MB+B recently held its departmental meeting the week before Thanksgiving.  The two GSA reps, Stefanie Lapetina and Dennis Mishler, hosted the meeting.  Turnout was light, but the discussion was heavy and covered a number of topics. The departmental meeting covered:

• The Yale Health Plan, including a lack of dental coverage and horror stories.
  
• Graduate student concerns, including the mentoring younger graduate students by older students and/or faculty as well as a discussion about Mentor Week.
  
• English Language skills in senior students:

Richard Wing brought up the fact that many foreign graduate students continue to need assistance in their later years when either writing up their dissertation, research papers, or other projects in English--a language that many of them do not feel fully comfortable with.

These issues were brought up during the next General Assembly meeting and within the week the issue of English Language training was discussed between Dean Schirmeister and Elizabeth Williams, GSA rep.   Although no solution was firmly decided upon, we are optimistic that additional assistance may be forth coming to assist those students who wish to improve their English skills in a more formal setting.


The Spring MB+B may be held in conjunction with a Graduate Student Townhall meeting (with our DGS, Mark Solomon).

-dennis