Submitted By:
Curtis Wadsworth
2001-2002 GPSA President
13 May 2002
 

 
Introduction

The graduate and professional students association, GPSA, is charged with representing the graduate and professional students of the University of Pittsburgh to the University’s administration as well as to other student organizations on campus.  To successfully accomplish this task, a strong infrastructure is very important.  The 2001-2002 term focused on rebuilding the infrastructure of GPSA.  We set goals to reorganize the financial records, ensure that GPSA was being represented on each University and Board of Trustees committees on which we have a seat, build stronger networks between the GPSA and individual graduate student governments ,GSGs, and get more student involvement.  At the same time, we worked hard to provide the level of representation that our students deserve.  I can now say that the GPSA was successful in accomplishing these goals, and a stronger infrastructure has been laid on which future administrations can build an even better GPSA.

In this document, I will outline each of our goals for the past year, and describe how we set out to accomplish the goal as well as the results.

I. Financial Restructuring

The GPSA financial reports had been neglected in the years previous to the 2001-2002 term.  Since the GPSA budget represents the student activity fees of the graduate and professional students that make up our constituency it is important to have accurate financial information at all times.  The Student Organization Resource Center, SORC, handles the financial transactions for each of the student organizations on campus and keeps all financial records for student groups.  Monthly statements are supposed to be sent to each student organization so that the groups can balance their individual ledgers with those of the University.  Unfortunately, graduate student groups had been largely ignored for many months and neither GPSA nor any of the GSGs had accurate financial information.  To resolve this, we worked with the SORC office and Jeff Donovan the official in charge of student accounts to get accurate information to graduate student groups.  With up-to-date financial information from the University in hand we set out to balance the GPSA ledger.

We continued our financial restructuring by asking each GSG for an up-to-date budget in compliance with the GPSA by-laws.  This guards against the misappropriation of student activity fee derived funds by any of the GSGs and gives a basis for the appropriation of supplemental funds.  Since these groups had not been receiving statements from the University, we worked with many GSGs to help them create working budgets, and in several cases, access their student activity fee allocations.

With accurate information from the University and the GSGs, we were able to utilize our funds more efficiently.  We could therefore fund more supplemental funds for GSGs.  Over the course of the year we helped fund research symposiums, seminars and seminar series at several schools, multi-cultural events at the school of education, women in law programs at the law school, Pan-Africa’s student recognition dinner for minority students, social events at several schools and various social events for students across schools, and we also helped fund the organization of the Arab Student Association.  GPSA also sponsored several very successful social events and funded hundreds of travel grants for students traveling to conferences.  While funding all of these events and grants, we still managed to provide several thousand dollars in carry over for the next administration.

II. Representation on University and Trustee Committees

The University graciously provides GPSA with seats on many University and Board of Trustee committees.  Many of these seats had not been filled for several years, and the representation that the University provides for graduate and professional students was not being fully utilized.  We set out to provide representatives to each of these committees.  The lists of delegates were first up dated and each open position was filled with a qualified student delegate.  GPSA also provided the delegates with information about their respective committee as well as information about the University administration in general in the form of a delegate handbook that can be up dated yearly.  We also met with each delegate and asked them to provide GPSA with reports from their committees detailing what was covered in the meetings highlighting information pertinent to graduate and professional students and the dates and times that their committees met.  This information was filed at the GPSA office to help future delegates understand their committees.  At present, almost every committee seat has been filled, and the new administration has been provided with a list of positions that will need to be filled in the coming year.

III. Networking with GSGs

Prior to the 2001-2002 term several GSGs were not in contact with GPSA.  These groups did not have representation on the assembly board and were not actively participating in GPSA events.  A goal of our administration was to contact each of these groups and attempt to get them involved in GPSA.  Through a combination of contacting the absent schools through e-mail and talking to students enrolled in these programs, all of the GSGs represented on the assembly board have been contacted and are regularly attending assembly board meetings.

Lines of communication were strengthened through a Meet the GPSA event for the GSG presidents.  GSG presidents were invited to meet with the GPSA Executive Board and Assembly representatives.  It is hoped that by making the GSG leaders more aware of GPSA, they will feel more comfortable contacting GPSA about problems in their programs or for support for their events.

We also attempted to strengthen ties to GSGs by attending one of their GSG meetings.  Visiting individual GSGs raised awareness of the GPSA elections while attempting to find potential candidates, and made more students aware of what GPSA has to offer.

Handbooks were created for Assembly Representatives to help them perform their duties more effectively.  These handbooks provided the representatives with relevant information on GPSA as well as the University administration and a list of their duties.  They were designed to be up dated every year.

The GPSA Advocate was resurrected.  This two-page news letter was meant to keep delegates, representatives and students at large aware of what was going on in the GPSA.  Each executive board member wrote a small snippet on their activities for the past semester and their goals for the coming semester.

IV. Increased Student Involvement

The need for student involvement in student government organizations such as GPSA is eminent.  Throughout the 2001-2002 term, attempts were made to contact students and get them involved in GPSA.

GPSA attended many new student orientations on campus.  Aside from passing out information on GPSA activities, names of students interested in being involved in GPSA were taken.  These students were contacted throughout the year and asked to help out on GPSA and University committees as well as at GPSA events.

To get students involved more directly in GPSA, GPSA committees were started.  These committees were designed to attract students who were not part of the assembly or executive boards of GPSA and give them a role in the organization.

Among the most active of these committees was the International Graduate Student Committee (IGSC).  This committee had a representative on the search committee for the new director of the Office of International Student Services (OIS).  They continue to work with OIS to keep international students informed about visa status and other important events.  The IGSC has also begun to sponsor social activities to strengthen the international student community and get more involvement on the committee.

The Social Activities Committee was very active this year.  We held successful events at The Attic, the Omnimax at the Carnegie Science Center, and the Schenely Park Ice Skating Rink.  The Social Activities Committee also held an event in conjunction with Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Program (PUMP) at Rosebud.  This event gave graduate and professional students exposure to programs offered by the city of Pittsburgh for young professionals.  We gave away tickets to a Pirates Game and the Symphony, and held an extremely successful Culture Crawl which took our students on a tour of the Northside art galleries, the Manchester Craftsman’s Guild, the Mattress Factory, and the Warhol Museum and ending up at Sportsworks at the Carnegie Science Center.  We also held a successful winter reception for administrators and GPSA representatives and delegates that was attended by both Chancellor Nordenberg and Provost Maher.

Our Elections Committee organized a very successful election which had higher voter turnout then previous years in part due to the addition of satellite voting stations at various schools.  This committee worked hard to recruit qualified candidates.  The elections committee also sponsored a meet the candidates event for students interested in talking to the executive board candidates.

The Student Affairs committee worked on several issues over the course of the year, and gave valuable insight into issues relevant to student affairs.  This committee also worked on developing a web based survey that will be utilized at the beginning of the fall semester to generate information on retention and career services.

GPSA successfully utilized surveys to gather information from students.  At several parties and ticket give-aways surveys dealing with a relevant issue were filled out by attendees.  The executive board utilized this information to represent the student’s interests more effectively.  The GSGs were also surveyed.  Leaders of each GSG were given a survey of career services and the results of this survey were reported to the UCGS Student Activities Committee.

V. Campus Wide Activities

GPSA was involved in a variety of campus activities throughout the year.  Among the most important was the Environmental Law Clinic.  GPSA met with student groups, professors, administration, and special interest groups about the Law Clinic.  This culminated in a resolution unanimously passed by the Assembly Board in support of continuation of the clinic as part of the law schools curriculum.  Chancellor Nordenberg personally commended GPSA for our work on this issue.

GPSA worked with the Undergraduate Student Government Organizations, SGB, and the CGS student government on several issues over the course of the year.  As part of our commitment to working with our undergraduate counterparts we held the first Inside Scoop.  This one-day program was designed to give undergraduates relevant information on graduate and professional schools.  Graduate student volunteers met with interested undergraduates and discussed their programs of study.  Although undergraduate turnout was low, 20-30 students, the students that attended found the information they received very helpful.

Conclusion

Through the contributions of many students and administrators especially the executive board, Stephanie Hoogendoorn, Julie Hakim and John Carney, the 2001-2002 term was very successful.  The infrastructure of GPSA has been greatly strengthened by restructuring the finances, organizing the student representation, providing more information to student representatives, delegates, and students at large, creating a stronger GPSA committee system to generate more student involvement, and reaching out to GSGs.  Students have been active in a variety of social events and our university service event, the Inside Scoop, and more interest in GPSA has been generated through these programs.  The GPSA continued to serve graduate and professional students on administrative committees and by gathering information on issues of interest.  Overall, GPSA is in a better position to serve the graduate and professional students of the University of Pittsburgh, and will continue to do so for years to come.