GPSO E-Newsletter: October 10, 2013

In this Issue:

From the President's Desk

Upcoming GPSO Events: Grad House Café, IU Board of Trustees Meeting

Open Meeting Space: IU Grad House

Fellowship Available: Future Faculty Teaching

Travel Opportunity: International Exchange Programs

Guest Article: Students Talking About Technology

GPSO plans your weekend!

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From the President's Desk

Good Afternoon,

There have been some exciting developments on campus in recent weeks  concerning important issues for graduate students.  You may have heard some rumblings about concerns centering around the proposed consolidations that would result in a new School of Media on campus, and also the affects on employment benefits caused by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.  GPSO has also been busy internally to ensure that it is as open as possible for graduate student involvement.

The proposed School of Media will be considered and voted upon by the Board of Trustees at their meeting next week.  The detailed plan and proposal can be found on the Provost's website.  GPSO is working hard to gather input from the various student populations that will be affected by such a consolidation; we are also working with the Provost to ensure that graduate students are an integral part of the School formation, if it is passed by the board. Check out our discussion forum for resources and open conversation.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will be implemented nationally in the coming months.  As a body with a large amount of employees, Indiana University will be making policy changes to be in compliance with the ACA.  The campus human resources departments will be actively offering educational seminars to ensure that students are well aware of how they will be affected.  GPSO is working with the Vice President of Human Resources to ensure that students are aware of coming changes; we are also investigating the details of ACA implementation policies to ensure that any university policy changes are as least detrimental to graduate students as possible.

Finally, the GPSO Assembly, comprised of representatives from each graduate program, has recently passed the "Fairness in Elections Act."  This Act opens up future GPSO office elections to all graduate students, rather than only those who are already a part of the organization.  This is in a continuing effort to make your student government as open and transparent as possible. A copy of the legislation will be available soon on our resolutions page.

I am happy to report that our campus administration is incredibly helpful and collaborative as GPSO has pursued the interests of graduate and professional students.  I am also excited to share that we have an exceptionally proactive and dedicated GPSO Assembly and Executive Committee to represent us this year!

Sincerely,
Brady Harman

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Upcoming GPSO Events

Grad House Café - Tuesday, 9-11am

GPSO welcomes you to our first biweekly coffee hour!

Stop by the Grad House (803 E. 8th Street) between 9 and 11am on Tuesday, October 15, for FREE coffee and Bloomington Bagels.

This will be a regular event on the first and third Tuesdays of each month this fall. Check us out on Facebook, and start your day off with us at this first Grad House Café!

IU Board of Trustees Meeting - Oct. 17-18

The IU Board of Trustees will be holding their next open meeting for IU Bloomington on October 17 and 18. For schedule and agenda, please see their website.

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Open Meeting Space: IU Grad House

Do you have an IU club, organization, or study group in need of a meeting place? GPSO is opening its doors for your use!

The Grad House is located at 803 E. 8th Street and has a conference room and living room, each seating 8-10 people, for you to reserve.

Availability:

• Monday: 10:30am - 3pm
• Tuesday: 9am - 4pm
• Wednesday: 10:30am - 3pm
• Thursday: 9am - 3pm
• Friday: 1 - 4pm

If you would like an evening or weekend meeting time, please contact gpso@indiana.edu with your request, and we will do our best to have a representative present to unlock the building.

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Fellowship Available: Future Faculty Teaching

This fellowship provides the opportunity to teach for an entire academic year at Butler University or one of the Indiana University branch campuses:

IUPUI (Indianapolis)
IUPU Columbus
IU East (Richmond)
IPFW (Fort Wayne)
IU Kokomo
IU Northwest (Gary)
IU South Bend
IU Southeast (New Albany)

$10,000 stipend from the University Graduate School, plus $2,000 to cover moving
expenses if the fellow is required to relocate to the area of the host campus. Host
campuses pay an additional teaching salary to fellows (minimum of $6,000 for the
academic year). Please note: This fellowship does not carry a fee remission. Participants are expected to be eligible to register in G901 or equivalent research credit.

Required residency in the host campus community at least part of each week during the
fellowship year. Assistance in finding affordable living accommodations is provided by
the host campus. Relocation is optional if teaching at IUPUI, IUPU Columbus, or Butler
University. Teaching load is two courses per semester.

For more information and the application procedure, please refer to the FFTF Applicant Guidelines.

Deadline: October 11, 2013

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Travel Opportunity: International Exchange Programs

Indiana University maintains exchange agreements with top universities around the world that provide important mobility opportunities for graduate students. These programs, administered by the Office of the Vice President for International Affairs (OVPIA), advance IU's International Strategic Plan through reciprocal exchanges of students with many of IU's overseas partners.

Applicants may be graduate students from any discipline, department, or campus who are making normal academic progress. Each applicant must submit a proposal for a program that would constitute an integral part of a well-conceived graduate degree program at IU. 

Exchange participants receive sufficient funding to cover their expenses. The Office of the Vice President for International Affairs (OVPIA) covers the cost of airfare, and participants receive a reasonable living stipend either from OVPIA or the partner institution. For all programs, the partner institution provides housing or helps participants make housing arrangements.

2014-2015 Programs:

• China: Peking University*
• Costa Rica: University of Costa Rica, San Jose*
• Germany: Free University of Berlin, Berlin**
• Mexico: National Autonomous University of Mexico/UNAM*
• Poland: Jagiellonian University, Krakow*
• Poland: Warsaw University, Warsaw **
• South Korea: Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul*
• Spain: University of Seville, Seville***
• Thailand: National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok**
• Turkey: Bogazici University, Istanbul*

  * semester only
 ** year or semester
*** year with teaching appointment

Deadline: October 25, 2013

Please note that you must be enrolled in an IU graduate program during the 2014-2015 Academic Year to be eligible. 

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Guest Article: Students Talking About Technology

By Jason B Jones; via The Chronicle for Higher Education

The Educause Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) has released the latest version of its annual report, ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2013. I first started paying attention to ECAR about 5 or 6 years ago when I was at a school that participated in the survey. It’s a good study to participate in, because you get some more data points about how students use technology at your school–but even if your school doesn’t participate in the study, there are data points that will probably interest ProfHacker readers. I’ll just highlight four:

First, students have lots of devices, but relatively little incentive or freedom to use them in class:

Students did seem to indicate an interest in having their phones and/or tablets be more directly incorporated into academics.

Second, two-thirds of students report that their faculty “use technology effectively”:

It’s a little unclear what the students’ judgment is based on here: stuff not crashing? Faculty finding their comfort zone and sticking with it? Regardless, it is useful to know that students respect the faculty’s technology use.

Third, the report asserts that “60% of students prefer to keep their academic and social lives separate,” although there wasn’t a lot of followup about student interest in social networking and academic work in general. (For example, since a lot of Twitter clients support multiple accounts, it’s not terribly difficult to keep one’s academic and social life separate.)

And finally, the report also says that students prefer that faculty themselves provide instruction in how to use technology, rather than rely on the help desk or online-only documentation, which suggests that for the foreseeable future, faculty who incorporate technology in interesting or significant ways will need to continue to budget class time to cover how to use the tech.

There are also interesting results about how students want to use LMSes, and more. As always, Educause interprets the data in light of its understanding of of the institional/corporate world of information technology, rather than a faculty-centered one. (As I’ve already joked on Twitter, no one but Educause would characterize the fact that “Students expressed only moderate interest in learner analytics” as a “surprising” finding, unless what was surprising was that their interest was as high as “moderate.”) Nevertheless, it is certainly helpful to understand how students talk about their use of information technology, especially as one considers incorporating social media, or thinking about an electronic device policy.

At the ECAR site, you can download the full report, an infographic drawn from it, and the survey instrument.

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GPSO plans your weekend!

October 11 - 13:

• October 11, 5-9pm: Haunted Museum Tour (Monroe County History Center, $5)

• October 12, 10pm: New Wave Night 80s Dance Party (Root Cellar, free)

• October 13, 10am-7pm: Fowler Pumpkin Picking Patch (4865 S Leonard Springs Rd, prices vary)

Nothing look good to you?

Check out the ongoing exhibits featured in the sidebar or visit www.bloomingtonscene.com and www.visitbloomington.com for the full on- and off-campus scoop.

Have an event to promote?

Email me at gpso@indiana.edu, and I can help you spread the e-word to our fellow grad students.

Go have some fun!

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