Officer Reports for May 2nd 2014

GSA Treasurers Report – Jessica Aubin

-We continue to appreciate the patience that you and your RGSO’s have had throughout the transition.

-It is important moving forward with the new system next year, that RGSO reps that come to the trainings and assembly meetings are relaying information that they receive to the rest of their RGSO’s, especially if other members are the ones that are submitting financial requests. There have been many errors in submissions, much of which is due to what seems to be a lack of good communication within RGSO groups.

- Are there ways that we could help the RGSO’s next year to make sure that you only have to submit a request once?

-We have a meeting set up for the week of 5/5 with UAS to discuss at length some of the concerns we have with their practices, lack of good communication, and poor representation and attentiveness to our needs as a student group. If you have any concerns that you would like us to bring to the meeting please email me directly at .

Below is the budget as of 5/1/14:

GSA Budget as of 5/1/14
July 1, 2013- June 30, 2014
Revenue
Projected Revenue: / $194,788 / Actual Revenue: / $180,603
UAS Cash: / $30,000 / Actual Budget: / $188,103
Contingency Budget: / $22,500 / Total Allocated: / $154,589
Total Paid as of 5/1/14: / $110,452
Total: / $202,288
Expenses
Services / Budget / Allocated / Paid / Notes
GSA Direct Sponsor Events: / $6,000 / $3,664 / $3,664
RGSO: / $35,000 / $35,000 / $13,145
MCAA: / $6,000 / $2,821 / $2,670
Programming: / $6,000 / $3,255 / $917
Grants: / $43,000 / $34,665 / $19,555 / *Includes summer (8,000 for Sum 13, $35,000- for Fall, Spring, Sum 13-14
GSA Orientation Picnic: / $2,000 / $2,000 / $2,000
GSA End of Year Event: / $2,000 / $2,000
GSA Assembly Meetings: / $1,000 / $219 / $219
Total: / $101,000 / $83,624 / $42,170
Operations / Budget / Allocated / Paid / Notes
Office / New Computers / $6,000 / $4,330 / $4,330
Copier and Printers / $35,000 / $22,635 / $22,635
Telephone and Fax / $1,000 / $822 / $702
Organization Liability Insurance / $1,000 / $886 / $886
Office Supplies / $15,000 / $4,751 / $4,751
Total: / $58,000 / $33,424 / $33,304
Stipends / Grants Chair / $3,000 / $3,000 / $2,625
MCAA Chair / $3,000 / $2,625 / $2,250
Programming Chair / $3,000 / $3,000 / $2,625
Treasurer / $3,500 / $3,500 / $3,062
Vice- President / $3,500 / $3,500 / $3,062
President / $4,500 / $4,500 / $3,938
Lead Senator and Senators / $1,000 / $0
Total: / $21,500 / $20,125 / $17,562
Salaries / Office Managers (5) / $20,000 / $17,416 / $17,416
Web Master / $0 / $0
Total / $20,000 / $17,416 / $17,416

Proposed Budget for July 1, 2014- June 30, 2015

GSA Proposed Annual Budget
July 1, 2014- June 30, 2015
Statement of Estimated Revenue and Expenses
Revenue
Projected Revenue: / $190,000.00
UAS Cash:
Contingency Budget: / $15,000.00
Total: / $175,000.00
Expenses
Services
GSA Direct Sponsor Events: / $6,000.00
RGSO: / $35,000.00
MCAA: / $6,000.00
Programming: / $6,000.00
Grants: / $35,000.00
GSA Orientation Picnic: / $2,000.00
GSA End of Year Event: / $2,000.00
GSA Assembly Meetings: / $1,000.00
Total: / $93,000.00
Operations
Office
Copier and Printers / $22,500.00 / (1 lease, 3 service contracts)
Telephone and Fax / $1,000.00
Organization Liability Insurance / $1,000.00
Office Supplies / $15,000.00 / (Includes paper for all three campuses, water, other general supplies for all three campus offices)
Total: / $40,000.00
Stipends / Grants Chair / $3,000.00
MCAA Chair / $3,000.00
Programming Chair / $3,000.00
Treasurer / $3,500.00
Vice- President / $3,500.00
President / $4,500.00
Lead Senator and Senators / $1,000.00
Total: / $21,500.00
Salaries / Office Managers (5) / $20,000.00
Web Master / $1,000.00
Total / $21,000.00

MCAA Chair Report - Nantasha Williams

- ​​Updated MCAA Form (will try to post online and bring copies of this to the meeting)

- Establishedprotocols to receiving funds (discuss these at the GA meeting)

- Hosted another filmscreening with EGSO (The University of Sing Sing)

- Canceled Diversity Potluck Mixer because no one responded to the initial outreach email

Grants Chair Report – Kim Berg

The difficulties with Purchase Requests in order to process grant reimbursements, in the MyInvolvement system, have been resolved. The reimbursement process has resumed and over one-third of awardees have submitted reimbursement paperwork and have either received their refunds or are in the process of receiving. The new document upload process seems successful and has enabled us to streamline how reimbursements are forwarded.

The Summer grants program has already received applications. That application period will close on June 1 and will cover summer research/professional development costs, as well as unforeseen expenses for students who undertook research/professional development during the Spring 2014 semester. Only students who did not receive a grant in the Spring can apply for funding during the Summer 2014 period.

Vice President Report – Kat Slye

Additional & Summer Funding Requests:The RGSO Committee reviewed the requests for additional Spring and Summer funding and the RGSOs have been e-mailed their new award letters. All requests were granted the additional or summer funding.

Voucher Reminders:

  1. Remember to double check that you have uploaded all required paperwork when you submit a voucher. The ones people are usually forgetting are the RGSO Calendar or the payee certification. We don’t want to have to cancel a request for lack of documentation.
  2. If you have one person who made multiple purchases from multiple places, you can submit all of those purchases on one voucher. Thus, you only have to submit one voucher per person you need to reimburse for funds spent.
  3. Over the summer, the E-board will be working with UAS to try to simplify the voucher process. We will try to combine forms and possibly eliminate things we don’t really need from you. We will also be working on simplifying the requirements overall and making changes to the RGSO Handbook. If you have any feedback or ideas of how we might do this, please feel free to e-mail me at .

Programming Chair – Hanna Pageau

-We are waiting on reports from finances about the results of the Campus Clean-up.
- The End of the Year event will be held in Dutch Quad, however, as a backup we will serve food in the Uptown GSA Office in the event of poor weather.

President’s Report – Caitlin Janiszewski

President’s Forum – We had a successful President’s Forum which went was programmatically perfect. Hanna did a wonderful job with coordinating everything. We will continue to improve upon the President’s Forum each semester as we continue and open dialogue with the President.

UAS – UAS has agreed to a meeting in which we will confront them some important issues. As some of you know it has become apparent that the financial process dictated to us by UAS is out of compliance with NYS tax law. This, plus the payee cert surprise, plus our many past issues with UAS makes this meeting long overdue.

New officers – I’m very excited to welcome our new officers. Justin Chase has been elected to be our new treasurer, Brittany Glen will be our new MCAA chair, Ryan Gregoire will be our new Lead Senator, Kat Slye will continue as our Vice President, and I’m very happy to be serving as your President for another year.

Move upstairs – We are hammering out details with campus management about moving to the third floor for the foreseeable future as the campus center expansion project is completed. It looks like we will need substantial work done on the rooms we will be moving into in order to have the electricity to support our computers and printers so we will likely not be open this summer.

Senate – By the time I give this report I will have an update for you on the fate of the CAFFECoR amendment to the University Senate and should be able to report who the new vice chair is.

Appointments – Having only a few weeks between the election and the final assembly meeting I am not able to say who I plan on appointing for programming chair, grants chair, and Senators in this report. I will hopefully be making all my decisions by Tuesday or Wednesday.

East campus apology – I want to apologize to the East Campus students for all of their technical difficulties this semester.

Communications – Our communications director continues to work on an end of the year newsletter, an organizational map, network map, and orientation videos that we can utilize for recruitment and retention in the future.

RGSO guidelines – As some of you know, when I was elected last year I committed to reforming our grants program. RGSO guidelines are next. I know that the guidelines are cumbersome, the penalties can be steep for minor infractions, they are not paperless even though we have moved online, and they are subject to change each semester leading to inconsistencies. New members of the E-Board have already been working on ideas on how to simplify the RGSO guidelines, make them fairer, and finally we intend to make them only changeable with an assembly vote. Moving the system online secured our accounting processes, now we need to make this process simpler for everyone. I thank you for your patience this year.

Finally, I just want to acknowledge some people for their work this year. First, I want to thank all those who have served on the executive board, especially those who came on mid-year and jumped into some very difficult situations. I want to thank our Senators, council reps, and our UAS board rep Genevieve Kane. I want to thank everyone who worked in the office this year. The office is a very difficult place to work at times so I appreciate the patience they have shown. I want to thank the bylaws committee for their commitment, especially Gary Roth for his passionate participation, and Melissa Murata-Gomez for her selfless efforts. Whatever conflict we may have over the content of the bylaws, their committee’s service is exemplary.

There a few faculty and staff which have shown indispensible support this year – Miriam Trementozzi of Community Engagement who always showed incredible patience, Mary Ellen Mallia and Mary Alexis Leciewski from the sustainability office who always restored my faith when I felt hopeless, JoetteStefl-Mabry, Cynthia Fox, and Helene Scheck who provided incredible guidance throughout this year, Beth Conrad somehow always met me with a smile no matter how much I pestered her, and Bret Benjamin in particular has truly made exceptional sacrifices to support us this year.

A very special thanks to the Wages and Benefits Committee for establishing a foundation for us to advocate for graduate student well being. Thanks to Jackie Hayes who dedicated her time to chair the W&B and did an amazing job.

There are two members of the Executive Board who I need to give special thanks, and they are the only members who have stuck with me this entire year. Kim Berg our grants chair scores a perfect ten on the officer scoring sheet. Very rarely have I ever had to request more paperwork on a grant voucher or purchase request. She came on board in the summer last year, and ran the grants program without a guarantee that her appointment would be approved in the fall. We partnered to re-write and significantly improve the grants guidelines after which she took the initiative to further improve and simplify the process by moving it online and adjusting the process for the online system. She continues seek out best practices to improve our professional development goals. When I her for her interview last summer I barely knew her, and now she is one of my best friends.

Jessica Aubin has done more this year to support me and my vision for the GSA than anyone on the face of the earth. As our treasurer, she has gone far above and beyond to work towards making us a strong entity which can defend and support the graduate student body. She is tough as nails and a pain in the butt. But every time she gave me a hard time, it made me a better officer and a better leader. I cannot express how indebted I am to Jessica for everything she has done this year. She has walked me through panic attacks, supported me when I was shaking with fear under pressure, and endured long exhausting days to help this organization take itself to a whole new level. She has fought like a warrior to gain the GSA the respect of our University community. Don’t let her “I don’t care” face fool you, she cares more than anyone.

Finally, I need to thank someone who isn’t here anymore – Amber Wilmot. Last summer when I started as your President, she was our lead office manager, one of many who were trying to help us stand on our own feet. But more than that, Amber inspired me to pursue a great vision for the GSA. There was a moment in which I had a realization about what this job was, who we could be, and what it would take. I was frozen with hesitation wondering if it was worth it, thinking about the risks that could emerge, and especially wondering if the direction I was taking us was the right one. I presented my dilemma and she destroyed all my hesitation saying “it’s about time we make some noise”. None of our progress this year would have been possible without Amber Wilmot.

P.S. thanks to our awesome assembly for always showing up <3 see you in the fall 