GSC Meeting Agenda
7pm Wednesday June 27th 2012, GCC Nairobi Room
Meeting Attendees
Michael Shaw
Ateeq Suria
Ernestine Fu
Daniel Bechstein
Hrishi Goel
Kunal Sahasrabuddhe
Wendy Ni
Xi Cheng
Robbie Zimbroff
William Wagstaff
Eduardo Gonzalez
Alex Lovejoy
David Hsu
Saad Bhamla
Nipun Sarin
Proxies
Krystal St. Julien for Adrienne Johnson
Randi Walters for Sjoerd de Ridder
Raymond Tambe for Camille Fletcher
Andrew Schenermann for Roshan Shankar
Rachana Gogate for Puja Devarakonda
6:45 Dinner (Ray’s!)
7:00 Welcome! (Michael + David)
- Approval of agenda
- Proxies
- Introductions
7:10 Advocacy Liaison Updates
- Healthcare (Wendy)
- Wendy had a discussion with Sjoerd about health care advocacy. There is not a lot we can do about cost and coverage of healthcare on campus, but we can provide information on alternate healthcare plans that are suitable for waivers. Sjoerd spoke to Ira about getting a list of plans, and a small list does exist. Sjoerd and Wendy will do more research to expand the list, get it to Ira for approval, and put the information on the website.
- According to Wendy, Sjoerd also had the idea to add a list of FAQs to the GSC website based on questions he’s been asked over and over again in the last year.
- Wendy is also interested in the use of CAPS (counseling and psychological services) for specific “student segments.” She read a related article in the daily and noticed that most of CAPS outreach seemed to be undergrad specific, so maybe the GSC should look into grad use of CAPS. Are grads using CAPS less than they would/should?
- Ateeq – seems like a very private issue, will grads respond?
- Wendy – let’s ask Vaden for info rather than polling students. If info doesn’t already exist, we can try to poll carefully.
- Kunal – Vaden probably has this info, but they may not be willing to give it to us.
- Wendy – we don’t need individuals identified, so maybe they will be willing to give us some idea of grad/undergrad breakdown.
- Ateeq – we should talk to Ira. He would know the feasibility of getting this information.
- Manish – the GLO (grad life office) might be able to give some help with this issue – Vaden probably has the numbers, but it is a difficult topic for “spreading the word.”
- Wendy – as far as talking to grad students, it may be hard to target specific groups of international students, maybe Ateeq and Bechtel can help.
- Ateeq – this could work, but probably after initial groundwork has been done.
Finish introductions
- Approve minutes
No objections, minutes from 6/6/12 approved.
7:05 Funding Committee (Krystal)
- Daniel from Stanford German Student Assoc – the group is mostly grad, they will be showing a Soccer match at Bechtel for group members and non-group members. Requesting $500 for pizza.
No objections, passes by consensus
7:10 Advocacy Liaison Updates
– Meyer Outlets (Ateeq)
- Ateeq – friends told him there are not enough outlets in Meyer library. After contacting Meyer, he was told that they are not interested in changing infastructure with a complete rebuild coming in 2 years. He offered to have the GSC put up the money and found extension cords and extension cord covers that are appropriate. He will continue working on this issue, so if people want to get involved, contact Ateeq.
7:20 Appoint Education Rep (Michael / David)
- Michael – the GSC needs an Ed rep.
(Two people in the room regarding the Ed rep position, one is just there to gather info for some friends, but not truly interested in the position, the other is Ernestine who is interested in the position.)
- Ernestine – she was an undergrad at Stanford, was in ASSU and executed student services division (transportation revision, Stanford Concert Network, and others) – works in venture capital, and can make it to all GSC meetings on Wednesdays at 6pm during the year.
- Michael – no questions, no objections, she is the new rep – she will be sworn in once the oath has been found
7:30 Equipment Purchase (David / Hrishi / Krystal)
- David – no one objected or added anything to the list of equipment to purchase that was distributed via email. Are there any changes now?
- Kunal – we actually could use a VGA to RCA converter, which is about $30 and allows you to connect your computer to a television
- William – what about VGA to HDMI?
- David – let’s do 2 of each, so we will add $150 to the equipment request list for $3044. (There are no objections.) We will order the items tonight and submit the receipts before the June 30th deadline.
7:20 Appoint Education Rep (Michael / David)
- No objections to suspend rules of order in order swear Ernestine onto the GSC the same day that she was elected
- she performed the oath and is now on the GSC
7:40 Update / Report on Website (Michael / Saad / Xi)
- Saad – Xi is willing to work as our webmaster for now
- Manish – we don’t have the line item to pay a web master because the ASSU is supposed to pay for a “full ASSU” webmaster
- Michael – that was the understanding with last year’s GSC and ASSU, but this year’s GSC and ASSU have no such understanding between the two
- Xi – he’s been the webmaster for 2 years. Everything is now being moved to the new site and he needs new officer information.
- Robbie – ASSU has a webmaster, but he is only interested in doing undergrad stuff (they asked him, and he was not interested in doing anything for grads)
- Saad – he and Xi are in the process of fixing any broken links, adding info about healthcare (example: FAQs from Wendy’s discussion), and updating current officer information. A lower priority goal is to set up system for equipment management to see who borrowed what and for how long.
- Xi – all GSC members: please write a paragraph or two to introduce yourself – not even necessary for it to be that long, just a couple sentences.
- Michael – Saad is charged with the task of reminding GSC members if they don’t get the paragraphs in to Xi
- Nipun – why was the website so messed up for the last 2 years?
- Krystal – the old system was difficult to work with, even if you wanted to make changes. Any content issues were not Xi’s fault since he updates anything that he is told to change.
- Michael – Saad and Addy (public relations) will be responsible for delivering content to Xi for updating the website.
7:30 Equipment Purchase (David / Hrishi / Krystal)
- David – reminded about this by Saad: we need to form a committee to form policies for equipment use and the equipment master. David, Eduardo, and (presumably) Hrishi will work on this. If anyone else would like to work on this, please contact David.
7:50 Report on Grad Stipends Meeting (Michael / David)
- Michael – he and David met with the VPGE to talk about grad stipends. 30 years ago Stanford was 50/50 grad/undergrad. Since then, grads have gone up 25% and undergrads 5% (this is a part of the reason we have such severe grad crowding issues). The estimated budget for a grad student living in the Bay Area last year is around $32400, and the minimum university stipend as determined by the VPGE, the provost’s office, and the budget office was $31000 for the year. Next year the estimated living budget has been tabulated at $33500, and the minimum stipend for next year will be $32128.
- Andrew – was this meeting just for awareness, or was there a concern that needed to be addressed?
- Michael – the VPGE reached out to the GSC and asked if we were interested in meeting. There were no major concerns, if people are interested in doing more on this, please contact the chairs.
7:55 Report from CDC Meetings (Ateeq)
CDC – career development center
- Ateeq – Michael and Ateeq talked to them about how to get grad students interested and how to get them involved in their services: advertise through department lists, NGSO, others? The CDC is available to help students find jobs, get interviews, write resumes, etc. They will come to a fall meeting to give the GSC an update and also to get more info/ideas from the GSC. They are specifically interested in increasing awareness of their office’s existence.
- Michael – there are some populations of grads who know much less than others across campus about the resources available through this office. Is there a way to get them to know more about the CDC? Are there ways we can specifically reach out to upper year students who are thinking about careers?
- Wendy – it seems many doctoral students will want to go into academia, do we know that those types of students are truly hard to reach or are having trouble meeting their goals?
Stanford Alumni Mentoring Program
- Ateeq – this program matches you with mentors in industry outside of campus and has been very successful for undergrads and masters students, but is currently unavailable for PhDs. They recently had a breakfast for 25 random selectees last quarter and feedback was great, so they’d like to have a Winter quarter launch, and they would like to open the program up to all students on campus. In their feedback, many students said they’d like to get to know people from outside of their specific focus. The program is exploiting contacts within the different schools of Stanford that already have alumni databases, and they would also like a list of the past 2-3 years GSC members. How do we reach past GSC?
- Krystal – send an email to the discuss list.
- Ateeq – do people have more ideas? They’d like to hear those, so contact Ateeq if you have an idea .
- Ernestine – I could see why grad students wouldn’t want to be involved because a lot of the mentors are not going through a PhD.
- Wendy – Their database of mentors is available online.
8:00 Suggestions for grad-announce (Michael / David)
- Michael – we need any announcements for grad announce to be sent in this weekend, if anyone has any announcements, PLEASE send them to the chairs by this weekend. We will have to add an announcement about Summer plans, anything else?
- William – textbook exchange? (details below)
- Michael – the chairs will send an email asking for stuff. If you have anything, just email them.
8:05 New Business (All)
Summer event
- Kunal – the Summer event will not be a 4th of July bbq, since it won’t be a long weekend. The GSC will do a mid-summer bbq instead, sometime in the midlle of July. An email will go out to the discuss list sometime next week asking for volunteers to help. For Fall the GSC will probably have the standard welcome back party, and we have no idea which quarter will hold grad formal. We are thinking of ideas for the 4th event.
Textbook Exchange
- Will – Robbie and Will want to create a textbook exchange. A committee will be put together to think about products that we could use to actually make this happen.
- Ateeq – what is this?
- Will – we want to start a list about what is available and evaluate products for people to exchange.
- Manish – I already know people do this through SUpost, should we link to SUpost?
- Kunal – is this an online thing, in person thing, a two hours at the end of every quarter thing…?
- Will – online. Example: if you have a book you want to sell for $70, you put it on the exchange. There are other sites that do this, but it would be nice to centralize something to Stanford.
- David – this was successful at my undergrad, but I’m wondering if this would even work for grads (grads often don’t buy books)
- Ernestine – there are people who have actually already contacted some of the ASSU members, there are things that already exist
- Alex – I just googled “textbook exchange” and a lot of these things already exist for specific schools, maybe we could find grads that went to those places if we’re looking for expertise
- Randi – what is the benefit of a Stanford-only exchange? Can we connect with Berkeley or something?
- Will – it would cut down on many issues, shipping costs for example, to be Stanford centralized
Meeting time
- Kunal – why did we move the meeting to 7pm for the Summer? It is easier than 6pm, could we do that for the year?
- Michael – I’d like for us to vote on that closer to the beginning of Fall quarter
8:15 Close official meeting
Tags: Minutes