From owner-info@gso.bu.edu Fri Sep 11 17:42 EDT 1998 Received: from gso.bu.edu (GSO.BU.EDU [128.197.60.71]) by cs.bu.edu ((8.8.8.buoit.b4)/8.8.8/(BU-S-06/23/98-b7)) with ESMTP id RAA08996; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:42:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from majordom@localhost) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) id RAA17569 for info-list; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:41:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from cs.bu.edu (root@CS.BU.EDU [128.197.10.2]) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) with ESMTP id RAA17565 for ; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:41:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from cs16.bu.edu (rip@cs16 [128.197.10.115]) by cs.bu.edu ((8.8.8.buoit.b4)/8.8.8/(BU-S-06/23/98-b7)) with ESMTP id RAA08962 for ; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:41:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Pitts Received: by cs16.bu.edu (8.8.5/Spike-2.1) id RAA07777; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:41:27 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:41:27 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199809112141.RAA07777@cs16.bu.edu> To: info@gso.bu.edu Subject: GSO - summary of Thu, Sep 10, 98 meeting Sender: owner-info@gso.bu.edu Precedence: bulk Content-Type: text Content-Length: 4934 Status: RO Here is a summary of what we did at yesterday's Graduate Student Organization meeting. Our next meeting will be on Thu, Sep 24 at 6pm. --Rob Summary ======= 1. Orientation Based on those at the meeting, students felt orientation went quite well. Nonetheless, we didn't end up needing as many volunteers (or restaurants) for dinner as we had originally planned. Some new students commented that they liked the idea of nametags, the packets of information sent from GRS, and going to restaurants. They weren't sure how useful the information fair was. Via e-mail, someone suggested having dept reps there (perhaps a goal for a future orientation when most depts have such a thing). We plan to provide a new grad student orientation each year. 2. Survey Gareth Roberts briefly presented some results from the Spring 1998 Survey of grad student interests and concerns (see our web page, http://gso.bu.edu, for a complete summary). Not present in the web page summary are the following comments: - Based on students answers, we learned something about how to improve the questions for a future survey. - Often, the reason that TA's work less than RA's is because they have both a TA and research workload, so hours spent at teaching does not reflect the total time they spend (i.e., on teaching AND their research). - Some would like us to (in the future) make a note of those that teach classes on their own and those that teach as "assistants" (e.g., for labs or discussions). It is not clear if we will do another survey this year, but most likely some time in the future. We'll probably not address the issue of a survey again until the Spring semester. 3. Issues/Projects Below are the projects we discussed at this meeting (whether we can take these on will depend on whether we have volunteers for each). The projects are in no particular order. Library Privileges We have pursued the issue of non-fellow students having worse library borrowing privileges than fellows. Apparently, the policy is going to be changed (so that all grads have the "better" privileges). We'll update you as we learn more about the policy change. Social Events - Pub Nights - Movie Night(s)?: 2 possibilities for this: we can pursue a movie night with free movie and food to be sponsored by Student Advantage and Cablevision (this was something we had discussed last semester) and/or we could have movie showings for grads in some campus location, organized by students. - Intramural Sports?: bowling, soccer, frisbee. - Talks: Chickering (BU Insurance), teaching issues?, unions?, race/gender?, international student issues (e.g., visas)?, other grad orgs. Grad Student Lounge We are currently in the process of obtaining a lounge for grad students. This will likely be where we hold future meetings and talks. Details about the location will be given when they are settled. We'd also like to set up a bulletin board in the lounge and a library of various documents that the GSO has acquired (relevant to grads). Formalizing Group We need to start thinking more about a constitution, officers/ dept reps, and what kind of relationship we want to have with the university. Student Funding We'd like to pursue the issue of the disparity in pay between the Humanities and Sciences. This may also include Humanities having less opportunities for summer funding. We'd also like to pursue: - Cost of Living increases. - The possibility of healthcare plans being part of funding packages. - Improving information about sources of funding (or other income opportunities). Teaching Issues - Lack of training in many depts. - Unregulated hours, workloads. - What's happening to tenure. Healthcare - Other healthcare options for grads. - Ways to improve our own plan (e.g., can we continue coverage after we graduate?) National Assoc. of Graduate - Professional Students (NAGPS) - Will we participate in their November National Conference (in Braintree)? - Will we become members of the NAGPS (giving benefits to our group and grads in GRS)? Labor Rights Will we continue to research the labor rights of students? Housing Improvements to housing information available to grad students. 4. Committees The committees that we will retain from last year are: Social Healthcare The new committees are: Liaison Steering Funding (since funding was ranked a #1 issue on the 1998 survey) A description of each of these committees will be sent in a separate e-mail.