Posts Tagged ‘Minutes’

GSC Meeting 2010-06-30

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Agenda

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GSC Agenda: June 30th, 6:30-7:30pm – FOOD @ 6:15!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
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1. 6:15 FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2. 6:30 Welcome with Introductions
3. 6:32 Announcements (Justin/Jess)
i. Minutes from 06/02/2010
ii. Proxies of the week: Charles Feng for Salvador Zepeda, Robert Hennessy for Praveen Shanbhag, Ze Yuan for Addy Satija, and Xiaojiang (Jack) Guo for Yichuan Ding.
iii. Reminder that meetings are recorded.
4. 6:35 Funding (Krystal)
5. 6:40 UNAFF Film Festival
5. 6:45 pm – ASSU Update (Kelsei/Angelina)
6. 6:50 pm – July 4th BBQ
7. 7:00 pm – GSC Sound System Discussion (Krystal)
8. 7:10 pm – Academic Advocacy Committee Update (Erik)
9. 7:15 pm New Business (All)

Attendance

Voting Members present:
Earth Sciences – Justin Brown
Education – Imeh Williams (proxy Fanuel Muindi present)
Engineering – Drew Kennedy
H&S – Natural Sciences – Erik Lehnert
H&S – Soc Sci – Salvador Zepeda (proxy Charles Feng present)
H&S Humanities – Praveen Shanbhag (proxy Robert Hennessy present)
Medicine – Jessica Tsai
Law – Evan Berquist (proxy Amy Askin present)
Engineering – Joanna Lankester
At-large – Tao Chu (proxy Roxy Du present)
At-large – Addy Saditya (proxy Ze Yuan present)
At-large – Krystal St. Julien
At-large – Yichuan Ding (proxy Jack Guo present)
At-large – Crystal Yin

Non-voting members present:
Ryan Peacock – ASSU Exec. Cabinet
Angelina Cardona – ASSU Executive
Michael Cruz – ASSU Senate Chair
Deepa Galaiya – VP of SMSA
Jasmina Bojic – UNAFF
Raj Bhadari – SSE

Absent:
Business – Ping Li

Minutes

Listen to this segment

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: June 30th, 6:30-7:30pm – FOOD @ 6:15!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************

1. 6:15 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2. 6:30 Welcome with Introductions

3. 6:32 Announcements (Justin/Jess)
i. Minutes from 06/02/2010
ii. Proxies of the week: Charles Feng for Salvador Zepeda, Robert Hennessy for Praveen Shanbhag, Ze Yuan for Addy Satija, Ruo Du for Tao, Amy Askin for Evan Berquist, Xiaojiang (Jack) Guo for Yichuan Ding, and Fanuel Muindi for Imeh Williams.
iii. Reminder that meetings are recorded.

4. 6:35 pm – July 4th BBQ – Joanna – It is coming up. There will be pulled pork, veggie and meat options, beer from Devil’s Canyon. A root beer keg, snow cones, kiddy pool, water guns and balloons. We tried to make this kid friendly for the grad students with kids. Please advertise using the facebook group and invite your friends. Still need help with buying from Costco. Angelina and Erik will volunteer. If anyone wants to help on Sunday morning with setup, we would really appreciate it. Drew Kennedy will help out. Finally, we only have three people signed for clean-up. Can anyone volunteer? Krystal St. Julien volunteers. If anyone wants to help out cooking pork, please contact Ryan Peacock. Finally, I will send out a to-do list that will be super-detailed. Please don’t take it as micro-managing, I just don’t want to forget things. Programming in general in the future, any people who will not be at the event need to e-mail me, not just tell me or assume I will know. People who need to sign up are Praveen, Tao, and Evan and may be asked to do extra shifts at Welcome back.

5. 6:41 pm – Funding (Krystal) – GradQ is Stanford’s LGBT graduate and professional organization. We do outreach and social gatherings to reach out to these populations. The first event is for $100 for an ordinary happy hour. The second is for a BBQ at Willis, $350. Funding committee recommends $450. Joanna – Do we have this money? Erik – This is for the next fiscal year. Passes by consensus.

6. UNAFF Film Festival – Jasmina – I am teaching a course that involves a film festival for international documentary films. We are reviewing 600 documentaries from around the world and will have ~60 screenings in October. We would like to ask for your support, last year we got $1500, and we would like the same amount or $2000 if possible. This is used to advertise at Stanford and do outreach. Some groups would like us to be more active, such as doing screenings throughout the year. The theme for the festival is Population, Immigration, and Migration. Erik: Can you give some examples of how the money is spent throughout the year? Jasmina: We pay the student who is putting things in the database and contacting groups, as well as hosting film-making events. Raj – I went to seven showings last year and really enjoyed this. I would suggest working with SSE on this since someone might be interested in helping to market to groups on campus. Jasmina: The event is also free to all graduate students on campus when you give us money. Raj: Do you have data on how many grad students end up going? Jasmina: It’s a lot. We probably got 500-600 for the whole festival. Joanna – How many films will be on campus? Jasmina: Of 50 films, 35 or so were at Stanford. And many were at Palo Alto. Joanna: I’d like to see a break-down for money to help us make a decision. Jasmina – That’s great – 75% for the student and 25% for materials. The ticket is $10 per session. Joanna – I’d like to see the amount you need, rather than a percentage. Ryan – A couple of important things. This is a non-profit, they will take as much as they can, so asking for a budget is strange because they will just adapt based on their other contributions. Last year we spent money just to fund a person, but I think we should value this based on how much the tickets are worth for grad students. Robert: This person will work on publicity on and off campus? Jasmina: No, just on campus. It’s a student of mine. Robert: How many hours in total would this person work? Jasmina: 10 hours a week for 8 weeks. Crystal – I am a publicity person, this is a great event. How did you publicize it last year and how are you going to do it this year? Jasmina: We use websites and student groups. We would love to have people help out on the advisory committee. Krystal: I think we should just say we’re going to give you X amount of money on the condition that we see how the money is spent. Erik: If you can just send out an e-mail, we can possibly advertise to people to get grad students more involved. Jasmina: We would love that. Jess: UNAFF funding for $1500 from Programming Discretionary passes by consensus.

7:02 pm – 9 minute break

7. 7:11 pm – ASSU update – Angelina – First, this is Deepa, VP of SMSA. One of the things I’m working on with health services on sexual health to go out on Oct. 15th. This will help us gather data for training. I’m also working on RA training. We’re going to hear back on the green dorm building soon. We had the trustee meeting this spring, and we encourage people to go to those in the future. I’m creating a survey for Ditch that Dumpster volunteer so that it runs more smoothly. I’m also meeting with a lot of admins to develop contacts. Erik: What are your plans for follow-up on the sexual health survey. Angelina – We might not do a survey, but we are going to have a taskforce to evaluate things long term.

8. 7:11 pm – GSC Sound System Discussion (Krystal) – GSPB had an event last week, but we had a crappy sound system. We are missing a ton of essential cords. It was like that when Ze started on the job. We should get a new sound system.
Ze – We may want to consider accessories as well, like a stand for a screen or a microphone. I’m not saying we need them, but they might be nice.
Krystal – We should have a sign-out for all the items.
Jess – Let’s talk about this off-line, so we can get an idea of how much we’re going to spend and if we can sell the old one.
Krystal – Do people want to replace the wiring or just buy a new one?
Justin – Ze can give us an idea of what we need.

9. 7:10 pm – Academic Advocacy Committee Update (Erik) – Talked to CTL about TA program (where we were directed by the VPGE). CTL basically said go talk to the VPGE. It sounds like the school Deans are the people to go to for this. I’m planning to talk to them about a TA academic review program, hopefully getting this rolling later in July. While talking to them – and I’ve already talked some with Fanuel about this – I was thinking that we could bring up the issue of diversity maintenance throughout quals and PhD, see if this was being tracked in the schools. Is anyone else interested in being involved in this? Jess, Joanna, Ryan, Fanuel volunteer. Amy Askin – What is the end goal of the TA initiative? Erik – We’re open to a lot of different suggestions, but I’m leaning towards something like course review run by the dean or the VPGE. It would ask basic questions about how many hours required to work, basic management. It would give TAs a way to give feedback to someone who was not in their department. It can also be a way of encouraging departments to adopt best practices. Amy – How can you protect people’s anonymity? And will the Deans do anything anyway? Erik – It will be difficult to completely protect anonymity – hopefully the results can be held for a couple of years so it’s harder to pin-point. But also, it is the Deans’ prerogative and job to tell professors to toe the line on things like this. Amy Askin – It might be more effective to get exit interviews, when students are less afraid about retaliation. Erik – I’d really like to figure out a way of getting info from students. I’d like to have a forum after one of our meetings when we’re doing outreach. Angelina – ASSU execs could send out survey monkey as well.

10. 7:35 pm New Business (All)
Crystal – For the outreach discussion, we will put publicity for the GSC at the bottom of grad-events and the GSC mailing list. Also, please work with departments for how to do outreach within the department.
Joanna – Transportation – We’ve talked about this, but I want to make sure that everyone is aware that the parking at Vaden situation is that there is only 75 minute patient parking that requires a permit. This is a problem for students that live off-campus and typically bike in, but may need to drive for medical reasons. I will be working on this next week – Ryan and Jess are involved, but if anyone else wants to get involved. Also, please let me know who should be involved in the e-mail.
Angelina – Could you get a printable parking pass when you get your confirmation e-mail?
Robert – They are looking for another NGSO coordinator, so if anyone is interested please let me know.
Justin – Couple of things – we are starting to organize our fall retreat. It will probably be around Halloween. Secondly, Xi and I started working on the web site. Please check it out and give feedback.
Raj – Matt is leaving today, so please congratulate him for all the work he’s done. We’re going through auditing now, we have our store – construction is starting winter quarter. SSE is moving over to software-as-a-service solution which is faster. I talked to Garret – who wanted $20-30k. We’re going to ID departments who want to help pay.
Adjourned 7:45

GSC Meeting 2010-06-02

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Agenda

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GSC Agenda: June 2nd, 6:00-7:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
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1. 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2. 6:00 Welcome with Introductions
3. 6:02 Announcements (Justin/Jess)
i. Minutes from 5/26/2010
ii. Proxies of the week: Ryan Peacock for Ping Li, Xi Cheng for Crystal Yin, and Ze Yuan for Addy Satija
iii. Reminder that meetings are recorded.
4. 6:05 Funding (Krystal)
i. Stanford German Student Association
5. 6:10 pm – ASSU Update (Kelsei/Angelina) – Cabinet positions
6. 6:20 pm – Transportation Advocacy Update (Joanna and Imeh)
7. 6:25 pm – Programming update (Joanna and Addy)
8. 6:30 pm – Stipends Advocacy Chair Selection (Justin and Jess)
8. 6:35 pm – Retreat Review (All)
9. 6:50 pm New Business (All)

Attendance

Voting Members present:
Business – Ping Li (proxy Ryan Peacock present)
Earth Sciences – Justin Brown
Education – Imeh Williams
Engineering – Tao Chu
H&S – Natural Sciences – Erik Lehnert
H&S – Soc Sci – Salvador Zepeda
H&S Humanities – Praveen Shanbhag
Medicine – Jessica Tsai
Law – Evan Berquist (proxy Robert Hennessy present)
Engineering – Joanna Lankester
At-large – Addy Saditya (proxy Adam Beberg present)
At-large – Krystal St. Julien
At-large – Yichuan Ding
At-large – Crystal Yin (proxy Xi Cheng present)

Non-voting members present:
Brianna Pang – Daily
Vivian Wong – ASSU Exec. Cabinet
Viviana Ania – ASSU Exec. Cabinet
Michael Cruz – ASSU Senate Chair
Taylor Winfield – ASSU Exec. Cabinet
Raj Bhadari – SSE

Minutes

Listen to this segment

ASSU Executive Cabinet Confirmation Bill
ASSU Executive Stipend Summary Bill
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GSC Agenda: June 2nd, 6:00-7:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
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1. 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2. 6:00 Welcome with Introductions
3. 6:02 Announcements (Justin/Jess)
i. Minutes from 5/26/2010
ii. Proxies of the week: Ryan Peacock for Ping Li, Xi Cheng for Crystal Yin, Adam Beeberg for Addy Satija, Robert Hennessy for Evan Berquist, and Fanuel Muindi for Praveen Shanbag
iii. Reminder that meetings are recorded.
4. 6:04 Funding (Krystal)
i. Stanford German Student Association – Not issuing funding from VSO funding source, but will ask for money from programming discretionary. Running two World Cup soccer games – mostly attended by international graduate students and soccer fans. Secured Bechtel funds for breakfasts all the games, but would like some funding for two special events on the 13th and 23rd of June, all hosted at Bechtel at 11:30 am. Asking for $200 for each of two events – total $400.
Justin – This would be for FY10, Jess states we have $15,000 in programming discretion. Passes by consensus.

5. 6:11 pm – ASSU Update (Kelsei/Angelina) – Cabinet positions
Angelina: We’re going to talk about cabinet positions, but first we’re doing a rejuvenation day.

Rejuvenation day is tomorrow. We have a lot of things planned, massages, comedy at the CoHo, yoga, etc… are planned. We are interested in getting a grad event together as well either tomorrow or Friday.

Angelina: We have made progress on the calendar. We can send you guys the minutes from that. We sent out the ASSU update recently, including info on “Ditch the Dumpster”. We are trying to set up with the meetings with the board of trustees shortly that we will be sending info out on shortly.

Krystal: We should do something that lets us put it in grad events, so maybe next week.

Jess: How about Thursday? (general agreement)

Angelina: Regarding cabinet bill, there have been changes to the bill from last week including descriptions of jobs and their plans for their year.

Joanna – I have a question for Viviana (Chair of Women Issues) – Can you talk about your goals for women’s issues, especially regarding graduate women?

Viviana: Going to focus on two things. 1) Try to get support for programs to prevent relationship and sexual abuse. While Stanford seems to be good about dealing with the aftermath, they are very bad about prevention. I want to focus on prevention training. 2) I want to make sure we sponsor programming to give training for on-campus and post-campus life (working and pregnancy, job issues, etc…). 3) I want to work with Vaden to help get more outreach on international women for education, because a lot of them are not aware of the resources on campus.

Erik: What populations are you going to focus on regarding preventing relationship and sexual abuse?

Viviana: Largely freshmen and the Greek system, where there is a culture that we need to try to change regarding women. We’re not expecting miracles, but we can make a start.

Fanuel: Can Tenzin (Diversity Chair) talk about her plans for diversity?

Tenzin – We’re going to work with the community centers to let them know about ASSU and improve relationship. We’re going to expand Diversity Week so it is not just for graduate students. Finally, we’re going to try to improve RA training.

Erik: Can you improve grad student involvement with the Community centers, especially emphasizing that the community centers need to do programming for grad students as well as undergrads. How can you do this?

Tenzin – We’re going to work to do outreach to the grad students and keep a dialogue open.

Justin: I really encourage Ryan (grad chair) and Tenzin to work together regarding diversity.

Salvador – Do you have any plans to encourage minority students to apply to Stanford?

Tenzin: We’re going to work some with that, although it is difficult. We don’t work directly with admissions. We are also going to try to create programs that help minority students succeed while they are here.

Ryan: For graduate diversity, half the problem is getting people to apply. We need to work on getting undergraduate minorities to apply to graduate school.

Tenzin: If graduate students want to run seminars to encourage minority undergraduates

Erik: Diversity is one of those often used but rarely defined words. What does diversity mean to you?

Tenzin: Not just race, diversity of thought, ethnicity, first-generation communities, and the LGBT community.

Justin: In favor: 13, Opposed: 0, Abstentions: 1 (Peacock abstains as he is a cabinet member).

Angelina: The executive budget includes $3000 for the summer for execs, but since Kelsei will be gone for half the summer, he will only take $1500 and give the rest to discretionary.

Justin: Votes to pass ammendments fixing bill so that date reads correctly and total stipends is correct passes 14-0-0. The bill passes 14-0-0.

6. 6:33 pm – Transportation Advocacy Update (Joanna and Imeh)
Imeh: We met with Brody Hamilton – transportation guy – and he outlined some of the initiatives they’re planning for the next year and we gave some feedback. They are thinking about re-routing the B-line so that it goes half the campus (so you will make a transfer when they meet up). They want to use smaller busses as well. We will get a formal plan shortly. PT also plans to promote and expand the zip car – currently ~30 cars and 2000 subscribers – going to add four cars. They ordered new bike racks and new lockers (for rent), and will try to fix biking situation in Munger by working with ResEd. They are going to push to improve bike safety so that instead of paying the fine you can go to “traffic school for bikes”. They will also try to go to residences during.

Joanna: They are considering a 5% increasing in price of parking permits. We also discussed 75 minute parking spaces at Vaden that require permits. We are working to get parking validation at Vaden.

Ryan: They should just make it 75 minutes.

Drew: Where are they going to put the bike lockers?
Joanna: Next to Y2E2.
7. 6:40 pm – Programming update (Joanna and Addy)
Joanna: On for July 4th, 1-5pm. We will do pulled pork because Ryan Peacock and Mary vander Hoven. volunteered. We will also work to make this kid friendly, so if you have any ideas about what will make this kid friendly, let me know. Also, if you are not here this summer, please find a proxy BBQ volunteer.

Fanuel: Where is it going to be?

Joanna: Willis lounge.

Krystal: I know we’re a month out, but can you set up a volunteer spreadsheet?

Joanna: Yes.

Raj: Can we have cupcakes and bubbles?

8. 6:43 pm – Stipends Advocacy Chair Selection (Justin and Jess)
Jess: Justin is volunteering. Any questions?
Imeh: What are your goals for the upcoming year?
Justin: I have 5. 1) Really do a cost-of-living reassessment now that we have had an economic downturn. 2) Find out how much people get paid by department. 3) Work with VPGE to get them the same information we get. 4) Address the problem of conference reimbursements that require students to carry large credit card balances. 5) Make sure we have someone to do this next year so that we have a replacement in the following year.

Joanna: Are you going to look at departments that do not have enough appointments for all the students?

Justin: All the departments – anyone who gets a stipend.

Joanna: Are you going to be pushing for higher stipends or more funding sources (TAships, etc).

Justin: The first goal is to make sure there is a minimum stipend, and we will do some additional work to try to get more things available.

Imeh: Some international students have difficulty getting funding for their 5th year. Can you address that?

Jess: Any objections to approving Justin? None, passes by consensus.
8. 6:48 pm – Retreat Review (All) – Tabled because everyone here was on the retreat.
9. 6:50 pm New Business (All)

Robert: Thank you for funding Mem. Day BBQ. We ran out of 180 lbs of pulled pork in 1.5 hours. Requesting $800 funding for pizza and beer for Mega grad Night by GSPB Thursday, June 17th.
Trivia grad night, June 24th, $400 line-item for this event. We will try to have one per summer.

Passes by consensus.

Imeh: I have a request, please keep a look-out for places that are dangerous for pedestrians and bikers and let us know.

Erik: Academic Advisory meeting with Chris Golde summary:

TA Review System:
1) At the school level there might be someone in the Dean’s office to go to.
2) Center for Teaching and Learning – mandated with the oversight of TAship – came out of faculty legislation – Michele and Robyn Dunbar
3) TA oversight provost committee- Sherri Shepherd sits on this committee
4) To get info on this: Research policy handbook, admin guide, Graduate academic policy handbook.

Qual Review Passage Demographics: (particularly acute in the Engineering departments that admit largely as masters)
1) The University has relatively few university requirements – most of these happen in the department. One policy is that every student goes through quals in the 2nd year. All responsibility for this resides at the department level.
2) VPGE is not eager to take this on.
3) Go to chair of EE (new, may have university-wide perspective), or Dean of School of Engineering (Sally Gressens [budget time for her] and Brad Osgood [EE, good university guy]).
4) Faculty Senate committee on graduate studies – four grad students on this committee – get names from Jess and Justin
5) Big brother program – committee on graduate studies – some departments have, some don’t. They are writing a guide on how to do this within a department – VPGE recommends doing this on the department level.
6) Advisor relationship: Gathering information – expectation setting work-sheets.

Ryan: Funding meeting next week 6 pm, probably in Old Union.

Justin: E-mail list-serve. It’s an interesting tool that we have. Our list serves a bunch of different people, not just the 15 voting members. It’s about 150 grad students, some ASSU execs, the Daily. So quick question for the non-graduate students: Would it be useful to have a voting member only e-mail list to keep us from spamming everyone?

Angelina: As long as there is a public list for all of our branches to contact people, that is fine.

Ryan: I know there’s an issue with business being conducted in an open manner. You would have to allow anyone to subscribe to the list, even if they couldn’t post to it. We have to be wary about a constitutional challenge if official business is discussed.

Adam Beberg: What is the problem with everyone being allowed to join?

Justin: I don’t want this to turn into the undergraduate senate list-serv.

Krystal: Are we giving people posting power?

Justin: Yes, I had to moderate last night.

Angelina: If we want all the branches to be cohesive, we have to have a list for all of us. I think we should just strongly clarify what the expectations are to prevent bickering and negative e-mails.

Kelsei: Michael and I can send an e-mail outlining behavior expectations on the list-serve.

Robert: I think we should just create a moderation policy and enforce it.

Ryan: To echo that, we can just enforce a policy.

Krystal: I think we can just restrict the lists period.

Justin: Adjourns 7:08 pm.