Collective Meeting - Thursday, October 17, 2013

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Collective Meeting Minutes

In Attendance: Mary Klann, Ben Smuin, Teresa Walch, Dave Henderson, Kevan Aguilar, Johnathan Abreu, Johanna Peterson, Jorge Leal

Website

Nick Hirsch’s summary report of options for the Collective website/blog was discussed and it was decided that a simple blog (Wordpress or Blogger) would be the best option for the Collective. This website would be more oriented towards posting useful information rather than enabling a forum for chatting or discussion (which would have to be moderated). With a blog we would be able to archive our meeting minutes, faculty meeting minutes, and other announcements could be made available to graduate students. A Google Group was also proposed, as a way to ensure privacy, but privacy concerns (or enabling some sort of limited accessibility) were decided to not be a big issue.

Nick has volunteered to be the point person for this (Mary to email Nick since he was not able to come to the meeting) and Jorge offered to help with keeping the blog updated.

GSA Updates

We need to find an alternate representative for the GSA, Mary will send out an email to the list-serve to see if anyone is interested. Alternate rep is needed to attend GSA meetings if one of the other reps cannot attend.

Jorge also mentioned that the lounge improvement request needs to be submitted to the GSA as soon as possible, so we are soliciting suggestions for what could be purchased with these funds. One suggestion was a coffee maker, specifically a Keurig or another brand that brews individual cups (so as to minimize the clean up process). GSA funds cannot be used to purchase the coffee itself, so people would have to purchase their own coffee pods. A new microwave was also suggested.

Faculty Meeting Updates

Teresa Walch has attended the first two faculty meetings of the year and has taken detailed minutes. We discussed the best way to disseminate this information to the rest of the graduate students in the department, so as to not flood everyone’s inboxes updates. Mary will email Pamela Radcliff to see if posting faculty meeting minutes on the upcoming Collective website will be feasible or if they will just be kept internal.

One item that came up in the most recent faculty meeting was the issue of capping undergraduate courses and the falling enrollment for undergraduate history courses. Those at the Collective meeting raised questions about how this will affect TAships or the role that TAs can play. The undergraduate enrollment issue is on the agenda for the Town Hall meeting.

Graduate Student Representative on Faculty Searches

This issue generated a long discussion on the list-serve this past summer. We discussed the issues brought up in this email exchange and decided on this rough plan for including graduate students in the faculty selection process:

To make the opportunity available to all who are interested in the position (as of now this is only an advisory position and not a voting position), at the time of the next faculty search the Collective should solicit an “application” (at this time just a one-page statement and a CV) from all interested students (regardless of field group or year in the program). The Collective will then forward these applications to the faculty search committee, who will then make the final decision.

The Collective’s role in this process is to act only as a facilitator, and to present the faculty with the options of all interested students. The Collective will not decide who the graduate student representative will be, that role falls to the faculty members on the committee.

This process is on the agenda for the upcoming Town Hall meeting with graduate students and the Chair of the Graduate Committee, Luis Alvarez.

Town Hall Meeting

We proposed the idea of having a town hall meeting with Luis Alvarez on Thursday, October 31, from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm. This time will be confirmed with Dr. Alvarez and advertised once it is confirmed.

Issues on the agenda include:

Process for a graduate student representative on faculty search committees

Undergraduate enrollment numbers - what does this mean for TAs

MMW TAs - change in the structure of the MMW program affects departmental funding

Travel grants - speed of reimbursements

Out-of-state graduate students’ tuition $

Departmental website

Fall Social

The Collective’s fall quarter social event will be a GSA social hour jointly sponsored with the Anthropology Department, tentatively scheduled for November 15.

Ben Smuin will be the point person for this - the Mandeville Suite in Tioga Hall was proposed as a location, rather than the GSA Lounge, where our GSA social was held last year.

Union Bargaining Updates

Kevan Aguilar gave a detailed update of the current situation with the union - contract negotiation and bargaining. He plans to conduct weekly or biweekly updates (in person) about the bargaining process to help graduate students better understand what the union does and how to be more active. Kevan will forward a distilled report of his updates to be disseminated to History department grad students.