Currently the Committee is elbow deep in UnCommon Fund Applications.  We would like to congratulate everyone who submitted a proposal, they show a lot of time, work and thought.  In total, we received 38 applications applying for a total of …$427,448.55!  That will make our job pretty tough, as we only have $60,000 to grant.   The Committee will be meeting at the end of this week to make preliminary decisions regarding which applications will be considered for presentations.  Currently, presentations are scheduled for next Sunday, March 2nd, as well as a date TBA.  We will keep you all posted as to when that day will be.   Please expect final decisions to come on or before March 14th.

Minutes from Assembly Meeting #5, held on February 14th, are posted here.

Minutes from the February 19th SGFC meeting are posted here.

If you want to post on the Forum or the Blog, you need to create a new account. Your CNET ID is not valid for these. You can use the same one but you still need to register as a new user. To do this on the forum, go to the ‘Register‘ Link on the top-center of the header and follow the directions. To post on the blog click on the ‘Register‘ link on the right side of the main blog.

Sorry for the confusion.

The CORSO meeting for tomorrow 2.19.08 has been canceled due to the second year faculty round tables.  CORSO will meet again on 2.26.08.

We apologize for any confusion regarding the deadline for the UnCommon Fund.  The deadline is Monday, February 18th, by midnight (Tuesday 12:00 AM).  Here is a link to the application.
Good luck! 

Minutes from the February 13th College Council meeting are now posted on the Documents page.

This text is intended to make more accessible the diverse activity surrounding the effort to increase funding for current graduate students at the University of Chicago, activity that is a direct response to the new funding package aimed only at new graduate students. For any students who want to get involved or want
more information, this document is meant to make that effort significantly easier.

Synopsis of Graduate Funding 2-15-08

For those who don’t know, I would like to introduce the UC Printing Initiative. A good majority of students spend large amounts of money printing huge pdf files for their classes. The UC Printing Initiative was created to:

1) increase quotas so that students can print more coursework materials for cheaper costs; and/or
2) integrate the various printing systems on campus so printing is more convenient for students

I have talked to administrative reps from Housing & Dining, USITE, NSIT, and the Libraries, all of whom have been very open to possibly unifying printing systems. I am also scheduled to have a meeting with Bill Michels next week to discuss the next steps for this project.

This is also a topic of conversation for the graduate divisions who have even more printing to do than the undergraduates. Hopefully, we can express our printing concerns and ideas to the Administration from both the undergraduate and graduate councils.

If you have any comments/thoughts/helpful ideas, post them here or email me at jaykim@uchicago.edu.

Thanks for the support!

Last week, Jarrod Wolf and I met with Dean Susan Art and several Masters of the Collegiate Divisions to discuss some issues of academic fairness within the College.  Specifically, we brought to their attention the fact that several professors within certain departments administer exams during one quarter and then recycle, use the same exam again, the next quarter.  Since certain groups of students take advantage of this and go looking for past exams to memorize so that they can ace their current exams, the Masters all agreed to remedy this situation by emailing their faculty members with suggestions to deter this behavior: 1) change the exams year to year, 2) post previous exams on Chalk so ALL students can study off them, or 3) change the exams year to year and post a list of study questions for all students to look at.

 The most important thing that the Masters told me to tell students is this:
If you feel like your receiving an unfair advantage in the classrooom because you’ve studied for weeks for a midterm and some kid is memorizing a past exam, talk to the specific faculty member.  They will listen and they do care that this type of behavior goes on in their classroom.  More importantly, write about it in the course evaluations that we fill out at the middle and end of every quarter.  These evaluations are read over by the faculty, and your comments will be brought to the attention of faculty members and carefully considered.

Talking to these Masters helped remedy the situation of “recycled exams.”  Jarrod and I will check back with them on the progress of this project.

Your 2010 SG Rep,
Jay Kim