Minutes of the GSASC meeting of
September 12, 2000

Funding requests:

1) The Writing Center, represented by Kate Stephenson (English)

First, presented revised proposal. The project currently includes three groups with 5 dissertaters each lead by experienced writing instructors from the writing center. The center felt there was need for advanced instruction for those writing dissertations. They are hoping that the groups will also develop communities among the participants. Three group are meeting currently, but there is enough interest to have 6 more. Overwhelming response.

Budget: No more copying costs, all electronic. Added $100 for administrative cost.

Questions: Have they asked Dean Husky for money? Education school was talked to, but they were not aware that Husky has other money to give. We suggested that they should talk to him as well.

Has English department been asked? They won't fund it, because the Center already has a budget.

Over thirty people are on the wait list. Each workshop meets 4-5 times a semester. Ideally they would like to offer workshops both semester. Enrollment on first come first serve basis. Current participants are from a variety of departments.

Have they considered charging a fee? They were hoping they wouldn't have to charge people. Graduate students are poor enough already.

2) Art History Graduate Symposium, represented by Mary Leclere (Art History).

The symposium didn't happen last year. The date has been changed to the fall so that there are fewer conflicts with other events. They received a lot of support from many departments. Update: architecture and Italian gave $100 each. First year that Dean Leffler and Studio department has contributed. They are hoping for a lot more participation among the wider graduate population.

Update on pending requests: Religious Studies has not gotten back to them. French, no. History and Anthropology are luke-warm. Media Studies, no. Special Lectures said that would send e-mail by end of last week, but no word yet. They will probably get a few hundred from them. Small grants only meets after symposium and they would like to make that request for next year's symposium. VA Foundation for the Humanities, said no since they don't fund academic events.

Questions: Request is now $1700 in light of new funding. Honorariums will be paid to speaker and respondent ($500 and $300).

How interdisciplinary will it be? Speakers will primarily be art historians, although the keynote speaker will appeal to many disciplines. Also, one speaker will be talking about visual art and Beat poetry.

What will publicity budget be used for? A program and posters to promote the symposium.

3) Women's Center sent no representative. Proposal is not considered in light of the absence of representation.

Debate.

1) Writing Center. Funded at $600 with the caveat that they evaluate the program and return these results to us. Also, they are reminded that they need to mention that Graduate Council funded the project.

2) Art History Graduate Symposium. $1200 with the option to return.

Secretary's report: What happened to the minutes from the end of last semester? Elena will be asked.

Treasurer's report: Report distributed. We have a roughly $2900 carry over from last year. We didn't have a time limit in the past. University now has an electronic system, and we can now control the approval process. Despite this, some money left the account last week with no clear explanation. Budget for coming semester is about $10,200.

President's report: Lowe's retirement will happen at the end of June. He was the Provost and controlled the purse strings. The administration will suffer many changes. Dean Husky will be retiring at the end of the semester. Dean Leffler, of the college of Arts and Sciences, is also stepping down. These people all affect graduate students.

We need to fight to have a say in who replaces these people, particularly with Husky. These changes provide some challenges, since both the outgoing and incoming people might be reluctant to take on new projects. On the other hand, we may get rid of some obstacles.

Patrick will attend a dinner with Casteen about students issues.

Departments without representation should have representation. We should work to recruit them. An e-mail will be distributed to all students to recruit representatives.

We can gain a lot by working with Students Council. We have two reps who are there tonight. Patrick will talk to them about ways we can work together.

Patrick wants to have a cook-out for all the reps in the next few weeks. We must promise not to feed the baby hot dogs. It will be at 6:00 on a Friday. It will be some time in September.

Constitution and by-laws. We should all take a look to see if there are things that need to be changed and to familiarize ourselves with the purpose of GSASC.

Two good resources: Inside UVA is the faculty and staff newspaper that is published once a week. Also, the university website will e-mail you stories about what is going on in the news. It gives you local and national news about the university and its faculty.

Honor and StudCo reports: neither is here.

Old business: Tavern social is set for this Friday. Omar will be DJing again. We need to work to get people there. It will 9-1 with a $3 cover. We pay them $300 for the rental.

The South Street Brewing Company is willing to have a graduate happy hour the second Thursday of every month with $2 beers and a dollar off appetizers.

We have lots of newsletters that we made for the orientation. We will pass some out at the Tavern on Friday. Also, we should distribute them in our departments.

New Business:

Research Exhibition: We will be having another exhibition this year with the same format as last year. Last year we waited too long to book a room in Newcomb. This year we will finalize a date as soon as possible and get more people to drop by. It will probably take part some time in April. This time we will talk to graduate advisors so that we will have more students involved.

Amendment to the by-laws: We have many outstanding allocation of funds and we don't know when this money will be used. This amendment to the by-laws will formalize the requirements that we already have for funding requests (i.e. evaluation, other sources of funds, 9 month cut-off for spending). Amendment to the amendment: deadline will be 9 months after the allocation or 3 months after the event; rejected in favor of second amendment to the amendment. Suggested that we simply close the budget at the end of the fiscal year. New amendment: 3 months after the event, or July 1st, whichever comes first. Another amendment: Groups that fail to meet this requirement may be ineligible for future funding. Passes unanimously.

Budget increase: We have more money and we will do more. One of our primary missions is to distribute the money to student groups. Patrick will seek way to gather more requests for funds.

Web site: Josh has revamped the web site. Patrick would like to pay the web master in the future.

Future meetings: We will try to find a place in Newcomb Hall. In the future we will meet at 8:15 on Wed. Oct 4th.

Meeting ends with much satisfaction for a job well done.

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