Focusing on one of its main projects of the year, Graduate Student Senate (GSS) announced Friday, during their last meeting of the semester, that a partial version of the graduate student handbook is available online.
Updates will continue into next semester as proposals by the senate become approved policies.
“There are a few items that we had asked for but because they need to have more research and an actual policy written, they’re not there,” Shelley Clagg, president of GSS, said.
The graduate handbook, which is the first of its kind in the graduate college, will provide protection for research projects and ensure that students get credit for their work.
“Basically I know what they’re wanting is something in writing showing rights and responsibilities,” Clagg said.
Though this is the assumption, graduate students are encouraged to review the partial version of the handbook and direct any feedback to GSS.
According to Clagg, it is the responsibility of the GSS senators to notify others in their department about the existence of the handbook online.
Besides providing basic guidelines and protection of research for graduate students, the handbook will also address protecting graduate students from their individual departments and supervising professors.
According to Clagg, personal testimonies dealing with being over and under worked beyond 20 hours a week is a problem for many graduate students.
“There’s a real inequity in what a 20-hour work week mean based on various departments,” Clagg said. “That’s one of the things that is being looked at.”
Besides creating the graduate student handbook, GSS had also envisioned updating their constitution early in the semester.
According to Vice President Deirdre Rogers, this project will have to wait until next semester because students who volunteered to participate in this committee cannot be contacted.
“There’s some wording that needs to be updated and some clarification that needs to be done within the constitution,” Rogers said. “I’m hoping to get that done early next semester and get it to the body to be voted on.”
Though the end of the semester means graduation for many students, replacing a few of their senators is not a major ordeal for GSS.
“We ask that people who are graduating find somebody ahead of time,” Clagg said.
To view the progress of the Graduate Student Handbook, go to: www.bgsu.edu/colleges/gradcol/studenthbk/tableofcontents.html