Marrah Lachowicz-Scroggins is the 2009-2010 GSA External Chair
See also 2008-2009 GSA External Chair.
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Marrah Lachowicz-Scroggins, GSA External Chair
Phone: 530-752-5547
FAX: 530-752-5423
Email: gsaexternalchair@ucdavis.edu
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GRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
P: 530.752.6108
F: 530.752.5158
E: gsa@ucdavis.edu
W: ![[WWW]](http://wikispot.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
http://www.gsa.ucdavis.edu
Congresswoman Doris Matsui CA-05 (center) with GSA External Chair Marrah Lachowicz-Scroggins (left) and NAGPS Western Regional Coordinator Ryan Peacock Stanford (right), two students from Duke University (outside ends): Legislative Action Days March 2009
Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI, right) with GSA External Chair Marrah Lachowicz-Scroggins. Rep. Kennedy received an award on behalf of his father, the late Ted Kennedy at the Committee for Education Funding Legislative Conference September 30, 2009
MONTHLY REPORTS
July 2009
I've just returned from the University of Nebraska Lincoln to assist the NAGPS Executive Board and campus representatives from UNL in planning the NAGPS Annual Conference to be held November 14-18, 2009. Stephanie and are working on compiling information to educate graduate students about the state budget crisis and how it directly impacts the UC and higher education. Please visit this page, UC Budget, and bookmark it to check for updates. I started my research for the Sustainability Subcommittee and plan to post current campus and city resources on the GSA Sustainability page. Additionally, the NAGPS Legislative Action Days are coming up in September. We are planning our lobbying events and issues we will discuss with California representatives, including Open Access to Research, Keeping and Extending Graduate Student Loan Programs, Including our Interests in Health Care Reform, RISE Act and proposed FAFSA questionnaire changes and VISA Reform for US Educated Graduate Students.
August 2009
UCSA Congress will be held at UC Santa Cruz August 6-9, 2009. GSA Chair Malaika Singleton will attend our behalf. The registration this year covers room and board, so the expense of sending a representative was worth the cost of allowing is to make connections with the other UC GSA's. Stephanie will be leaving Davis at the end of August; we are looking for a new lobby assistant. If you know any one who is interested, please let me know. I've launched the registration for the NAGPS National Conference and registration is $125 per student. I've also generated a Facebook event for Legislative Action Days and the NAGPS National Conference. Please join the NAGPS Facebook if you would like more information.
The EC selected a candidate for IGS Coordinator, we will present this candidate for approval by the general assembly in October. Legislative Assistant interviews are also occurring this month.
Finally, I have finally found a new lawyer for our GSA. We are at the beginning of contract negotiations at this time.
September 2009
The GSA has hired a new Legislative Assistant/Scheduler to help assist with our ongoing legislative efforts on behalf of graduate and professional students on campus. Please welcome Jeremia Kimelman if you see him around the GSA office. Please see GSA Legislative Assistant.
I have been working with Will Klein this summer who serves on the ASUCD Environmental Policy and Planning Commission to see if there is a feasible to get UNITRANS access to for graduate students on a fee basis. The motivation for this work is my sub-project in sustainability. I am trying to get students out of their cars and onto other modes of transportation. Many students, including myself, are commuter students who use their cars to drive around town and campus we do not have the "unlimited" ride access as undergraduate students. We met with a group of students and UNITRANS employees to discuss this issue. At the moment, we are going to try to use the TAPS fall survey to determine the ridership by graduate students and if they would be able to use the service if they were assessed a quarterly fee. I did find out however that the new UNITRANS H-Line provides free service to and from Silo/Health Sciences district.
GSA Chair, Malaika Singleton and I met with ASUCD President Joe Chatham, ASUCD Vice President Chris Dietrich, and the ASUCD University Affairs Office to determine what areas we can partner on in the next academic year. Malaika and Joe plan to participate in the UC AS/GSA President's Council. We will try to partner on lobbying efforts, particularly on local issues at the capitol. We will also try to get access to the regents and UCOP through white lining privileges as we are not represented solely for not being members of UCSA. Graduate students are welcome to participate in Lobby Corps. ASUCD may also ask the GSA to align with them on resolutions to support or not support bills going through the capitol. Finally, we will all work together to maintain transparency on campus. GSA and ASUCD reps will have regular meetings.
From my two terms as serving as an executive officer for the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, I feel that this group is in need of some reorganization. I think the current officer structure can been streamlined and the organization made more efficient. I have offered some constitutional amendments with corresponding author Brent Laabs (former NAGPS officer and professional at legalese) to be proposed at the NAGPS National Membership meeting in November. For more information please see NAGPS Constitutional Amendments
Met with NAGPS Legislative Concerns Chair, James Hodgson, and several students from the Stanford Graduate Student Council to prepare the white papers for our legislative appointments in Washington, DC with California House and Senate representatives. Additionally, MIT students provided some background research on some of the key issues for graduate students at the national level. I've posted the documents below:
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Federal Research Public Access Act.pdf and Federal Research Public Access Act White Paper.pdf
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Graduate Student Tax Exemption.pdf and Graduate Student Tax Exemption White Paper.pdf
NAGPS Legislative Action Days September 30-October 2, 2009
Legislative Conference and Gala
The Committee for Education Funding hosted a legislative conference and gala dinner on September 30, 2009. Several distinguished guests received awards, including Rep. Patrick Kennedy who received a lifetime award on behalf of his father (photo above). Notes from the meeting: 
Committee for Education Funding 2009 Legislative Conference.doc please remember these are not to be viewed as official documents but my notes from attending the meeting.
Legislative Appointments October 1-2
GSA Vice-Chair Karinna Hurley, myself and two representatives from Stanford made over 20 visits in two days.
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Rep. George Miller's committee staff in Education and Labor (UCD)
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Rep. Zoe Lofgren (Stanford)
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Rep. Anna Eshoo (Stanford)
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Rep. Duncan Hunter (UCD)
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Senator Barbara Boxer (UCD)
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Senator Diane Feinstein (UCD/Stanford)
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Rep. Buck McKeon (UCD)
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Rep. Howard Berman (UCD)
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Rep. Elton Gallegly (UCD)
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Rep. Dan Lungren (UCD)
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Rep. Linda Sanchez (UCD)
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Senator Charles Schumer (UCD)
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Rep. Tom McClintock (UCD)
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Rep. Mike Thompson (UCD)
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Rep. Doris Matsui (UCD)
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Rep. Lois Capps (UCD)
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Rep. Wally Herger (UCD)
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Senator Joe Lieberman (UCD)
October 2009
Please see some of my committee reports for work I have done this month. Working with the NAGPS Constitutional Committee to draft a compromise document between the Secretary, Ombudsman and NERC proposals.
November 2009
Malaika and I will attend the NAGPS National Conference at the University of Nebraska Lincoln November 14-18th. I have personally been very busy with the conference planning as NAGPS Secretary. I have been working on the NAGPS constitutional committee as well as maintaining the conference webpage and weekly annoucements. I will provide a detailed report from the conference proceedings when I return.
I have been working with ASUCD (University Affairs; Jeremia our Lobby Assistant also sit on this committee) and UCLA GSA to obtain whiteliner privileges to the UC Regents. Through all of their work they have gotten the run around and no real answer on how to obtain this access for our groups. We are continually referred to UCSA as we think UCOP may interpret our request as asking to be one of UCSA's 4 designated student whiteliners, which isn't the case. I've done some additional research that I've passed on to ASUCD UA and UCLA GSA. It seems that there have been other groups that have obtained whiteliner privileges. Jeremia has put out an email to find out how they obtained this access. Additionally, as a group of three we can pool time for public comment at the Regents meeting to receive 7 minutes for our group. Additionally, we may submit materials for distribution to the Regent's Secretary. These last two options are specifically outline in their bylaws. Therefore, at this time we will use these rules to access the Regents at the November meeting at UCLA. The UCLA GSA will focus on fee increases and UCD GSA will focus on the GSHIP vote. As more information is available, I will post it here. In the meantime, we are still working on obtaining our own not UCSA-affiliated student whiteliner access to the Regents for the future.
COMMITTEES
Student Affairs Budget Advisory Group
Student Affairs Budget Advisory Group
Group started last academic year to deal with the cuts Student Affairs would receive in addition to cuts from 2007-2008 that were made permanent for their annual budget. Comprised of student affairs administration and leaders from groups on campus funded by the student affairs budget.
September 8, 2009
Met to give a status update on last year's discussions as well as provide an orientation for new members to the group. Student affairs has received notification of an additional budget reduction above the amounts we discuss during last academic year while they were budget planning. Additionally, there is an estimated larger cut for the 2010-2011 year and we will get more information about this soon. Some of this budget information will be provided on our already existing page, Student Affairs Budget, which I will update soon.
Health Fee Oversight Committee
September 15, 2009
The Student Health Center is shifting to an "Open Access" model for appointments. For more information on what this means to you and your standard of care please see Appointments. With the UC-wide directive to meeting staffing furloughs Cowell has been operating on decreased staff plan which will hinder their plans to move to this open access model and their ideas of optimal service in new health center building. The current furlough model consistently has understaffed primary care physicians and often students have been deferred to the urgent care clinic for non-urgent issues. The health center would like to move to a reduced hour schedule where there are more primary care physicians during a shorter work day, to help meet the open access model. A proposal for new student health center hours of operation would close the health center at 6:00 PM daily (instead of 7:30 PM) and eliminate Sunday Urgent Care as well as meet the current furlough hours required by Cowell. The proposal will keep the health center fully staffed during business hours rather than causing employees to take furlough time during normal business hours. The health fee oversight committee approved this recommendation for the 2009-2010 academic year.
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Next meeting scheduled 10-27-09; I was out of town for this meeting but will update this section once I receive minutes from the meeting
Student Health Insurance Committee
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First meeting scheduled 10-22-09; I was out of town for this meeting but will update this section once I receive minutes from the meeting
City-UCD Student Liaison Commission
City-UCD Student Liaison Commission
September 2009
After considering other obligations may not allow me to chair the commission, I offered to serve as vice-chair and current ASUCD Vice President Chris Dietrich will chair this year's commission. Next month our commission will have a joint meeting with City Council to focus on the commission's work in rental issues. The Renter's Subcommittee has recommended we move forward on several action items; development of a renters educational information guide, post the 2009 renter’s survey online for review of locals' concerns can continue to monitor renters' issues by doing the survey on a annual basis at ASUCD housing day. One of the more current projects is the Davis Neighbor's Night Out. The City of Davis would like to encourage you to host a party for the upcoming Davis Night Out on Sunday, October 11, 2009. Each host will receive a complementary $25 gift certificate to Davis Co-Op to purchase goods to host your party. Additionally the campus Safe Party Initiative is giving prizes for simply attending a party and larger prices for hosting a party! For more information please see Safe Party or City of Davis. Here is an article with more information DNNO.
October 2009
This will be a joint commission/city council meeting, to primarily discuss rental issues in the city of Davis.
November 2009
The commission formulated its work plan for the year. We will focus on renter's issues, student "friendly" businesses/discount programs, sustainability, student-police relations and campus-city entertainment partnerships.
GSHIP Campaign
I have been trying to keep our campus in the loop about the UCSA GSHIP Campaign since last academic year.
I recently found out that the request for bids will go out for the system-wide GSHIP campaign through updates from the Graduate-Professional Student Committee at UCSA. With this, I felt that the GSA should get more involved in this process, as bids start to come in, we should be able to look at the proposals and bids. We want to make sure that the new plan, if adopted by the Regents/UCOP will at minimum meet our current plans' coverage and preferably enhance it (particularly with dependent health care). I have scheduled a meeting with those individuals in administration who have been working on this campaign during system-wide meetings.
September 14, 2009
Graduate Studies Associate Dean Lenora Timm is the contact our campus who has been working with the administrators from other campuses and UCOP on the system-wide GSHIP proposal. They have been working together for since last academic year on what to include in a system-wide plan. Timm has put a strong emphasis on dependent health care as an option for the plan. Very recent data from the retention survey projects about 30% of our students have one more dependant. In the "insurance world" once you hit 1000 the cost of service on a group plan goes down therefore it could be feasible that between all of the campuses there is at least 5000 students with dependents; although it is likely the number is larger. The system-wide group sent out a RFP and these will be presented to the committee within the next few days. Timm has requested we start a committee to specifically review the bids and determine if any will meet the needs of our campus. I've been in contact with the administrative coordinator for the current UCD SHIP committee to obtain the names of the graduate and professional students currently serving on that committee. I've also been in contact with student leaders from the vet and law schools; so once these meetings start, all those covered on our current SHIP plan who would move to the new GSHIP plan (if approved) will be represented in the meeting.
September 30, 2009
A webinar was hosted to train each campuses' workgroups on how to score the GSHIP bids.
October 5, 2009
Met with the UCD workgroup to discuss our progress on scoring, decided we all need to do our individual scoring this week. We will meet this week to compare our scoring and decide which proposal we'd like to send as our campus recommendation.
October 19, 2009
Dean Timm met with the system-wide work group, this information is confidential at this time but at the meeting they reviewed all of the campuses' scores of the plans given to us.
October 22, 2009
UCSA asked for more student representation on the system-wide GSHIP workgroup. I sent an email indicating that if meetings were held at UCOP, the students on the Davis GSHIP work group could attend and I would facilitate transportation.
November 3, 2009
I was granted access to the conference call, as part of the system-wide workgroup, to discuss the financial aspects of the plan. At this time, I cannot report any information as this is still confidential. However, this information is to be presented to the University Office of the President as a potential Regent's item to mandate system-wide graduate student coverage (at this time, only undergraduates have this mandate and graduate student mandates are campus by campus) and potentially vote on creating a system-wide plan.
GSHIP Literature from UCSA
GSHIP Factsheet_draft.pdf GSHIP Newspaper Article.pdf I sent a copy of this to the Aggie 11/4/09; asking for publication on this issue GSHIP_Postcard_to_the_Regents.pdf Please feel free to have students fill these out and return them to the GSA office, we will collect these and send them to UCOP on your behalf
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