Notes from the February Delegate Assembly Meeting

Earlier this month, the Graduate Assembly (GA) held its first delegates’ meeting of the spring semester. Upcoming elections for positions on the GA’s  Executive Board were the first topic of conversation. Many people will be stepping down at the end of this term and the delegates will vote on their replacements at the meeting scheduled for March 3rd.

Campus Affairs Vice President, Philippe Marchand, sought feedback on the changes that are being made to the Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship (DNTF). The DNTF is available only to students in certain departments and provides one year of funding for students who advance to doctoral candidacy within normative time. The changes to the award stipulate that if you accept the DNTF, you will no longer be eligible for financial support from your department after normative time for graduation. (Normative time has two dimensions: the time between entering a program and advancing to candidacy, and the time until the dissertation is filed.) This change will take effect for the 2010-2011 cohort. If you have comments or concerns, please email Philippe at cavp@ga.berkeley.edu.

Finally, UC Office of the President Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, Steve Beckwith, spoke about his position and answered delegates’ questions about budget cuts and decisions about how to allocate funding. His office distributes research funding and oversees research policy for the UC system. They also communicate to the outside world about the value of graduate training; as he said, learning to research is learning to produce knowledge. Some of the challenges his office faces currently are maintaining support for graduate students while the budget is in decline and maintaining an adequate balance of funding across the disciplines.

The Graduate Assembly delegates meet the first Thursday of every month and the full minutes from their meetings are published on the GA website.