Although much campus discussion this semester has focused on undergraduate residential life, attention centered on the other student constituency Monday night as Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, met with the Graduate and Professional Student Council. Moneta emphasized the importance of graduate and professional student life and discussed issues ranging from space to child care.
"We're trying to institutionalize the concerns of graduate and professional students so we're not just looking at it when issues arise, but on a regular basis," Moneta told the council.
Moneta noted his division's emphasis this year on residential life, particularly a vision for a renovated West Campus with an increased focus on quad programming and renovating student space. He said graduate and professional students will have a role in that vision; for example, each quad will have a team of medical students assigned to it as mentors.
"It's just an example of what we hope will happen with all the schools--connecting graduate and professional students to undergraduates, whether it's through informal advising or one-time career presentations," Moneta said.
Several students raised other issues of graduate and professional life, including the planned consolidation of two Craft Center locations on East Campus.
"[It] is much more inconvenient for graduate students because most of us aren't on East," said Tobin Freid, a second-year student in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. The move was necessary, Moneta said, because of the growing needs of the multicultural community.
Craig Borowiak, a student in political science, said several members of his department had questioned whether Student Affairs' influence comes at the expense of involvement from student and faculty members. Moneta stressed that the vision for campus life centers around intellectual engagement.
IN OTHER BUSINESS: GPSC President Elayne Heisler announced she had received 65 responses to a survey on graduate and professional student child care and that she will submit a report on the survey today to the Board of Trustees.
"The survey found what we largely thought, that this is not an issue for most people, but for those people it is a tremendous, tremendous issue," said Heisler, a third-year student in sociology.
The council elected representatives to three University committees, including the new Transportation Advisory Committee, the University Judicial Board and the President's Council on the Affairs of Black People.
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