My meeting with the chancellor was postponed until August 18, a lunch meeting with a little more time than the 9 a.m. slot that his office had offered for August 1.

That gives me a little more time to research some issues that we will be discussing at the meeting, including plans for AGS events that UCI can help through material support, and ways that the administration can help address mentoring standards and practices.

Speaking of those, I had a great meeting with Lydia Soleil, UCI's graduate student career services consultant. She has already set up a "page on AGS":http://www.ags.uci.edu/Members/lydias with several helpful links.

Among the things we discussed:

--Future programs, beyond the standard and very popular personal consultations on CV and cover letter writing, workshops on interviewing, CVs, "networking," and negotiating for salary, housing, spousal support, etc.

There are discipline-specific workshops scheduled throughout the year, and Lydia was very interested in tying AGS social events to these workshops. For example, we might have a dean or associate dean address a group, then have workshops on academic and extra-academic job preparation and research, and then smaller discussion groups and a wine-and-cheese kind of social hour sponsored in part by the schools, in part by AGS. The social hour could be used to practice your thirty-second version of your dissertation topic, in addition to actually being social!

--Training the trainers: as part of the mentoring issue, in coming years, Lydia will try to develop workshops for faculty members: what do their students need from them in terms of job market preparation? what are faculty able and willing to do, and what services might help them accomplish those things? An information-gathering process for this goal will start soon.

--Lydia was also very helpful in explaining the links between the First Year Initiative and campus services for graduate students. This has been a contentious issue for many grad students, especially on-campus residents confused about why their rent money is funding a "co-curricular" coordination office. For many students, the administration and funding of such a program seem strange coming from Housing and Administrative Services, instead of from campus units dedicated to academic and non-housing-related offices, such as the Career Center. AGS will continue to look into the structure and purpose of FYI and its connections to other services on campus.

On the social events tip, yesterday I started setting up a to-do list for party planning and did some research into catering options for the Welcome Week party, currently scheduled for Friday, September 22. Save the date! The party will likely start at around 5:30!

For my first President's Blog entry, I would like to lay out a little of what I have been working on since being elected in June.

But first, big thanks to Brett Goldsmith, AGS president for 2005-06. Brett has played a major role in reviving the effectiveness and visibility of AGS, and I look forward to building on his work.

The Pub: Associate Vice Chancellor has given AGS a September 2006 deadline for submitting our recommendation for the operator of the AGS Anthill Pub & Grille, scheduled to reopen in the Student Center in Fall 2007. We have two, and perhaps three, viable bidders, and the extra time allows AGS council to articulate better its goals to the bidders so that they can make any changes to their business plans.

At our first council meeting, Janet Neary volunteered to draft these points for distribution. If you have something to add to the discussion, drop by the Forums and add an entry under Pub Discussion!

Filling the ranks: the executive board has been working hard to find good people to fill open spots on the board, for critical staff positions, and various Senate and administration committee. We've appointed nine people so far, and the AGS council has approved the appointments. There are plenty of places for students to volunteer, so please let us know if you want to work for your fellow graduate students through an AGS position!

Welcome Week Events: AGS has been invited to have a presence at the Welcome Week picnic. We will staff a table with information on AGS and how we work for our members' interests, housing on- and off-campus, GSHIP, UAW Local 2865, and other groups that grad students should get to know during their time at UCI.

Planning for the annual AGS Welcome Week party, tentatively on Friday, September 22, should start next week.

University of California Student Association held its annual congress at UCSD to determine how it will focus its resources this year. I was a delegate and spent three days meeting with other student government delegates, all of them very dedicated and full of information and experiences to share. Of many items of interest, one is especially close to many graduate students: a graduate student task force will work systemwide to bring about the elimination of international tuition for grad students to relieve schools of this debilitating block against recruiting and funding international students.

Meetings since election: I have attended my first Academic Senate committee on graduate housing, where implementation of the new guarantee policy, rent increase issues, and other items were on the agenda.

Meeting with James Parker, who is helping to coordinate graduate student involvement in Welcome Week events. Melissa Bruninga-Matteau, VP-Internal, also attended.

Coming up:

--a meeting with Housing officials to discuss ongoing concerns about the administration's implementation of the new graduate housing guarantee, rent increases incommensurate with services, and other business

--an August 1 meeting with Chancellor Michael Drake. On the tentative agenda: improving graduate mentoring across the campus, better implementation of student participation policy at the department and school level, administration support for upcoming social events, and grad housing issues

There are three main "meta-governments" which AGS belongs to: UC Student Association, US Student Association and the National Association of Graduate and Professional Students.  Each of these groups has annual meetings and lobbying events.  This year, we have sent delegations to the UCSA lobby day in Sacramento and the USSA lobby day in Washington.

Generally speaking, politicians have no idea who we are or what we do.  Some hear the words "student government" and get ready for a tirade.  Some hear the words "graduate student" and think law school.  In general, they are very confused.  I've had one politician visibly afraid to talk to me because I told him I do physics research, and he was never any good at physics.

Before we can talk about increasing the funding, diversity and respect for graduate students, we need to explain what it is we do.  Many politicians quickly realize that we are in important positions.  Most fundamentally, we are part of the college education system, employees rather than students.  Teachers are very important to politicians.  Secondly, we  actually perform the research which is used by the government to form policy.  Third, we are uniquely positioned in the University system so that we can see the next big problems in addition to the next big ideas.

You would be surprised at how easy it is to talk with Senators about graduate issues.  Although our lobby trips are finished for the year, we still have in-district visits to make.  If you'd like to give your elected representatives a piece of your mind, we can help.

As eventual UCI degree holders, we are all going to be permanently affiliated with this school.  It does us no good for the place we get our most important degrees from to be in the newspapers implicated in the deaths of anyone.  It is unacceptable for a school of UCI's caliber to let a single program drag down the reputation of the institution.  This is why AGS passed a resolution in favor of the efforts to improve the Medical Center.

Chancellor Drake did the right thing by bringing in external experts to identify what went wrong and issue recommendations.  Their report reveals the kind of problems we see on campus all the time.  Reading through the report you will see that the main issues which led to this scandal were a bureaucratic lack of responsibility, a failure of communication at all levels and allowing personality differences to over-rule good judgment.

Graduate students who are involved in campus politics can easily think of examples where these issues have had direct, negative effects on education and the ability of UCI to be a premier institution.  If we want to be one of the best Universities in the world, we have to act like it! If this scandal doesn't show us all that we need strong leadership, accountability, and above all communication, perhaps other examples will:

To be fair, I will start with an example from AGS.  Last year, after an audit of the student center made a recommendation to close the Pub, AGS officers assumed the recommendation was made at the request of campus administration.  Fortunately, that assumption was false.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really matter any more.  Rather than seek a way to leverage the on-campus good will toward the Pub, the leadership attacked the audit alone.  Without a strong ally, there was no way to halt the progression of events toward closure.  Eventually we were left facing a delicate situation, and the possibility of losing one of the best things ever to come out of UCI student government.  The AGS leadership fumbled our best opportunity to present a united front against the baseless attacks on our business by failing to communicate effectively with the faculty and staff on campus.  Fortunately, previous leadership did a great job making the Pub a necessity on campus, and that resulting good will was eventually tapped and used.

Consider now the travesty which is the graduate housing computer network.  In this case, the housing administration started off well.  Faced with an aging infrastructure and frequent virus outbreaks, they approached the residents with their plans to use the Cisco Clean Access Agent to clean up the network.  Many students who heard of this plan immediately recognized some fundamental flaws.  Although it was campus policy to ban all network routers (including most wireless access points), this had never been enforced.  Although not common among undergrads, many grad students used these tools.  Although graduates argued that their network would be significantly different from the undergraduate network, those warnings were ignored.  Furthermore, the system failed to provide complete security, as had been shown by many academic researchers (oddly enough, many of them graduate students).  Ignoring this, they bought and implemented CCA.  When the system came on, conflicts with routers and other network devices rendered the entire network useless.  There is now a committee looking at changing this program and residential network policies.

As a final example, we turn to mismanagement among the faculty.  The department of Environmental Health, Science and Policy has a modern, interdisciplinary feel that should make it an attractive candidate for the best prospective graduate students.  Instead, admissions to the department have been suspended and it has been placed in receivership.  The leadership of the department let personality conflicts and academic posturing dominate the department for too long.  Faculty from the department will be fine; they will move elsewhere on campus or try to work through the receivership process.  Graduate students, however, are left with a degree which is suddenly worth much less that it should be, assuming they can find funding for the research to finish that degree.  Unlike the Pub, this story doesn't have a happy ending.

Just as we at AGS have endeavored to save the pub, improve the residential network and help the students of EHS&P, we also need to help the campus recover from the scandals which have troubled the Medical Center.  It is of no use to be angry or vindictive after the damage has been done.  We must remember what has happened and do our best to remind the University leadership (repeatedly, if necessary) of the consequences of ignoring problems.

To get right to it, current residents of graduate housing will NOT be evicted after 3 years of residence.  Instead, graduates who signed a lease with the housing limitation language in it (the lease given starting June 1, 2002) will be guaranteed housing until the published normal time to degree for your degree.  Those of you who signed leases prior to June 1, 2002 are not effected by this new policy at all.  Also, everyone should note that residents who signed limited term contracts (undergrads) will not be staying past their contract date.  Starting next year, every incoming full time Ph.D. and M.F.A. student will be guaranteed housing for one year less than their degree's published normal time to degree, with a minimum of 3 years for MFA students.  In case you are wondering, your "published normal time to degree" can be found in the general catalogue for the academic year you began your study.  There are still details about this policy which we are not sure of, but we'll keep you informed as we find out more.  Come to our council meetings, or post in our forums to let us know what you're thinking.

For those of you who would like a bit more background on this issue...

For the last few years, we have been working with a "priority system" which allowed departments to guarantee housing to a few incoming graduate students.  Those of us not in this privileged group had to put our names on the waiting list (which is currently empty for many types of apartment).  After being admitted to on-campus housing, graduates were allowed to stay almost as long as they would like, in some cases 10 years or more.  This system was continued for the 2005-06 academic year despite a policy decision in 2002 to limit housing to 3 years and guarantee all grad students immediate housing.  As it came time to really implement this policy, we all realized that students had not been properly informed of the housing situation.  This gave us at AGS a chance to review the wisdom of the policy with various parts of UCI administration.  The most important tool in this regard was the ad hoc Housing Committee, which brought together people from the Academic Senate, Housing Administration and Student Affairs, Office of Graduate Studies, Resident Councils and AGS.  As it came time to announce the policy, the fragile alliance they formed nearly fell apart.  With a little more discussion (thanks Chancellor Drake), everyone stuck together.

In the end, it looks like we have a policy which accomplishes many of our most important goals.  Unfortunately, we will not yet be able to guarantee students housing until their degree is finished.  However, unlike the flat 3 year guarantee, this policy will do more to financially protect students.  We should be able to keep housing policy from contributing to drop outs in long programs.  With the housing policy linked to the published time to degree, there may even be more pressure on departments to make sure students are not falling through the cracks.  In addition, UCI is able to make a very attractive and competitive housing offer to prospective graduate students. 

You should check the Cross Cultural Center Webpage for events on campus.  They often have some really interesting speakers and unusual cultural perfomances.  This week, they have a lot of events which tie in to Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  I've gotten to know some of the people over there, and they're really welcoming to graduate students in general.

Their website is http://www.ccc.uci.edu

If you're a professional student, you know very well why we fight for lower fees.  It's simply too expensive to get an MD or MBA right now.  To require the same fees of nursing students when that school opens would be even more silly.  PhD students often don't pay any fees themselves, and may wonder why we bother fighting to lower them.

It's really easy to come up with great ways to improve graduate life on campus.  We could have weekly parties, sponsor more fellowships, increase daycare or give out housing stipends to make life as a grad student a bit more livable.  Unfortunately, these ideas require a lot of money.  Without the Pub, AGS doesn't have a lot of money to throw around, and even with the pub, we couldn't do half the things we would like to.  In addition, all we hear from the administration is how strapped for cash they are.

The departments have little extra money as they are paying the fees, and the Office of Graduate Studies spends most of it's money trying to provide fellowships to students who need them to put food on the table.  In fact, if you know any alumni, OGS needs some donations just to keep their existing fellowships going.

With lower fees, departments would be able to support more students on fellowship, and OGS could concentrate on helping us improve graduate life.  Faculty with grants would be able to afford to hire more graduate students, and that's always a good thing.  If fees are so high that a Post doc is cheaper than a grad student, then we all might as well pack up and go elsewhere.

It goes beyond money though.  It's our names on the papers out there leading to cure for cancer, and it's our effort which makes the undergraduates who come through here better writers.  We all know what we really are: cheap labor.  Faculty are free to do whatever it is they do because we carry a lot of the load.  Why should we pay fees to be employees of the University?  Most departments realize what we are, and that's why our fees are paid for us, but the upper management of the UC system seems confused.  By charging departments more for a graduate student, they think they're "increasing revenue,"  when they're really moving money from one pocket to another.  It's silly and wasteful.  If there have to be fees, the money should stay on the campus which generated it, rather than being filtered through the bureaucracy in Oakland.

The good news is, someone seems to have gotten the message and Governor Schwarzenegger made the first move by proposing a budget which would stop the fee increases.

The pub will be coming back.  As of right now, we have reached a compromise with the administration.  It isn't finalized, so I don't want to jinx it.  The basics are that we will be allowed to continue operating the pub on campus, but we will have to improve the insurance situation, and provide more stability in pub management.  The  pub will be on the ground floor of the student center, and will be centrally and prominantly located.  While this will take away from some of the atmosphere we enjoyed, it will be twice as much space, and take away the risk of falling down a flight of stairs while drunk (not that any grad students would EVER do that).

Unfortunately, the pub will not be coming back until the Student Center renovation is done.  It's more than enough work for us to put together one new pub, let alone two.  The idea of an "interim pub" just didn't work out, it would have required us to do things which might have ultimately sacrificed our long term ability to run the pub. The pub is too important to gamble away.

That does not mean there will be no beer on campus while the pub is closed.  The current plan is for the Pheonix Grill to sell bottled beer during lunch.  We won't have any influence on this business, and it is NOT an interim pub, but it is beer.  We're not sure if they're going to stay open later, or whether they will end up competing with us when the pub re-opens.  Frankly, we're not scared of compitition from the Pheonix Grill, and we're looking foward to be able to at least get a beer at lunch again on campus.

The idea behind this webpage is to give graduate students more access to the people who are actually running the University.  We're hoping that you all will post your feelings, complaints and suggestions here.  In AGS, we spend a lot of time dealing with emergency level problems which could have been fixed very simply had the right people been told about them a few months earlier.