• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

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GSC Agenda: December 5, 2007, 6:00-8:00pm - FOOD @ 5:45!
Graduate Community Center - Nairobi Room
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1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Anwei!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions (Kristina)
3) 6:05 Announcements (Kristina)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Approve minutes from the last meeting (11/28/07) with the following change:
Add Maxim to the attendance
4) 6:10 Funding (Polina)
i. Comedy Club
5) 6:18 GSC Social Dinner (Melahn)
6) 6:22 ASSU Update (Hershey)
7) 6:25 GCC Operations Committee Update (Justin)
8) 6:30pm Meet the VPGE office (Patti Gumport)
9) 7:00pm Cupertino Shuttle Update (Song)
10) 7:10 New Engineering Representative Needed
11) 7:15 New Business

Attendance

Voting members present:
At large 1: Maxim Afanasyev
At large 2: Hanna Muenke
At large 3: Kristina Keating
At large 4: Zeng Fan (proxy Anwei Chai present)
At large 5: Lan Wei
Business: Rhyan Uy (proxy Polina Segalova present)
Earth Sciences: Kyle Anderson (proxy Justin Brown present)
Engineering 1: Melahn Parker
Humanities: George Bloom
Medicine: Yana Hoy
Natural Sciences: Fen Zhao
Social Sciences: Euan Robertson
Education: Michelle Brown


Voting members not present:
Engineering 2: Marja Mullings
Law: Shireen Barday

Others in attendance: Donna Winston, Adam Beberg, Jon Gretarsson, Song Li, Yan Yan, Ina Shen, Cullen Buie and other members of the Diversity Steering Committee

Minutes

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Anwei!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions (Kristina)

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3) 6:02 Announcements (Kristina)

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i. Please be aware that all meetings are recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Minutes from the last meeting (11/28/07) are approved by consensus with the following change: Add Maxim to the attendance.
iii. Melahn interested in organizing a GSC dinner as a casual social event. A show of hands indicates that people are currently busy and would prefer to have this event next quarter instead.
iv. Will be signing Holiday cards for people, and testing out Promotional Item pens while we’re at it. These will be passed around the room during the meeting.

4) 6:07 Funding (Polina)

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i. Comedy Club. Here to request funding for the rest of the year.
This quarter, membership numbers of the Comedy Club were reevaluated, by means of an online survey as well as Polina attending some shows. Numbers based on the survey were comparable to actual attendance. Based on these new higher attendance numbers, an estimate of 275 people, Comedy Club can be considered for more money, and their current request puts them essentially at the GSC cap for student groups.
Primary points of our our discussion are as follows:
- Kristina wonders about the verifiability of the names on the survey, and whether they’re all graduate students at Stanford.
- Discussion about the recent hypnotist event, which we had agreed to fund separately because it was not specifically a Comedy Club event, yet in actual practice, including advertising on flyers and at the show, it seemed like it was being billed as such. If it was a Comedy Club event, then money should come from within their budget, which would necessarily lower their request today, since that would put them over the cap. However, it is ultimately resolved that we should have been more clear prior to awarding the additional money for the show how it would be billed and advertised, but since we gave the money as a separate amount, it should not be counted against the current request.
- Adam reports that Comedy Club has been through greater scrutiny than other groups because of their connection to the GSC. Polina is also comfortable with the current budget request.
- Justin asks about whether Comedy Club has looked into funds from Undergrads. They have, but it would need to be a different type of event, held in undergrad territory and alcohol free, so any money from Undergrads would lead to other events, rather than money going towards the Tuesday comedy nights at the 750.
- Kristina wonders why they are asking for more money for the remaining two quarters than they originally requested (in last year’s special fees vote) for the entire year. Seems to just be as a result of not having enough details together last year about costs and about the special fees process.
Funding Committee recommends $5320. There is not consensus, so we move to a vote.
6 for, 2 opposed, 5 abstaining.
Giving $5320 passes by consensus.

5) 6:24 ASSU Update (Hershey) –

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- Lots of positive articles in the Daily today about good things the ASSU is doing or has done.
- There were 591 students on the ASSU Thanksgiving Shuttle, which was 88% of capacity. Hershey is still looking for numbers of grad/undergrad riders, but egroups is making it difficult to check that. However, seems that at least 30% were grad students. Thinking about expanding service during peak hours in future, including for Winter break. Wanted to ask us for funding later, but we do not fund retroactively. More on this in New Business.
- Row block/Big Party went well. Went beyond capacity around midnight, despite the fact that five houses participated.
- Courserank.stanford.edu will be the ASSU version of Axess for ranking classes.

6) 6:31 Meet the VPGE office (Patti Gumport)

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Patti coordinates with various offices to work on broader problems for graduate education. The VPGE is a cabinet level position, meaning that she interacts frequently with upper level administrators. There was a University report in 2005, which basically became Patti’s job description when she started in January 2007. Her background is in studying higher education, which she has done since the 1980s, making her well suited for the job. Started with the goals of building on strengths (academic excellence and innovation & collaboration), and creating new practices (interdisciplinarity, leadership roles, diversity). Patti’s three developed priorities are to advance diversity, support innovation, and assist in problem solving.

Big picture for grad education – from 1985-2007 Stanford has become both more selective and more popular, with the number of applicants up to 58%, the admit rate decreased to 13%, and the yield rate up to 55%. Back in 1985, there were equal numbers of grads and undergrads, but the number of graduate students has increased since then (mostly Masters and PhD students, not professional) while the number of undergrads has stayed relatively constant. There are general problems with decentralization as things expand, and this is one area the VPGE is addressing.

There is a definite pipeline problem, both for women and underrepresented minorities (URM). Stanford is in the top 10 of schools in terms of numbers of PhDs granted, and seems to be at the lower end of percentage of women graduating, though seems to be roughly equivalent to the other 9 large schools for percentage of degrees for URM. There is a similar comparison among our peer institutions, with about the same standing. Percentages of admit and yield rates are about equal for men and women, though fewer women apply, leading to lesser numbers admitted.

Although grad student numbers have increased from 1995-2007, the percentage of URM has decreased. Undergrads are doing better with this, increasing the percentage of URM although class size has remained constant. There seems to be a good match between diversity in the applicant pool and diversity of the class accepted, so increasing the number of applications to grad programs from URM could help. In absolute numbers, the number of URM students graduating with PhDs each year is small, indicative of the fact that any increase in URM is a very good thing. The relatively low graduation numbers for URM each year is not reflective of those of URM being more likely to drop out than other students. There is perhaps a small effect of URM taking longer to complete the degree, but the clearer problem is just the low numbers of URM applying each year.

The VPGE is working on a number of efforts to increase the number of URM in graduate programs at Stanford. There is a Graduate Diversity Steering Committee group, including Cullen, which has been working with the VPGE to address this concern. Current initiatives include:
- Commitment to diversity, broadly defined.
- Recruitment, by adding to school initiatives for campus visits (STANDOUT and G-RADD) for URM.
- Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE) Graduate Fellowships were announced last spring, and are starting this winter. Is a three year fellowship for new students, to be used as a recruitment tool.
- For retention, are working on getting funds to support student groups & departments, dissertation research funds, bridge funds for science and engineering to fund some time before matching-up with lab and the grant funds with that.

A new program is the DARE Fellowship program (have handout for this that will be posted at some point). DARE stands for Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence.
- Competitive two-year dissertation fellowships
- Commitment to diversity broadly defined
- cultivate skills, confidence, mentoring networks (preparing for academic careers).
- diversify the pipeline (prepare as future faculty, mentoring by senior faculty, promote diversity)
- Big new idea is to have acting assistant professorship positions, which would be one year paid positions to continue research, teaching, mentoring here at Stanford prior to getting a job elsewhere. Expecting to offer four of these positions each year.


VPGE Support and Problem Solving: Interdisciplinary
- Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowships Program (SIGF). Will be application based, three year full support.
- Stanford Graduate Summer Institute. 1 week interdisciplinary, no cost, courses for grad students (sgsi.stanford.edu). Held in the 3rd week in September, just before classes start. Had 400 students interested last year, 200 selected.
- Outward-facing courses which are courses within a department specifically geared towards students in other departments.
- Workshops for communications and leadership skills. Previously had IWrite, a workshop focusing on “elevator pitch” and may continue funding some of these through the Center for Teaching and Learning, which has more background and manpower to implement this.

VPGE Support and problem solving: Graduate Programs.
- Senate’s Committee on Graduate Studies
- Faculty Directors of Graduate Studies. Faculty from across the university who oversee graduate studies in their departments, haven’t been brought together before.
- Strengthening the CORE (SCORE) innovation funds. Have a lot of funds available to support investigation into possible changes to graduate training.
- Student Programs for Intellectual Community Enhancement (SPICE). Anything that promotes intellectual community in department, such as talks, etc.
- Tuition shortfalls (i.e. NIH training grants, NSF graduate fellowships) because some grants aren’t covering as much as tuition actually costs, so department has a problem making up the difference. Looking to have other sources step in to help departments with that.

The VPGE office is in building 310, and also have a website, vpge.stanford.edu. Everyone is encouraged to give feedback or ideas.

7) 7:18 GCC Operations Committee Update (Justin)

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The GCC Operations Committee is a group discussing the GCC building and the events that go on here. The group consists of Housing deans, Residential and Dining Enterprises, and a GSC member (Justin). They meet every other week, to talk about the use of rooms, 750 pub, etc. The biggest problem is that there is no budget for building maintenance, because this was not part of the proposal when the building was built. Housing has already submitted their budget for next year, which does not include a budget for the GCC, so 09-10 academic year would be first possibility of having a specific budget for it. As has been the case, and will continue to be so, any changes that require funding need to go through an approval process that ends in funding being found elsewhere, but this takes a long time and requests for changes aren’t always funded or approved. For example, the stage lights that we approved money for some meetings back can’t just be installed because it has to be approved by various sources. In general, if you had ideas, comments or questions regarding the GCC, you should let Justin know.

8) 7:28pm Cupertino Shuttle Update (Song)

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The shuttle has been running, though they needed to cancel the stop at the Indian food store because could not get permit despite much effort with the store itself and with the India Association on campus. Have put the schedule on the P+T website, sent out promotions to many groups who might be interested in using it, including information posted at the I-Center. Got some email feedback from people who wished they had known about the shuttle earlier, which apparently they hadn’t despite previous efforts at advertising. We had heard previously that ridership was 10 people, which has now been clarified to be per day, rather than per ride. However, not sure whether the P+T estimate is the best indicator, because other sources thought it was higher. There have been complaints about the service, including that P+T forgot an entire day once (which has been refunded), and that drivers sometimes miss a stop, both on-campus and at the stores. While P+T is aware of these issues and has been responsive, it would be better if they just got it right, and this unreliable service might be part of the reason for low ridership, if people tried it and had a bad experience. Justin volunteers to ride the bus this weekend and take a count of people and also make observations about the service.

GSC had agreed to fund the shuttle this quarter, with the expectation of seeing changes like an increased ridership, and also with the goal of finding other pots of money, neither of which has happened. Kristina suggests checking in again with the GLO (Chris and Ken), because it’s possible that them considering funding might have gotten lost in the transition. Because of the skipped weekend earlier in the quarter, there seems to be a chance to keep the shuttle going into the first part of next quarter, perhaps providing a little more time to find other sources of funding, but the GSC is unlikely to give additional funding to this endeavor.

9) 7:42 New Engineering Representative Needed

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Marja is too busy to continue participating in GSC and is stepping down from her Engineering seat. Zeng is currently an At Large rep, and had the second highest vote total for students in Engineering in the last election, so she will take the Engineering seat, and Polina, who was next in vote totals, will fill the At Large seat. We’ll do official voting and swearing in at the next meeting when Zeng can be there.

10) 7:45 New Business

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i. During the ASSU update, Hershey mentioned that he would later ask us for some money to support the increased number of busses for the winter break ASSU shuttle, and we told him then that this was our last meeting before break, and that we do not approve money retroactively, so he would need to ask during new business. Hershey was unable to stay till this point in the meeting, but sends an email detailing his request instead. Kristina comments that in the future, she would like to see a change to the bylaws, such that anyone requesting money must do so as part of a previously submitted agenda item specifically for the request, but this is a discussion for another time. We decide not to vote on the request for funding primarily because giving the ASSU shuttle any money would not be approved until January (because money is not officially approved until the minutes from the meeting are), which would be past the event, and thus retroactive.

ii. Yana went to GHAC (housing) meeting recently, and they talked about gender neutral housing. It’s clear that housing is a complicated process, but they are interested in working on this issues, so it might happen. If you would like Yana to bring up anything at housing meetings, let her know.