Amanda Anastasia Paniagua | Graduate Student Senate – Senate Executive Committee

I want to welcome new and returning graduate students to Bowling Green State University (BGSU) for the Fall 2022 semester and introduce the 2022-2023 Graduate Student Senate – Senate Executive Committee (GSS SEC) to the wider campus community and share our overarching vision for the academic year. 

Collectively, we are focused on community convergence, or seeking out the ways in which graduate students can work together with BGSU administration, faculty, staff, undergraduate students and the Bowling Green community to advocate for change through our collective graduate student voice here at BGSU. We strive for the pathway to community convergence through the following:

1. Active Listening

2. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

3. Community Involvement

If you are a currently enrolled graduate student, you are already a part of the student body that we serve. Talk to your graduate coordinator to find out who your academic program senator or representative is, and make sure you are on the Graduate Student Senate Canvas shell to take full advantage of all that the senate has to offer, including access to applications for professional development funding. 

GSS SEC has been working behind the scenes in recent weeks to address long standing concerns around health insurance costs and the current stipend rates across the campus for graduate students. Another graduate student, Hali Kivari, recently noted the current lack of transparency regarding student stipend amounts and we too, share this concern.

In addition to these concerns, we are also working to gather data about graduate students’ feelings around belonging here at BGSU, within the larger graduate student community and within their respective colleges and programs. 

We cannot fully advocate without your participation and the feedback you bring to us. 

Additionally, Amanda Grace Taylor, GSS President, and Nick Malendowski, GSS Vice President, have been tasked by BGSU President Rogers with benchmarking where the university stands in relation to other four-year public institutions across the country in relation to BGSU’s graduate student healthcare costs and current graduate student stipends. 

It is the hope of the GSS SEC that we can advocate for BGSU to do more public good and do better for its current graduate students based on current policies at peer institutions. 

Using our vision, data and policies at peer institutions will position the GSS SEC, senators and representatives to advocate on behalf of the 3,200 plus graduate students at BGSU and leave a better campus for our undergraduate students who could find themselves as graduate students themselves. 

In other words, we want to leave campus better equipped for future generations of graduate students. 

All General Assembly meetings are open to the public and will take place in the Education Building, room 115 and virtually via Zoom. Join us at our first meeting of the semester on Friday, Sept. 9 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

If you have questions or concerns for the GSS SEC, please e-mail [email protected]. Join our group on BGSUserves and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.