GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDENT ASSOCIATION (GPSA)
Fifth Senate Meeting Location: 435 CSC Date: 02-21-08 Time: 2:50 PM
ATTENDEES:
E-board Members and Advisors:
President- Chris Chanyasulkit
Vice President for Finance- Kristen Hudak
Vice President for Academic Affairs- Tammy Hartke
Vice President for Administration- Manasa Madasu
Vice president for Media and Membership-Ashish Jain
Advisor, Steve Gibson
Senators College
Thomas Arruda Arts and Sciences
Hiba Tannoury
Jing Li
Adriano Ciccomancini College of Business Administration,
Stephen Morse Accounting and Taxation
Shweta Raina
Rajiv Panwar Bouve College of Health Sciences
Brijesh Garg
Ninad Satam
Aparna Chavali
Madeeha Basharat
Prakash Potukucchi
Ehsan Kianirad College of Engineering
Ignacio Marin Garcia
Muhammad Shahrear
Tasneem Jodhpurwala
Yalcin Bulut
Saurin Gandhi
Rickesh Ashok Kumar
Christopher Miller College of Criminal Justice
V-Tsien Fan
Ifetayo Belle School of Law
Annie Serafim
Evan Bitto
MINUTES OF THE MEETING
Issues
President Chris Chanyasulkit called the meeting to order.
PRESIDENT'S REPORT (Chris Chanyasulkit)
1.The minutes of the previous Senate meeting were approved.
2.Special guest speaker- Professor Kostia Bergman, Faculty Director of Center for Innovation and Excellence
in Teaching and Learning.
a)Discussed the vision for implementing new teaching methods, improving the current teaching methods and the
role of graduate students in the process.
b)He expressed his views about good teaching practices and encouraged active participation of students.
c)More workshops on best practices in teaching and over the web teaching to be conducted.
d)There is collaboration with the ‘Ed Tech Center’ to improve networking to facilitate sharing of material
using the blackboard, pod casts and blogs.
e)Material created by students is to be included in the future. The digital media center in the library allows
students to create media. It is located in the library.
f)There is a plan to have electronic portfolios for students so that students and faculty can place their work
and share it with other people.
g)Increased communication between Professors and teaching assistants is required.
h)The university is being accredited this year and NU core requires a basic curriculum that everyone has to follow.
Writing skills in English, Science and Philosophy is one such area. Teaching assistants have to try and improve student
performance in this area.
i)There can be a course for effective teaching to support people in the field of teaching. Support from people from
other colleges at Northeastern University is needed to achieve this.
j)Masters program in the field of Sciences which is like a mini PhD is not very recognized according to Professor
Kostia but Professional Masters program is much more recognized in the field of Business and Engineering.
VICE –PRESIDENT OF ACADEMIC AFFAIR'S REPORT (Tammy Hartke)
a)6 Senators and E-board members met with Vice Provost
b)Luis Falcon, IT Director Leslie Hitch, and her assistant Beth-Anne Sullivan to discuss the issue of increasing the
print quota for graduate students.
c)The argument was that there is an aggregate data set including the graduate students and the undergraduate students.
80% of the student population falls under this category. This needs to be disaggregated and the issue is to be looked
at from the graduate students’ perspective as the needs of the graduate student population are different from the needs
of the undergraduate student population.
d)Since the limit is 400 pages a semester, bringing the total number of pages is 1200 per year.Therfore, during the beginning
of the year 1200 pages should be given at once instead of giving 400 pages every semester.
e)Since Northeastern University is a research based institution, we supplement textbooks with research articles at the
graduate level and hence the quota should be increased for graduate students.
f)Duplex printing machines can be installed to save paper.
g)Class packs can be provided to students during the beginning of each semester as it would be cheaper to buy class
packs than print out the slides.
h)There can be a sponsored account for students with SGA’s and they should talk to the person they work for to do so.
i)Limiting print quota may inhibit the quality of education since it limits access to materials.
2.Graduate student survey is under process. The Senators will be E-mailed regarding the same. The Senators need to take
the survey and publicize it amongst their constituents to get the highest possible response rate.
3.The safety seminar conducted at 12 pm on February 21st focused on the Department of Biology was conducted at 12 pm
today (February 21st). The next safety seminar will be for Bouve. The senators were contacted to help Tammy with the
next seminar.
a)Senators from the Bouve College and College of Arts and Sciences were encouraged to give the message to the students
in their respective colleges about the future safety seminars.
VICE-PRESIDENT OF FINANCE'S REPORT (Kristen Hudak)
1.The third period of funding has ended.
2.There are requests for group funding for about $20,000 and $3000 for conference funding for the fourth period of funding.
3.$3000 is remaining for group activities in May and June.
4.The Senate votes to approve the budget for the next academic year at Senate meeting in April.
5.The Finance committee meets twice to present a budget.
6.There was a question as to whether we can make an amendment in the constitution to access the reserve fund mid-year
if we fall short of funds to fund students for conferences.
7.There was a proposal to change the procedure of funding the student groups.It was decided to fund the groups
at the beginning of each semester (once during the Fall and once during the Spring).
8.The Finance committee meeting was scheduled to be held right after the Senate meeting today (February 21st).
VICE-PRESIDENT OF PROGRAMS REPORT (Manasa Madasu)
1.Guest Speakers:Carlotta Starks and Peter Franklin from the Justice for Janitors Coalition.
a)There are 194 janitors at Northeastern University with few benefits .The group has been working with the janitors
since 2002 and asks the GPSA to support the addendum to the Masters contract and to create student awareness.
b)They plan to increase the wages for janitors.
2.The GPSA would follow up on the issue after the group provides more information on their work and the salaries of
janitors at other Universities when compared to Northeastern University.
3.Tasha Henderson from the Curry student center asked if the Graduate students wanted to have a movie night during the
Spring break but since most of the students will be away from campus,the GPSA agreed on not having any events during
the Spring break.
Old Business
Ignacio Marin Garcia was elected as the new Vice President for Student Affairs after the election.
Other issues
a)Next week the reaccreditation committee meets .President Chris Chanyasulkit is incharge of acquiring information on
standard 3 of reaccrediatation-Governanc and Vice Preisdent of Student Affairs,Tammy Hartke is incharge of acquiring
information on standard 4-Graduate education.
b)There were few Senators who put forward their issues.They wanted a focused approach for Graduate students as they felt
their needs were different from the Undergraduates.They also wanted the issues about lab spaces and inability to take
courses in other departments to be addressed.
New Business
1.There was a motion to set the day and time for the Senate meetings for the year 2008-2009.The motion was passed and the
time for the Senate meetings for the year 2008-2009 was set as 2:50 pm to 4:30 pm on Thursdays.
2.There was a motion to make an amendment to the constitution so that it allows Senators to inform the GPSA of their
inability to attend Senate meetings due to any academic commitment so that their spot can be considered vacant and
Graduate students on the waiting list (for the position of a Senator) can fill the vacant position.
Announcements
Elections for 2008-2009 Executive Board elections to be held March 20th.The nomination forms are due on February 29th by 5 pm.
Upcoming events
Graduate Research Expo (Wednesday, March 26 – 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM)
Deadline to submit your abstract - February 27, 2007 at Midnight
Information at www.expo.neu.edu or email research@neu.edu
Graduate Student Awards: Monday, March 17, 2008, 3-5pm, Raytheon Amphitheater
Provost and Vice-Provost's Forum: April 8, 2008, 4-6 pm, 444 CSC
Future Senate meetings
March 20 - Curry 346 (Elections for new Executive Board
April 10 - Curry 346 (Approval of 2008-2009 Budget)
The meeting was adjourned by President Chris Chanyasulkit.
