DSC Student Rep Duties
From GSLISWiki
Every year, two PhD Student Representatives are elected (or simply nominated if there is no competition) to serve on the Doctoral Studies Committee. The PhD Students send two representatives to the DSC. It is traditional for one of the representatives to the DSC to be an international student, and for the other representative to be an american student. The goal of this tradition is to ensure that both viewpoints are heard, and to have multiple people for students to feel comfortable providing feedback to, in case there are personality conflicts.
Contents |
[edit] Responsibilities
DSC Reps are responsible for serving as advocates for the PhD students in the DSC meetings. Their responsibilities include:
- Bringing up important issues troubling PhD students to the DSC.
- This includes making sure the DSC follows up on these issues. Rarely is that a big problem though.
- Representing PhD student perspectives/concerns and looking out for PhD student interests during DSC meeting discussions and decision-making.
- This means that if you are in a meeting, and you hear them discussing a policy that you have an intuition might be bad for any particular subset of PhD students, you have a duty to speak up.
- Reporting to the PhD students any important issues that arose in the DSC meetings that might be of concern to everyone.
- It is a good idea for the reps to email a brief list of bullet points to the phd student list summarizing the most recent meeting of the DSC when distributing the minutes, since few people have the time to read the complete meeting minutes.
- Scheduling 1-2 meetings per semester where the PhD Students can meet with the faculty members of the DSC in order to voice their concerns directly, or obtain clarifications about policies or rules which concern them.
- Run the election process for electing new student representatives. This includes sending out a notice requesting nominations, recruiting enough people to fill all the positions, conducting a vote if need be, and counting the ballots.
- Obviously, if there is a vote, and the DSC Rep is running for one of the positions which is being voted on, the vote collection/counting process should be delegated to somebody else (the other DSC rep, one of the other reps, another student who has been a rep in the past, etc.).
- It is usually the case that one of the DSC Reps takes a leadership role in this process. This usually means, "do all the work". These votes are not complicated affairs; it is more important that someone just makes sure they get done.
- Schedule a meeting at the end of the school year (end of March, beginning of April) for all PhD students to attend, where we elect our new PhD representatives, construct an Orientation Committee, plan for Orientation next year, and just generally see each others' faces.
- Serve as a substitute if one of the other representatives (curriculum, faculty) cannot make it to their meeting.
It is important to realize that sometimes the DSC asks the PhD reps to give the perspective of PhD students, and it is important for the PhD reps to emphasize that they can only speak for themselves. This is important when decisions are being made which affect the PhD student body a great deal. Then, the DSC rep has a duty not to give an opinion, but rather to go back to the PhD students and ask them for how they feel; they must not guess (you'll be shocked to find out how wrong your guesses can turn out to be). Mistakes of this sort can cause much grief for both the DSC and the reps.
The DSC meets irregularly throught the semester. It is acceptable for only one of the student reps to be attending a particular DSC meeting due to the difficulty of scheduling such meetings; however, this should be avoided if at all possible, since it reduces the impact the representatives have at the meeting, and limits the diversity of viewpoints which are being represented.
[edit] Related Concerns
Recently, the DSC reps have functioned as the de-facto organizers of the PhD students: calling meetings, holding elections, etc. This is more because nobody else will bother to do it, than because it is part of their job. This means that their leadership role is usually as distinctive and effective as the King of the Alley Cats.
It should also be noted that PhD student apathy is not necessarily a bad sign. It can arise for several reasons:
- A general satisfaction with the program and how things are going, so students don't feel a need to act.
- In this case, the DSC Reps duty is primarily to defend the current state of the degree program, and prevent the degredation or erosion of any rights, priviledges, etc., which the PhD students currently have, whether explicitly in policy or implicitly in practice.
- A lack of internal rivalries, or political blocks.
- If the students mostly get along, they do not worry that the wrong person will be elected as a representative, that the wrong decision will be made, or that they need to have a strong voice in any decision-making proceedings.
- A feeling of unempowerment: that any involvement won't make a difference anyway.
- This is the bad kind of apathy. In this case, it is the DSC Reps' duty to fight for the faculty and administration to recognize the PhD students' right to participate in the creation and maintenance of structure in the program. Fortunately, we are in a strong position to do so, given the research demonstrating the merit of user studies and participatory design.
- Currently (2005-2006), this is not an issue at all, as most DSC decisions seem to be made with the explicit desire to include student input.
[edit] Meeting Times & Scheduling
The DSC meets on an as-needed basis. Given the difficulty of scheduling these meetings (they need to integrate several faculty members' schedules to find a time), the meeting times are highly variable. The DSC rarely meets more than once a month, and sometimes meets only once a semester, at least for meetings that the student reps are invited to. Student reps are not invited to field exam related meetings and admissions related meetings.
[edit] Current Issues
Any?
[edit] Issues that have been addressed
[edit] 2005-2006
PhD Students have been expressing a desire recently to have more meetings with the DSC to discuss important issues and concerns, and so one of the new tasks of the DSC reps is to figure out whether a "Meeting with the DSC" can be scheduled once per semester, similar to the Meeting with the Dean that happens once or twice per semester.
[edit] Trivia
The distinction between the "Loyal" Rep and the "Friendly" Rep is entirely one of light-hearted fun. It is not coincidental that the original "Friendly" rep was the american rep, and that the original "Loyal" Rep was an international student from China.
