Graduate Student Government
Senate Meeting
9/18/2013
Noon
Curry 318
I. Call to Order (at 12:20pm)
A. Attendance:
1. General Member: Adedokun Adedayin, Billy Zukauskas, Shane Riehl,
Theja Putta, Brahimi Labinot, Chung Hau Duc
2. Executive Board: Courtland James, Rini Ghosh, Jack Korpob
3. Advisors: Gail Olyha
II. Officers Report
A. President
1. Intro to GSG
a) 8 Recognized colleges; minus CPS
b) Initiatives
(1) Welcome Back
(2) New Office
(3) SGA/GSG Collaboration
(4) New Assistant Vice President of Graduate Student Life and
Global Connections
(a) Started in July
B. VP of Student Affairs
1. Recognition of Student Groups
a) Goes through the Center for Student Involvement (CSI) and can
get recognized through us and can apply for funding
(1) We approve funding requests!
b) Groups
(1) Before: We capped student groups at $3000
(2) Event Grant Pool: We set aside $15,000 for student groups
to come up with plans and ideas and come to us; sell your
idea to us and let us know how you will get back that
money
(3) Grad meeting with pool
(a) Met with Indian Student Group
(b) No groups got back to us about applying for
funding
2. College Councils
a) GSG does not recognize CPS
(1) Need to have a referendum to get student fee
C.
D.
E.
F.
b) 8 Colleges
(1) Some have informal councils
(2) College of Science has really great stuff happening
(3) Bouve, Arts and Sciences meetings coming up
VP Academic Affairs
1. We had 60 people attend the NSF GRFP Informational Panel on Monday,
both grad and undergrad but predominantly grad.. and evenly split
between the Engineering and Science Colleges. Dr. Jonna Iacono from the
Fellowship Office spoke, as well as previous reviewer Prof. Mary Jo
Ondrechen. We also had a lively Q&A panel with our speakers and
previous award winners Sarah Brown and David Walsh. We hope to make
more of these types of panels for other funding opportunities, using our
coop resource mentioned below.
2. Our coop in the Provost office is working on a new website for fellowship
and grant database and will be providing mock up choices for GSG to
review soon.
3. Library services wants a regular liaison between GSG and their group, so
if anyone is interested in being our advocate and information provider on
library issues... ask them to volunteer!
VP Finance
1. Revised funding guidlines
2. Individual Funding
a) Take note of all deadlines! See website.
b) Reimbursement style
c) You can apply early in an earlier deadline if you know that you
will be attending a conference
3. SABO
a) We now have a budget advisor in that office to help out with
transactons
b) Point person - John
c) Passed our 3rd funding period, we are on 4th funding period
VP Membership
1. Website
2. Social Media
3. Senator Nomination Forms
VP Programs & Administration
1. Ballroom Reservation & Setup
a) The reservation for the ballroom must be done months in advance,
like end of spring / beginning of summer semester. Once a
confirmation comes from Northeastern a link may be followed to
give the university the pertinent set up information they require.
This form should be filled out asap and essentially finalizes the
room order.
b) In order to satisfy the dual purpose of the event, ie providing a
forum for information to be distributed to grads while keeping the
social atmosphere of the event we suggest having a few (3-4) guest
speakers and having the remainder of university departments &
student groups set up in tables around the perimeter of the room
available for discussion after the speeches.
c) For this purpose we set up with a stage and podium with a few
seats at the front of the room. 40, not 50 as shown in the ballroom
set up attachment, placed at the front of the room. 12 round tables
scattered in the back portion of the room, and again as many
rectangular tables as can fit around the perimeter. 4 rectangular
tables, 2 for food and 2 for drinks were set at the back.
d) Note:The northeastern staff is good about last minute adjustments
so my advice would be to order more of everything than you need
and get ride of the extra on the day off.
2. Catering
a) Rebecca's is easiest and because they have an ongoing contract
with northeastern and can be booked literally 2 weeks in advance.
b) This is NOT recommended. Northeastern has a list of approved
caterers available online. Please take the time to shop around with
these vendors and get a better deal. Jules Catering gave a better
variety of food for a 30% less expensive price after some
negotiation.
c) As food is a majority of this cost this step is critical. We could not
utilize Jules because although they are an "approved" caterer,
Northeastern still requires 4-6 week notice to review their invoice
before approval.
d) Look at catering 2 months in advance, negotiate with these
vendors, and then send the best price to Northeastern for review 46 weeks prior. If for whatever reason this doesn't work you can still
fall back to Rebecca's just days before the event.
e) Have the food set up in the back of the room and good to go when
the event starts however it is HIGHLY recommended that access to
this food be blocked until speeches are done so that people focus
on the speeches, stay in the room, and mingle with each other /
grad groups & university department tables after the speeches.
f) From our last order it was recommended that we have a bit more
sandwiches, and in particular vegetarian sandwiches / options for
this event. Maybe like 1-2 dozen more of the mini sandwiches.
Everything else was about right but estimate according to your
guest count!
3. Decoration
a) Firstly we have extra table cloths from iParty now Party City that
we did not utilize last year / are left over and clean from last year.
Please use these before ordering more and let the university and
chosen caterer know that you do not need them to provide their
own linen (which is relatively expensive).
b) We have two approved suppliers, iParty and Staples to provide
these materials but when I was shopping iParty was significantly
cheaper.
c) Northeastern can provide balloons, the form is in the 4th floor of
Curry and can be done on the day off however you need the
manpower / time to go down to the helium room in curry and fill
them up yourselves.
d) Northeastern Provides a banner upon request, two if you are really
nice on the day of to the guys helping set up!
e) The rest of the decoration is really up to the different student
groups and university departments that show up. Make sure to
stress in your contact with them that this is their responsibility!
4. Invitations
a) There are essentially 4 groups of people that must be invited to the
event.
(1) Speakers - in our case we had GSG President Courtland
speak, VP Wankle was invited, and Phil He from the
Provost.
(2) Graduate Student Groups - I went on OrgSync and used the
graduate filter to find the groups then created an OrgSync
form to invite them to the event and get RSVPs
(3) University Departments - Gail can give you an updated list
of the departments / student services that should be in
attendance and then provide the necessary contact
information.
(4) GRADUATE STUDENTS ! (duh) - I had created an
invitation on the GSG letterhead and sent that to Dan
Volchok to send to the colleges who then distribute to their
respective student bodies.
b) Make sure that you remind people appropriately and ask for
RSVPs so that you know in advance how many people will be in
attendance.
c) That about sums it up. Hopefully future GSG VP of Programs and
Admin have an even easier time organizing the event from this and
that the Welcome Back Event continues to grow in popularity and
success amongst graduates!
G. Old Business
1. Welcome Back Event
III. New Business
A. Programming ideas for the years
1. Big Data
a) going over what this is and what can we do to gain these skills
2. Career Panels
a) What do you want to do after graduating? What options are
available after your Masters or Doctoral Degree?
b) There are people doing great things, but we don’t often hear from
them here at NEU
c) Figure out things that are not being met in colleges and
departments
3. Potentially organizing a Pub Crawl
a) Most Graduate students are over 21, not just focus on academics
b) When you “drink” people tend to come around and socialize
(1) Engineering and Law groups already do it (“Law’s Bar
Review”)
4. GSG Suggestion Box
5. Field Trips to Breweries
6. Taste of Boston
a) Go around to food venues
b) “GSG Voted that _____ is the best ______.”
7. Make events a fundraiser
8. Intellectual Property (IP) Group (Law School is putting this together)
a) Working w/ other groups on campus
b) Legal advice on IP issues
c) Putting together workshop
B. Open forum
C. Next Senate Meeting: October 2nd, 12-1pm (tentative time, check back)
IV. Announcements
V. Adjourned at 1:09pm