[Bgsa] Things from faculty meeting: Dept. has some money; taking attendance at Thurs seminars?; is TA workload increasing?

[Carla Essenberg]

Dear fellow graduate students,

There was a Biology faculty meeting today and a few things came up
that may be of interest to you:

1. Money: The department has accumulated a bunch of money (tens of
thousands of dollars) somehow and Rich wants to spend it before the
university notices and tries to take it back from us.  He has asked
the faculty to think about what they would like it spent on and was at
least willing to hear what we think as well.  Please let me know if
there are things you would like us to ask him for.  Some ideas I have
had: a refrigerator in the Moore room (we keep asking for this and not
getting it - but perhaps now is the time?) and, if getting all our
computers hooked to the photocopier isn't practical, a departmental
computer to use for that purpose.

2. Attendance at seminars:  The faculty are considering taking
attendance at Thursday seminars, as they have started to do at Lunch
Bunch.  If you have strong feelings about this, let me know.  Reasoned
arguments would be most useful (i.e., if I just tell Rich people don't
like the idea, I don't think that will make much difference).

3.  TA workload:  In view of increased class sizes associated with the
university's budget cuts, Len has asked that people pay attention to
their workload and let him know if it appears to be increasing.  I
would like to second that - this is something I hoped we would have
time to talk about at the meeting.  Our contract sets strict limits on
the amount we are supposed to work (average of 20 hours/week for a 50%
position, 10 hours per week for a 25% position), so if you are working
more than that, the university is supposed to do something to address
the problem - either pay you more, assign another TA to the course, or
in some other way reduce the workload.  I know many people may be
worried about being seen as trouble-makers, and many of us may feel
that we maybe we could work faster so it's not the university's
problem that we are working too much - but I don't think that way of
looking at things does anyone (except penny-pinchers who don't care
about the quality of public education) any good - if we are letting
ourselves get overworked or trying to speed through our teaching
responsibilities, we're not going to be teaching as well, and the
situation will also be detracting from our research, causing us to
take longer to finish, and pulling down the quality of the graduate
program.  So, please do keep track of how much time you are putting
into your teaching, and let Len, your course instructor, and (if you
don't mind) me know if it is taking longer than it should.

Cheers,

Carla

-- 
Carla Essenberg
PhD Candidate and EEOBGSA President
Department of Biology
University of California, Riverside