I. Call to Order


II. Additions to the Agenda


III. Red Ball sponsored by GSA and ODEO December 5th (tickets in Blue Dog Cafe) - Brannon McCullough


IV. Departmental Meetings
MCDB & MB&B - Sara Heitkamp, Brannon McCullough, & Daniel Spakowicz

• Surveyed most important issues: 1. Health care 2. Transportation
• About half of the comments mentioned dental care and one-fourth mentioned prescriptions
• Request for "opt-in" rather than "opt-out" prescription coverage
• Concerned about safety and reliability of the shuttles - Daniel has the specific comments
• Did not like location of the Blue Dog Cafe for the First Friday @ Five activities
• Also - concerts should probably be held somewhere else - Bobbi will ask Lisa Brandes
• Move some of the FF@F events to other locations on campus?

Psychology - Kerra Bui

• Each lab has to pay to use certain programs - need a department site-license
• Would like a second copying machine, a scanner for the department, and a color printer
• Have a small graduate computer lab - computers are slow - would like to have someone to defrag, wipe, and re-install programs regularly
• Psych-specific issues
• Studies on intro to Psych students - students either participate in 5 studies or summarize 5 journal articles
• If the class is small, it is difficult to get participants
• Solutions - either double the requirement per student, or have a penalty when students fail to attend scheduled sessions
• Currently, students are able to cancel up to an hour before session - this it too late
• Questions re: the Conference Travel Fund (CTF)
• How many are awarded?
• Chris Crick - CTF stats:
• Received approximately the same number of applications as for the previous October cycle
• In years past, the applications were divided by division, and the money was split evenly amongst the divisions
• Conference travel cicumstances differ among divisions - i.e. Natural Sciences have more money in departments, but conferences are also very important to their training
• Now - people from all divisions compete against each other
• The award is based on demonstrated financial need and importance to career development
• Thought that this strategy would reduce the percentage of awards given to natural scientists - but instead - awarded quite a bit more to social sciences at the expense of humanities awards, while the percentage of natural science awards remained the same
• Psychology and Linguistics departments were big winners this past cycle!
• 45% of applications funded with a high percentage of the total money requested funded
• Low turn-outs from Humanities departments - are humanities students aware of CTF?
• Since the Provost increased our per cycle budget from $10K to $15K - more students are being fully funded, but the number of people getting funded overall has remained the same

Forestry and Environmental Science - Noel Aloysius

• Sixty Ph.D. students spread all over the world
• Have annual-2 day retreat to get everyone together
• Should they make it a requirement for incoming Ph.D.'s or keep it as an optional event? DGS is exploring this
• MB&B department has a retreat like this - maybe DGS could consult with Tony Koleske or Mark Solomon?

Final Departmental Meeting Announcement

• Since many cannot have departmental meetings at this point in the semester - send an e-mail update to your constituents
• Instructions for use of P-card are posted online
• Office supplies cannot be bought on P-card - can only be used at grocery stores, liquor stores, and restaurants

V. Housing Update - Stephen Gosden

• A copy of the letter regarding Whitehall was sent to the President, Provost, and Dean Butler
• A committee has been formed to look specifically at the Whitehall issue
• Next semester - plan to have a housing committee with graduate students on it - need a formal vehicle for discussion
• There is a letter in the December issue of the Newsletter (or maybe Jan/Feb) about housing concerns
• Housing Committee - keep in touch with Whitehall students and remind administration about forming the committee
• Housing issues - How to improve housing availability awareness - have info available upon request - make website listing vacancies with comments from previous tenants? This is probably legally intractable - liability for Yale -and regardless, it would be too much work to moderate
• Get a meeting with the heads of the dining hall service to discuss graduate meal plan options - DISH magazine in undergrad dining halls?
• A lot of times students coming to grad school from far away choose to live in grad housing (especially their first year) - have comments for these intra-university housing efforts? Eli will ask George Longyear about feasibility of implementing a system like this - with comments from previous tenants re: on-campus housing
• Have a reader-flagging system where moderators can step in and delete flagged posts?

VI. Internal Committee Reports
Teaching Commitee

• It is difficult to get inter-departmental communication established re: teaching opportunities
• A clearinghouse website does exist for this purpose (TF office maintains it) - but no one uses it
• DGS's and registrars unaware of this resource?
• Publicize this to students, DGS's, registrars
• Contact Bill Rando - get graduate school to send clearinghouse info to DGS/DUS/registrars & link it through classesv2
• Master's student concerns:
• Teaching not required for Master's students, but can be a source of funding
• Get last pick of classes after Ph.D. students
• Basis of choosing assignments is not transparent
• Teaching survey & best practices document last year did not mention mush specific to Master's students
• TF office has a lot of problems registering students who are teaching - tax problems (sciences budget switch when teaching)

VII. Motion to Adjourn - Second