Hi Grad students: great Grad Council meeting last night with lots of debate on the UVIC Fellowships and Bursaries, and the way UVIC could handle this problem better.
What are the next steps on the fellowship and bursary payment campaign?
Not sure what this is about? Check out the GSS reports on the issues here:
http://gss.uvic.ca/fellowship.htm
6 comments:
Thanks for making this area Stacy, I just would like to add that making our salary (i.e. non-union pay) be direct deposit like our union pay would be a great help for students in our department. Many of our grads go in the field for months at a time and getting our pay can be a real problematic (even so far as our secretary going to the bank to deposit the cheques for students!). We are also in seven different buildings on campus and our admin wastes a lot of time distributing cheques that could be done automatically. Thanks!
After yesterday's Q & A with the Dean, I kind of feel that if we don't push harder for change, everything will stay the same until the system is ready or even much later.
I would suggest that a campaign committee be set up, with 3-4 students who would be really enthusiastic about and committed to the issue. The committee could create different scenarios for processing the new policies we have proposed, work out solutions for the University Administration who reports having difficulities in processing, etc. They could make use of the rich technical know-how from fellow graduate students across departments to address those perceived implementation problems. The committee could also act as reps for grads to talk with UVic officials and offices, have debate with them, etc.
Anyway, it may be difficult for UVic to change everything all at the same time (and it would look more intimidating), but we could force UVic to start from the easiest thing and work on to see how it goes. As long as there is change that can be seen, I guess both the students and the university would feel better and more constructive ideas may pop up.
I emailed David Turpin about the Fellowship Payment issues yesterday morning and he emailed me back. It was quite a surprize to get an email from the pres!
Not to make light of the issue but us grads continually find something to complain about. If we are not complaining about lack of funding we’re complaining about the timing. That said this is a serious issue that unnecessarily affects the stress level of many grads.
During the February GSS meeting Devor held the party line and promised a change when the new computerized system is in place. This is not soon enough.
One temporary Band-Aid solution that requires no change in how paperwork is processed is simply to move the tuition due date to 2 months into the semester rather than one (end of Oct and end of Feb). This would allow grads to save through two payment periods rather than one to pay tuition.
I liked Dan's idea (what goes on in Math), where you simply have a first cheque that is big enough for the tuition amount + 1/4 of the remainder. This is already done, is simple, seems like almost no paper work. If the uni is worried about people ditching with the money (oohh $2000, so worth a fraud conviction!) they could require a cheque from the student when they first pick up their cheque or something...Either way it is simple and a good band-aid till the uni can get in line with the rest of the Canadian Universities
I think the best solution is the larger first cheque--it requires no actual changes to the computers, processessing, and requires no special exemptions.
The only thing we would need is the OK from the policy makers and then the cheques are simply divided differently. Perhaps using the Presidents' scholarship would be a good model?
My ideal would be to have this set up in time for any influx of new scholarships from the new BC Graduate Scholarship Program.
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