Officer Reports for Assembly Meeting October 4, 2013 MCAA Report by Joel Balbi The relationship with Dr. Shadrick has continued successfully through our first joint program the Welcome Reception for Graduate Students. The welcome reception hosted by Dr. Shadrick was a complete success with over 100 students in attendance! The money allocated for the program was used adequately and the program helped to solidify our relationship with the office of Graduate studies. I have continued to work on the Decolonizing lecture series which will continue this semester with a decolonizing food lecture which would focus on the historical origins of “ethnic foods” from different colonized cultures and their relationship to their colonizers, as well as their relationship with the political economy and how that has affected their cuisine. I will also be organizing a decolonizing language lecture series which would focus on the historical origins of certain discriminatory/oppressive words that have been traditionally used to keep people in a marginalized state. The decolonizing language program will be the first of these 2 programs to be hosted. The confirm date for the decolonizing language program is Thursday October 17, the room and the confirm speakers are still TBD. Programming Report by Amanda Levit Preparing the Presidential Forum is currently my main focus. The Forum will take place on November 4 th 2013. We will have a student preliminary forum from 3:30pm- 4:30pm and the President Q&A from 4:30pm-5:30 pm the preliminary forum will give student the opportunity to discuss major issues with each other, and create structured questions and thoughts for the President Q &A. To prepare for the Forum both SA and GSA will reach out to their respective student body to find out what are the top 5 main areas of concern. This will prepare us further for the day of the event. The Facilitators of the discussion the day of will be Caitlin and Joel. I am also currently developing a Programming Chair Handbook. This handbook will advise future chairs on how to develop and put on an effective and efficient program. It will include certain process specific to UAlbany, as well as checklists for a chair to follow when developing an event. I am very excited to have joined the GSA team and I am looking forward to making this a great year! Grants Chair Report by Kimberly Berg The new grants guidelines and application process were approved at the first assembly meeting of the semester, during the first week of September. By the following Monday, the grants applications and guidelines were posted on the GSA website and graduate students could begin completing and submitting applications at any point thereafter. The deadline for the fall funding period, for this semester only, is October 1 due to the need for assembly approval on the new process. Thus far, there are 11 applications (9 PD and 2 Research) and I expect a few more on or before the Tuesday deadline. The call for committee members has also been disseminated on the listserv and we have a sizeable committee given the number of applicants. The informational meeting for member responsibilities as well as distributing evaluation forms will be in the first couple weeks of October. Tentatively, grants will be reviewed and grantees will be notified of their awards no later than the first week of November. Officer Reports for Assembly Meeting October 4, 2013 Vice President’s Report by Nic DePaula The RGSO committee is currently reviewing applications. Information regarding awards will be provided by the time of the Assembly Meeting on October 4th, 2013. Complications have not allowed me to be present in the first-meeting of my committee (Governance). I thus cannot report on this at the moment. The President, who was present at the meeting may provide information on this in her report or in the aforementioned assembly meeting. I am no longer participating in the Campus-Community Engagement Committee. Questions regarding these activities may be addressed to the MCAA chair. This week has been a “celebration” week of the work of UAlbany, culminating in a formal inauguration of the new President Robert Jones. I will be participating in the inaugural event on Saturday morning, at 10am, representing and giving remarks on behalf of the graduate student body. A review of the RGSO Guidelines is currently taking place. A few propositions in regards to training, requirements, funding periods, and initial amounts allotted to the RGSOs will be proposed for discussion at the assembly meeting herein referred. Please, see agenda items and subsequent meeting minutes for further information on this discussion and propositions. Treasurer’s Report by Jessica Aubin - We are currently in the process of moving our voucher system online using myinvolvment. The system is built with the exception of the RGSO’s designated budgets and links to RGSO pages. All RGSO’s should have and will need a page on MyInvolvement by the start of the Spring semester. There will be mandatory training for all RGSO’s on the new online process. RGSO’s should have had someone email me with a designated representative as well as contact information by Oct. 1, 2013. Anyone that has not contacted me should do so ASAP. - - I am looking at late Oct early Nov. for trainings to begin. All designated representatives will be contacted with date options. - As of 10/1/2013 we have taken in, $72, 600.00, allocated $21,200.00 and actually spent $14,200.00 (See table 1 for budget breakdown). Table #1: GSA Budget as of 10/1/13 July 1, 2013June 30, 2014 Revenue Projected Revenue: $ 194,788 Actual Revenue: $72,600 Officer Reports for Assembly Meeting October 4, 2013 UAS Cash: $ 30,000 Actual Budget: $79,500 Contingency Budget: $ 22,500 Total Allocated: $21,186 Total Paid as of 9/24: $14,174 Total: $ 202,288 Expenses Budget Allocated GSA Direct Sponsor Events: $ 6,000 $1,725 RGSO: $ 35,000 $2,781 MCAA: $ 6,000 $500 Programming: $ 6,000 $340 Grants: $ 35,000 $8,000 $5,324 GSA Orientation Picnic: $ 2,000 $2,000 $1,188 GSA End of Year Event: $ 2,000 GSA Assembly Meetings: $ 1,000 Total: $ 93,000 $15,346 $8,297 Budget Allocated Paid Services Operation s Office Paid Notes $1,785 New Computers $ 6,000 Copier and Printers $ 35,000 $3,135 $2,991 Telephone and Fax $ 1,000 $353 $295 Organization Liability Insurance $ 1,000 $886 $886 Office Supplies $ 15,000 $1,091 $730 Notes Officer Reports for Assembly Meeting October 4, 2013 Total: $ 58,000 $5,465 $4,902 Stipends Grants Chair $ 3,000 MCAA Chair $ 3,000 Programming Chair $ 3,000 Treasurer $ 3,500 Vice- President $ 3,500 President $ 4,500 Lead Senator and Senators $ 1,000 Total: $ 21,500 Office Managers (5) $ 20,000 $975 Web Master $0 $0 Total $ 20,000 Salaries $375 $375 $0 $0 $975 President’s Report by Caitlin Janiszewski I want to thank Nic for filling in for me at the President’s inauguration. I had a personal matter that day and was relieved that Nic was able to attend in my place. I have confidence that he did an excellent job and represented us well. The first order of business is our purchasing of new technologies. Since the last assembly meeting when you approved printer purchases I have worked on negotiating the service contracts. There were substantial difficulties with our Xerox salesperson. We could not seem to clarify where in the written parts of the contract this salesperson’s verbal promises were reflected. Besides small issues such as the fact that they still had the wrong name of our organization on the contract, there were substantial issues such as exactly what is included in maintenance, what the cost per print is once we reach a certain number of prints, as well as what we can expect in terms of Officer Reports for Assembly Meeting October 4, 2013 service. I know you are all familiar with coming into the uptown office only to find out that the printer is down and we are waiting on the tech. There is nothing in our current maintenance contract which indicates a time limit within which the tech must arrive. I am trying to negotiate for some stipulations or at least clarify what our contract contains. The salesperson was not clear about these issues, delaying our signing of anything. I had a discussion with the salesperson’s boss, and he apologized profusely. He will now be handling our purchase at the pace we are comfortable with. Once all of the nuances of the contract are clear we will sign the purchase agreement and maintenance contract then schedule a day to deliver the printers to East and Downtown. I apologize for the delay in opening Downtown, but I was not going to sign anything that was not entirely clear. Because we are opening Downtown soon, we are also going to buy at least 2 of the 8 computer we planned on purchasing before the April deadline. Currently, we are looking into whether we can utilize an account the UAS has with Staples to get us a discount. As Amanda noted in her report, we have scheduled a date for the President’s forum. We hope to establish a precedent and a protocol with this event that allows it to be repeated every semester. It is unique for a University President to agree to a public forum every semester. I am working closely with Joel and Amanda and a rep from SA to make sure that we establish an inclusive and focused program. What we need to do as an Assembly is attempt to identify our top 5 issues we would like to see discussed at this forum. Senate Councils and Committees – here is the good news, I am told this is the earliest the GSA has assigned people to Senate Councils and Committees in recent history, but our attendance has not been and will likely not be perfect. I don’t expect it to be. I have shared a little bit with the Senate Executive Committee and more with the Chair of the Senate about our plan for addressing these issues. From year to year the expectations associated with being a Senator or sitting on a Council are unclear and people over extend themselves. I told the Senate Chair that we will do our best this year, but more importantly we want to lay a foundation to do better next year. Here is what I mean. I was misinformed at the beginning of my term that the Senate would contact me when they figured out how many Senators we needed and that we would start putting people on Councils after that. It turns out all of the Senate Councils form in the spring, but since we held our elections so late, they didn’t even think to bother us. At this point, it is just kind of expected of us and SA that we will scramble to put people on Councils and have spotty attendance all year. To address this issue, I am working with the advice of the SEC and the Senate Secretary to put together a GSA-Faculty Senate guide which indicates to GSA Presidents from year to year a recommended course of action. This includes, ensuring that our elections are held early enough that a call for Senators and Council reps can be sent out and people appointed at the last GSA assembly meeting in May. That way we will have the summer to smooth out all the issues. It will also include sections of the Senate charter which clearly indicates the activities and expectations of each council. On that note, we have not put a person on every Senate Council yet. We still need someone to sit on UAC and LISC. This does include sitting on the council and a committee of that council. We also only had one person volunteer for the Special Election committee and no one for the Wages and Benefits committee. This leaves us unable to hold an election for a new Lead Senator. I want to emphasize that we should have a Wages and Benefits committee because of what may happen this year regarding the CNSE split. As most of you know, the primary concern of GSA thus far has been staying up to date on information so that we best know where to position ourselves to serve our interests. The frustrating component has been that information does not flow at a comfortable rate. As some of you know, over the summer, SA and GSA sent a joint letter to the President, Chancellor, and Chairman indicating that we needed to be meaningfully integrated into this process to represent our interests. At that point it was unclear what the re-structuring process would look like. At the first SEC meeting this year I discovered there is an “Implementation Group” which is the group planning at the system level, and there is an advisory council to the President which is going to advise President Jones at the campus level. Since Officer Reports for Assembly Meeting October 4, 2013 our concerns are at the campus level, this was the space I was concerned about getting a graduate student voice. But, by the first SEC meeting on 9/16, I discovered that a list of 15 names had already been sent to the President’s office by GOV. If the President chooses 51% of those names to be on a 12 person council he has gone through formal consultation with GOV. I went to the first GOV meeting and expressed concern that student names were not on that list. The Chair of GOV agreed that they had missed that and both the Chair of GOV and the Chair of the Senate have suggested that they will encourage the President’s office to address this issue and give us space on this advisory council. GOV asked for a name to give the President’s office and since 1- I could not commit someone else on the spot and 2- it fits with my responsibilities as President to fulfill this task, I gave them my name. If given a role on this board, I intend to push the 2 main issues that have been brought to my attention from the moment the split was announced; proper compensation for GTAs and the restoration of the humanities at UA. My plan is to work with Dean Williams to understand how University funds are allocated to the pool of money that he is able to use to fund graduate students. While this advisory council will likely deal with everything from payment for services to who will clean the toilets, the important thing is that we are be in place to bring up our issues at the appropriate time. This is why I believe it is important that our Wages and Benefits committee be in place. If we do succeed in getting GTA compensation on the table, the next question will be whether to use that money for raises, 4 th and 5th year funding, or if we want to tackle issues of childcare and healthcare. Having that committee already discussing these things will allow me to speak with confidence on this council (hopefully). The other key issue which is bigger than graduate students is the restoration of the humanities. I personally support this issue and have had a few students bring it to my attention. But I do not feel I am in the position to state that the GSA as an organization supports it. I think it is something we should discuss and consider taking a specific position on. Due to the fact that I am taking on extra responsibilities in the Senate, our former Vice President Genevieve Kane has agreed to take my place on the UAS board of directors. They just recently changed their bylaws offering us a place on the board so Genevieve will use this opportunity to better understand our relationship with UAS, our financial operations, and how we can get UAS to support us better as graduate students. See you all at the meeting!