GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDENT ASSOCIATION (GPSA)
First Senate Meeting Location: 333 CSC Date: 10-16-08 Time: 2:50 PM
ATTENDEES:
E-board Members and Advisors:
President- Jeffery Rosenspan
Vice President for Student Affairs- Shraddha Pogul
Vice President for Academic Affairs- Tina Penman
Vice President for Media and Membership (Acting)- Gaurav Singodia
Vice President for Administration- Tasneem Jodhpurwala
GPSA Advisor- Gail Olyha
GPSA Advisor- Steve Gibson
Senators College
Lauren Nicoll
Hiba Tannoury Arts and Sciences
Saradha Chandrasekhar
Rahul Shah Business Administration
Sumit Purohit
Manish Maheshwari Computer and Information Sciences
Keeth. P. Jain Bouve College of Health Sciences
Kunal Phadnis
Amna Saleem Engineering
Kusuma Basavaraju
Lindsey Dahlben
Ashwin Shankar
Liam Duffy Criminal Justice
Brandon McDaniel School of Law
1.Agenda for the meeting, new e-board information and contact-list distributed.
2.Pizza and Soda were served.
MINUTES OF THE MEETING
I. Icebreaker
1.President, Jeffery Rosenspan, introduced himself and the rest of the e-board members to everyone at the meeting.
2.The attending e-board members briefed the senate about their roles as VP highlighting their future commitments towards GPSA and their ambitions to make it
a great year for GPSA.
3.The senators and graduate students who attended the meeting introduced themselves to everyone at the meeting.
II. Introduction
President’s Welcome Message (Jeffery Rosenspan)
1.Briefed the attendees about the senate nomination process. Informed that the deadline for applying to become a GPSA senator was 10/20.
2.Spoke about the various GPSA committees namely:
•Committee of Academic Affairs
•Committee of Finance
•Committee of Programs and Administration
•Committee of Media and Membership
3.Introduced the GPSA advisors: Gail Olyha and Steve Gibson
III. Committee Reports
The Vice President of each committee gave a report on their work during the summer, their ideas, duties and the involvement of their respective committee members
for future tasks.
1.Student Affairs (Shraddha Pogul)
•The committee members were asked to meet to discuss the general graduate student concerns and the President's Forum at the Student Affairs
committee meeting.
•Issue of Graduate students’ safety who live off campus was raised. It was suggested that there should be more safety boxes on campus towards the
Mission hill side.
•The issue of increasing the Grad connectivity on and off campus was discussed and it was concluded that for any event to be successful, there has to be
a strong media of advertising it. Agreed to follow up with VP Klotzbier on how we could get help of NU-alert to target the entire grad student body.
2.Academic Affairs (Tina Penman)
•Details about the work done over the summer semester: She has been regularly attending the faculty senate meeting and the lab safety luncheon.
•Raised a concern about classes being scheduled during the activities period.
3.(Acting) Media and Membership (Gaurav Singodia)
•President Jeffery Rosenspan spoke about current VP Media–membership position. The elected VP resigned in the month of August. Gaurav volunteered
to take care of the responsibility of maintaining the GPSA website.
•Senators and committee members were asked to give their valuable suggestions in improving the GPSA official website and to come up with creative ways
to promote the GPSA at Northeastern University.
•Question from senator Rahul: Do we have to stick to a special technology like PHP for the website?
Answer: We could use another technology but there are certain compatibility issues which are difficult to deal with. So, it is better to stick with PHP for the
moment.
4.Administration and Programs(Tasneem Jodhpurwala)
•Attendees were informed about the GPSA Graduate Welcome Night that was held on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at the CSC after-Hours from 8PM to
Midnight.
•Everyone was suggested to join the GPSA Facebook and Orkut communities initiated to serve as tools to promote the upcoming events of the GPSA
and to post recent news and activities of the GPSA.
•A proposal for having events wherein speakers are invited from eminent institutions in the Boston area was mentioned and attendees were asked to give
their valuable ideas to have more social networking for the graduate students at the University.
IV. President’s Report
•Spoke about the new GPSA initiative for the year 2008-09: CEPAC (Co-operative Education and Placement Analysis Committee).
•Informed the senate that CEPAC will be a committee of students who works in the supervision of a co-op advisor (college and department specific)
and commit some of their time in researching over current job opportunities and career fairs in the Boston area and beyond.
•The VP Media & membership position and the VP Finance position in the GPSA is vacant due to both elected members resigning earlier this semester.
Elections to fill up both of these positions will be held in the next Senate meeting.
•Advisor Gail called out for any nominations on the floor. Two senators, Kunal and Saradha nominated themselves for the position of VP Finance.
4:30 pm: The President adjourned the meeting and asked the attendees to mingle and talk to the e-board regarding any further concerns.
