MINUTES
Graduate & Professional Student Assembly
GPSA Discussion Meeting
Monday, September 26th, 2011
Bache Auditorium, Malott Hall
5:30–7:00 P.M.

I. Welcome, Guests & Introductions

E. Cortens called the meeting to order at 5:37 p.m. There was a roll call of the voting members.

Voting members present: K. Albert, B. Alkemeyer, S. An, N. Baran, Y. Chen, J. Ciecholewski, E. Cortens, C. Ferkinhoff, M. Hawkins, Y. Izrayelit, J. Keach, A. Nash, J. Pacelli, R. Robbins, E. Smith, M. Tootill, M. White Voting members late: R. Adra, C. Wilson

1. Barbara Knuth, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School, 30 min.

Dean Knuth said she is happy to come to any meetings that the GPSA would like her to attend. She started as Dean of the Graduate School last year. She said one of the main elements of the Graduate Community Initiative was to provide a space for graduate life, providing centralized office space, congregating areas, etc. Unfortunately, given budget difficulties, major facilities projects have really taken a hit, so this space will not be built in the foreseeable future. As alternatives, the Big Red Barn provides helps to foster a graduate student community. The graduate school is also working with facilities to maintain this structure so that it will continue to be available to grad students. The Assistant Dean of Grad Students is working to build a virtual community for graduate students through the graduate school’s website. Dean Knuth said she would like to ensure that the GPSA has space available to it. It now has this meeting space in Malott, some in Caldwell, and there are talks with the Dean of Students for space in Willard Straight Hall.

Another aspect of the GCI was to foster mental health wellbeing on campus. There is now a committee to support students with mental health problems. Childcare grants are also now available to graduate student couples and the amount of the grant will be increased to all students with children. Additionally, the cap has been increased so that dual-stipend families remain eligible.

There was a plan in the GCI to improve graduate student housing. Hasbrouck is now entirely graduate student housing. Vice President Susan Murphy is trying to develop a strategy that would allow Cornell to finance the rebuilding of the Maplewood area.

There are two new Deans in the Graduate school, Sheri Notaro for Inclusion and Professional Development and Tilman Baumstark for Professional Development. Notaro will serve as a liaison to graduate groups with students who are traditionally underrepresented in graduate school programs. Baumstark will work in partnership with alumni affairs and career services to provide more opportunities for students to network with alumni. He will work in partnership with the international students and scholars office (ISSO) as well. These positions were created to provide students with important career development services. There is an additional 0.5 FTE in career services, as yet to be hired, to assist humanities studies with non academic career options.

E. Cortens read questions asked by a graduate student and submitted to the GPSA.

One of the questions concerned the disparate treatment of research technicians and graduate students.

B. Knuth said she encourages everyone to realize the host of differences between graduate students and research technicians. As an apprentice, there are elements of learning that occur throughout your time at Cornell that are different from the assigned duties of technicians. Graduate students also have a degree of freedom that technicians don’t have. Technicians have to clock in and out on a time card, for example. There are defined days of work/vacation work for technicians as well. She said the graduate school is looking into the notion of staff being eligible for financial planning assistance through workshops. They are also looking into workshops about retirement plans that could be available for staff as well as graduate students.

B. Alkemeyer asked if there was a possibility for career development within departments, rather than in general, as provided by the new positions mentioned above.

B. Knuth said there are close to 100 graduate fields, so they are not able to provide these individualized services at the graduate level. There are some fields at Cornell that do a great job in providing these resources, while others fall short, so they are seeking to understand which fields are stronger than others. Another solution is smaller, similar fields teaming up with each other to provide career development services.

Liz Newberry (Field Representative, Communication) asked if there was a way for graduate students to become involved with those in the new positions.

N. Baran said she sent out a request for names of those who were interested in working with the graduate school directly and she would send it out again. B. Knuth said those hired to the new positions have not been at Cornell for long enough, so students should give them a bit of time to get settled. The new Deans are looking for input from students, but at this stage not from all graduate students by means of an email sent to all graduate students.

K. Albert said there was an article in the Sun last week about the economics departments and their merger into a single department. Is there discussion of any other mergers in similar social science departments? B. Knuth said there have been discussions about the creation of a school of Public Policy. This dialogue is just getting started.

II. Approval of the Minutes

1. September 12th, 2011, 1 min.

The minutes from September 12th, 2011 were approved.

III. Reports of Officers and Committee Updates, 20 min.

1. Executive Committee (E. Cortens)

E. Cortens said the initial round of staffing is now complete, but some important vacancies remain: UA Codes and Judicial Committee, UA Campus Welfare, Graduate School Academic Integrity, University Diversity Council, Student Union Board, Liaisons to the Employee and Student Assemblies. Visit committees.cornellgpsa.com for a full list of vacancies.

2. Appropriations (C. Heckman)

C. Heckman said the committee met on Saturday to look over its received byline funding requests. They will be meeting with byline funding groups next week to talk about their funding.

3. Communications (S. An)

S. An said the first communications committee meeting will be held in two weeks.

4. Finance Commission (M. Tootill)

M. Tootill said funding requests are due by September 30th. Forms can be found on the GPSA website. Forms should be submitted to 109 Day Hall.

5. Student Advocacy (R. Robbins)

R. Robbins said there would be several issue-focused events this semester. The first regards graduate/professional student wellness and will likely be held over dinner at the Big Red Barn. If anyone is interested in volunteering to lead discussions or do something else, email her.

6. Graduate & Professional Student Programming Board (Y. Chen)

Y. Chen said the monthly Grad’s Night Out will be held this coming Thursday. There are also two interschool mixers this semester on October 13th and November 17th. The October 13th event will be held with Physical Sciences, Humanities, and Architecture. There will be a Zombie Pub Crawl the Thursday or Friday before Halloween. The second board meeting will be held next week. The Programming Board needs one-time volunteers for event logistics. If anyone is interested in volunteering for the October 13th event, contact her at yc462@cornell.edu.

7. Presentation from the 2010—2011 Ad Hoc Survey Committee

M. Genkin said he is the Committee Chair. S. An, C. Clarke, E. Cortens, and T. Spiller are also members of the committee. The committee was authorized last fall to gain a more empirical understanding of the allocation of student activity fee funds. They surveyed 1000 students and received a 65% response rate, so they have a lot of confidence in the data. The survey ascertained the demographic and academic characteristics of the responders and the effects of the student activity fee on personal wellbeing, sense of community, and social mixing between different university communities. Most people surveyed were happy with their lives and felt they felt a sense of community within the graduate school program. One of the questions asked how many friends students had met at GPSA events. The average number met was two, and fifty percent of those surveyed said the friends they had met are “close friends”. The cautions and suggestions of the survey are:

• Association is not Causation
• Particular events are driving the results
• Need for metrics like these surveys instead of politics when allocating funds
• Think in terms of baselines
• What is an acceptable attendance rate for a given fee?
• What is an acceptable fee for this service?
• Better data
• Continuation of the committee in the future
• Keeping track of trends
• More details will be presented later

N. Baran said the preliminary information could be posted to the GPSA’s website.

IV. New Business

1. Resolution 3, Approval of Amendments to the Byline Funding Procedure, 4 min.

Since the resolution was presented and debated last week, E. Cortens moved to skip debate and move directly to a vote on the resolution. No dissent. By a vote of 17–0, the resolution passed.

2. Presentation on CornellNYC Tech Campus Proposal (S. An), 10 min.

S. An said Mayor Bloomberg has wondered why NYC isn’t like Silicon Valley. It’s likely because the city lacks people with computer skills and entrepreneurial talent. Bloomberg has thus decided to give money and land to a university in order to construct a tech campus in Manhattan. The two schools who have been really public about winning the tech campus contest are Cornell and Stanford. These two schools are therefore submitting their graduate and research-oriented plans to Bloomberg. If Cornell is chosen, there would be both full and part-time appointments to the new Manhattan campus. The plan requires a mix of new and old faculty and heavy interaction with the main campus in Ithaca. Because this is such a huge project, there is a lot of financial risk. Cornellians need to think long and hard about this, so there needs to be a lot of graduate community cohesion and collaboration, particularly because of the graduate-oriented nature of the proposed program. The SA has already acted and passed a resolution in support of the new campus.

A. Nash asked how this could interact with the Cornell Extension Program and the AAP building in New York. S. An said that all of these programs would be coordinated into a single campus, where the programs would interact with each other. Y. Izrayelit asked when developments will begin in the project. S. An said a decision will be made about the contest by the end of the year. The project will move quickly, but it will take a long time overall.

V. Break Out Session, 20 min.

The topics of discussion for the break out session are:

1) Brainstorm a list of the issues your group believes to be the most pressing among graduate and professional students in your respective fields.

2) Cornell is aggressively pushing for a new technology-focused campus in NYC in response to Mayor Bloomberg’s recent call for proposals. As it will be primarily for graduate and professional studies and research, it is crucial that the GPSA expresses its views and provides feedback. What do you think about it?

3) How can we increase student participation in university committees?

VI. Open Forum, 5 min.

The meeting was cut short during the break out sessions due to another group being scheduled to use Bache Auditorium.

Respectfully Submitted,

Allison Bazinet