Mon, 29 Nov 1999 14:07:19 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3842DCBA.3B231819@bu.edu> Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 14:06:19 -0600 From: Ann Walker Organization: Boston University Center for Space Physics X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: info@gso.bu.edu Subject: minutes of the November 18th meeting Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-info@gso.bu.edu Precedence: bulk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Length: 5204 Status: OR Organized according to committee reports: Healthcare FAR Liaison Publicity & a note about our plans for the December meeting. Healthcare Committee ==================== - In October, the Healthcare Committee completed the National Assoc. of Graduate - Professional Student's (NAGPS) health insurance survey, filling in information about BU's student insurance plan and campus health services. The Healthcare Committee contributed to this survey's creation earlier in the year. - NAGPS has collected some basic statistics from the 24 institutions that have answered the survey so far (more statistics will come from the NAGPS in the future). Some interesting statistics are (percentages and fractions are out of the number of institutions that responded to a particular question, list as N below): - BU's premium of $576 is lower than the average of $644.25 (N=24). BU's premium for spouses is also lower than average (N=19). (This does not take into account how our "coverage" compares to the other plans.) - 1/3 of institutions subsidize at least part of the premium for some subset of graduate students (N=18). - 1/4 of institutions don't require grads to purchase insurance, i.e., neither the state nor the institution mandates this (N=24). - 61% of institutions have fees for using student health services, including BU, whose fee is comparatively low (N=23). - 43% have domestic partner coverage available (N=21). - Healthcare Committee members have been assigned to update Healthcare Pages (http://gso.bu.edu/healthcare) write-ups of: - MassHealth - Healthnet FAR Committee ================= - How to improve the experience of Teaching Fellows at BU The planned expansion of orientation programs (sponsored by the GRS) for new Teaching Fellows was discussed. Also, the possibility of using the class that TF's take (#699) to help them be better teachers was brought up. At the departmental level, we should encourage the use of this class as something more than another course TF's sign up for each semester. Liaison Committee ================= The following information comes from a meeting with Andrea White (assistant to Assoc. Dean Whitaker) on November 17, 1999: - GRS is still planning a mandatory end-of-summer orientation for all new students arriving as Teaching Fellows next Fall. Int'l TFs will arrive first (tentatively, August 22) and go through the same kinds of language evaluation given at last year's orientation. Domestic TFs will arrive later (date not yet determined) when joint International/Domestic TF training (like "practice teaching") and events will begin. The program will run until the tentative date of August 31. GRS is currently looking for accommodations for the expected number of students. - Andrea suggested we take advantage of each dept's "graduate student orientation" as another means to introduce students to the GSO. This may be possible as we acquire dept reps for each dept/program. - Andrea still has not done a survey of grad stipends at other local schools (she has said that if she does one, she'd ask the dean whether she could share those statistics with the GSO). - Andrea stated that information on "what other schools have" can be useful in arguing for certain resources with the administration. In the context of acquiring a reasonable grad student/GSO lounge, our liaison acquired some information about what "space" grads/grad orgs at other local schools have this past summer--we should use this information when the lounge issue is revisited. - GRS will allow us to place a flyer in mailings to new Spring grads and/or the packets they receive when they arrive. We will prepare something with information about the resources available at our web site for that purpose. Library Privileges ------------------ As of the meeting, Assoc. Dean Whitaker had not responded to an e-mail sent on November 12th inquiring about the state of his efforts to discuss library privilege improvements for grads with the library administration. Andrea White could not provide any information on that state. To this end, what to do as a next step was discussed during this general GSO meeting. The consensus at the meeting was for the liaison to send one more request (as a paper letter) expressing students' concerns about how that process is proceeding and then to give Whitaker the rest of the semester before taking additional action. Publicity Committee =================== The system administrator for our GSO server (gso.bu.edu), Dave Morgan , asked whether any students knew of a machine the GSO could use to replace its server. Recently, the machine the GSO uses, a machine lent to the GSO from Math, was down because that dept used it to temporarily replace an ailing Math machine. To avoid problems like this in the future, the GSO is looking for a machine that can be dedicated solely to act as our server. Such a machine could be an old 486, Sun Workstation, etc. that either a dept or individual is willing to donate. December ======== We will elect officers at the December meeting.