June 16, 1998
6:15pm: Call to order.
Because the meeting was not quorate (only 3 voting members were present), the funding proposal for the Creative Writing journal Meridian could not be considered.
Secretary's Report:The secretary was not present, so no report was made and no minutes approved.
Treasurer's Report: Rich Pierce, Treasurer, had distributed the following report over e-mail before the meeting:
1. Because Dean Huskey's #s often don't reflect what $$ is carried over from previous years (he has our current balance as being $587, which is not what we truly have), I'll try and go back to a point where we actually KNOW how much we really have/had. The TOTAL amount of money we had last year (as reported by Bill Murad) was $13,647.67 at the beginning of the Fall Semester plus about $3,500 that we received in SAF Funds at the beginning of the Spring Semester, for a grand total of about $17,150.
2. Here are the Expenditures from this past year:
3. This amount of carry-over is pretty typical, however, there are a few caveats that we need to consider:
a. I've included the 4/98 Centropa appropriation in this report even though it will be spent over the course of the next academic year (which is I guess why last's year's was carried throughout this year's budget).
b. Our appropriations don't necessarily reflect actual expenditures, as many of the groups don't wind up using all the money we appropriate to them. Thus, Dean Huskey has our YTD expenditures as being only $7,274 (as of 4/30/98), which puts us about $3,580 ahead of my $12,165 estimate, even when we account for the $1,300 to Centropa, which would not have been included in DH's total.
c. In other words, if we take DH's expenditure estimate, tag on Centropa, and subtract this from our "real" money, we get:
$17,150 - ($7,274 + $1,300) = $8,576 that will carry over to next year.
Rich also recommended that we begin sending Dean Huskey an allocation report so that his office has a way of checking that groups don't spend more than we've appropriated to their use. Heretofore groups have usually spent less than we've allocated them, not more, but there's no sense in taking chances.
President's Report: Amanda French, President, reported that she has an appointment with Dean Huskey tomorrow to give him the revised travel grant proposal and the informational letter about Grad Council, and to ask for filing space. She'll also ask for permission to send an e-mail to all the graduate lists now and in the fall in an attempt to get representatives from all the departments.
Regarding orientation, which will be Saturday, August 29, we're going to try to set up tours through University Guides especially for grad students. Amanda will also attend the big meeting to give information about Grad Council.
We continute to try to get information out about the NAGPS health insurance alternative to the QualChoice plan. Amanda has sent information about both plans to Rich Schupp, in the Risk Management department, so that he can compare the two plans.
Other Business: Rich brought up the issue of which departments listed on the web page are really part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The School of Nursing, for example, is an entirely separate school, like Darden. Do their activity fees really come to us?
Amanda brought up the issue of payroll: their methods of notifying us of our earnings is erratic (sometimes e-mail, sometimes nothing), and there's no indication of what we're being paid for--fellowship, teaching, another job. Amanda's going to write a letter.
The meeting was adjourned at 6:47pm.