Meet Your Senators
The Graduate Student Senate held a ‘Meet Your Senators’ forum on Thursday for graduate students to meet the senator for their college and discuss any questions or concerns they had.
The forum was held as part of Graduate Student Appreciation Week, which included a social on Tuesday and workshops put on by Career Services on Wednesday. The week’s activities will conclude with a tailgate party booth in the parking lot before Saturday night’s game. GSA week was brought back this year after a few years of being absent, said GSS President and ASUSU Grad Studies Vice President Jeri Brunson. “Graduate students have a unique set of needs,” said Jillian Guttormsen, GSS Campus Affairs Vice President. “We have a different set of issues that need to be addressed, and that is what the GSS is for.”
Among the topics brought up by students in attendance were the status of voluntary subsidized health insurance for graduate students, which is currently still in the works and should be finalized and implemented by next fall, Brunson said. There were also questions regarding travel funds for students traveling to conferences, which some in attendance did not know was available. Brunson said there is an application form and more information available on the GSS website for interested students.
The GSS works to promote a sense of community for graduate students and provide opportunities for them to come out and meet each other, said Guttormsen. There are nine student senators, one for each college and one each for international and distance education students, she said.
Guttormsen said in addition to offering activities like GSA week, the GSS sells discounted copy cards and plans on offering discounted ski passes to graduate students this winter. GSS also hosts and coordinates USU’s Intermountain Graduate Research Symposium, Guttormsen said. GSS hopes to provide more activities for GSA week next year, both Guttormsen and Brunson said there were some activities that were well-attended and others that didn’t seem to interest many students.
“Hopefully next year we’ll be more expanded,” Brunson said. “We’ve got some good ideas.” For more information about GSS and what they offer, visit their website at http://www.usu.edu/usugss/.