Committees, Committees, and more Committees

In many ways, universities are run by committees. Committees approve new academic programs, hire all senior administration and department chairs, and oversee new campus services. UVIC even has a committee on committees!

Living in residence? Got a child in the UVIC daycare? You might be interested in some of our committee vacancies.

Love to reward great teaching? Seats on the Gillian Sherwin Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Andy Farquarson Teaching Excellence Award for Graduate Studentscommittees are now seeking graduate students.

Interested in UVIC fudraising, art galleries, and government relations? You could be on the appointment committee for the new AVP External Relations, who is responsible for all these things.

While we are at it, you  might be interested in the vacancies on grad council or some of the GSS committees like the Health and Dental Appeals Committee, Events Committee or various campaign committees (which are looking at grad student housing, creating a grad student advocate office, looking at GSS relationships with UVSS clubs and advocacy groups (and grad student fees for these groups), or examining our means of allocating seats on grad council) – email me at gssmgr[at]uvic.ca if you are interested in these committees.

UVIC GSS website

Hi all, we are experiencing some trouble with our UVIC Graduate Students' Society website in google since it migrated to the new site. It is being fixed, but for now, the link is the same: http://gss.uvic.ca/

UVIC graduate student health plan information can also be found at http://gss.uvic.ca/.

kick start you writing using online motivational tools

Beyond my life working for graduate students at the gss, I also have a secret life as a graduate student.

This term I am to submit my research proposal. Through my first two terms of graduate school, I have attempted to journal as a means to help my writing process, but with limited success.

Today I embarked on a new effort to ensure I do keep to my writing commitments, partly inspired by Joan Bolker's book, Write your dissertation in 15 minutes per day. (What an inspiring title!) Which advocates keeping a research journal.

But for those, like me, who need some prodding, some online tools may be of interest.

Do you forget to write every day? Oh, Life may be fore you. It is a simple system. you set up an account using your email, and then each evening Oh, Life sends an email asking about your day. You respond, and that is these emails become the substance of your journal. After you build up content, it will send snippets of past entries as reminders/starting points, selected at random. I wish I could choose its question to suit my purpose (not "how was your day" but "how's the research?" or something ... as long as it isn't "are you done your thesis yet?"). However, I can't fault the simplicity of the system, and the fact that an email prompt will likely be helpful for someone like me.

If goals and rewards are what you need, you might like the online journal, 750 words. With this site you are encouraged to login and write 750 words per day, and if you do this for five days in a row you get a little reward (penguin badge), and each month you get a score card with more points the more days you write. The site also assigns moods based on what you write (which unnerves me). There are challenges as well -- you could end up on the wall of awesome (or wall of shame) so think on that before choosing your pen name!

In both cases, the online journal can be downloaded for use elsewhere. Perhaps in your thesis methods section!

It’s your call: One click could save you $55 per term in athletics fees

Should students pay for a new athletic facility with a “new” $55/term fee (in addition to the current $73/term fee)?

You will be asked to vote on this question October 19-23, 2009 on webvote at https://webvote.uvic.ca

The Graduate Students’ Society is opposed to this fee increase. Here are some of our reasons:

Is this fee increase legal?

The GSS is concerned that the fee increase is not permitted under BC’s tuition limit policy, which caps increases of tuition and fees for current programs at 2% per year. This new fee will be a 75% fee increase for students.

The GSS has sent UVic a letter (PDF) asking UVIC to account for this, and will post any reply we receive on our campaign site here: http://gss.uvic.ca/2009athletics.htm

Who uses and who pays?

In the January 2009 term alone, contribution by students to the Athletics and Recreation budget was $1,082,939.00—without including additional fees paid by students for intramural, weight room, and program fees.

According to UVIC data for January – March 2009, which assumes average usage of 1-3 visits per week, about 30% of undergraduates and 8% of graduate students are using the Ian Stewart Complex (the most popular recreation facility on campus).

Athletics fees: the goal posts keep moving!

Until UVIC purchased the Ian Stewart Complex (ISC), athletic fees increased at a rate almost identical to inflation. Since the purchase of ISC, students have been paying a greater proportion of the cost for Athletics at UVIC each year. In the past decade, the proportion of the Athletics budget covered by student fees has risen from 20% to 38%.

Mandatory fees can be a benefit—if they are less than market rate

Compare this fee proposal to the U-pass... the U-pass costs one quarter the cost of buying a monthly buss pass. Every student pays in, but the cost is kept lower than market rate. In return, transit improves bus service to Victoria campuses.

Now compare the proposed athletics fee proposal to other recreation passes in Victoria *:

No. of terms	Current fee	New fee
One term	$73	$128
Two Terms	$146	$256
Three Terms	$219	$320*
COMPARE
Sannich Rec student pass	285/year
Oak Bay Rec annual pass	$345/year
YM-YWCA pass - family pass	$444/year $780/year

* graduate students will have the option to opt out of the summer term; summer term will be charged at 50%. 60% of graduate students and 20% of undergraduates pay 3 terms of fees per year.

What are the other options?

UVIC says mandatory student fees need to cover 36.7% of the cost of the building—but what are other options? UVIC’s consultation process suggested selling the Ian Stewart Complex as one revenue source. Other options include bigger donor campaigns, a stronger lobby for government support.

UVIC’s facility analysis indicates UVIC will seek to cover costs of the building with the following revenues:

1. New students Mandatory Fee

2. Program revenues

3. Donors

4. Government funding

5. UVIC contribution

What are the arguments in favour of the fee increase?

UVIC made a presentation to the GSS Grad Council about the proposal. It can be found here.

UVIC’s facility analysis (500 pages) can be found here.

UVIC’s/vikes website supporting the fee increase is here

Student facebook group in support of the fee increase is found on the vikes website here

Visit open houses

Help the campaign

Visit the GSS campaign site, download a poster, learn more: all here

Referendum on Health and Dental Plan

Going to the polls... again. (This is it, I swear!)

Grad students will have the opportunity to vote on the coverage and cost of the GSS extended health and dental plans on April 22, 23, and 24th 2008.

The referendum will ask you to choose between the following options:

1. Keep premium at current level with benefit reductions.
2. Increase paramedical coverage to 100%, with $10 co-pay ($230/year, $19.17/month, an increase of $1.58/month
3. Add vision coverage of up to $200 every 2 years ($245/year, $20.42/month, an increase of $2.83/month)
4. Combine options B and C ($255/year, $21.25/month, an increase of $3.67/month)

Choice with the highest number of votes will be selected.

You will be able to vote on webvote and also by paper ballot at the GSS office.

Info on the referendum is here: http://gss.uvic.ca/Healthanddentalreferendum.htm

Info on the health and dental plan is here: http://gss.uvic.ca/health.htm