At Wednesday’s meeting the Graduate Student Organization plans to adopt a resolution that will officially establish a Grant Committee to review graduate student requests for travel and research funding.

Though the committee was established around five years ago, most decision-making has been done internally, said GSO President Patrick Neary. Tomorrow’s meeting will signify GSO’s plans to improve transparency between committees and the overall GSO senate, he said.

“In the past, the committee was simply given the power to make (funding) changes,” Neary said. “We want to put it in front of the senate to show how the program is being operated.”

The Grant Committee consists of members of the executive board, the senate and two co-chairs who process applications that request funding for travel and research endeavors. The travel grants cover expenses when students go to conferences, while the research grants cover the costs of things like research materials.

Around 250 students usually apply for travel grants, but only 20–30 students apply for research grants because the program has only been active since last spring, said Peta Long, co-chair of the Grant Committee. The senate receives far less applications for research grants because the process to apply is “very extensive,” she said.

“A lot of students are still trying to figure out what our research is going to look like,” Long said.

For the 2013–14 academic year, Neary said travel grants were allotted $52,500 and research grants were given $12,500. Students who apply for travel grants can receive up to $300, while research grants are capped at $500 per person.

Though the program is one of GSO’s most popular services, Neary said it will likely see some budget cuts. Last year, travel grants were $55,000. The grants were cut to $52,500 this year as a result of some oversight by a 2011 GSO comptroller, Neary said.

The comptroller approached enrollment asking what the graduate population was, but didn’t distinguish that not all graduate students pay a student fee for GSO to run, he said. The GSO collects fees from all matriculated, main campus students. This disqualifies online students and non-matriculated students, such as professors who take one or two classes, Neary said.

This meant that the comptroller recorded a graduate population of 5,600 students instead of the 4,700 who paid the fee. Neary said GSO swiftly went from a budget of $525,000 per year to $390,000.

“We had a fairly good roll-over cushion for the next year,” he said. “But because of that we did about $45,000 in emergency cuts — some of which had to be made to the travel program.”

The resolution proposes that students can apply for one research grant and one travel grant per year, which Neary said has become a point of contention among the senate.

In a previous senate meeting, he said a student brought up a vote independently of the committee that would limit students to one application total — either research or travel.

“The committee would like to switch it back to one of each program,” Neary said. “There are pros and cons to each side. I’m not even sure where I identify, but wealth redistribution gets tricky.”

Neary described it as a “concentrated benefits issue.” Because students can receive up to $800, the senate wants to make sure that one student doesn’t receive a disproportionately large amount of money, he said.

The resolution will allow students to apply for travel grants every month, as opposed to every semester, and will permit them to apply for research grants as well, Long said. The senate decided to allow applications every month so that the number of applications would be evenly distributed throughout the year. If applications were only accepted in December and April, like Long said they were before, the senate might receive as many as 175 applications at a time.

“We’re encouraging (students) to plan accordingly and apply in a timely fashion,” Long said.

Regardless of debate, Long said the resolution being addressed on Wednesday will standardize the way students apply for grants and the way that grants are reviewed and rewarded. She said the ultimate goal is to move away from operating the committee in an ad-hoc fashion and toward a body that works hand in hand with the entire senate.

Said Long: “We’re presenting it to the senate so they can approve and create a legacy of a standard based on efficiency.”

Published on March 26, 2014 at 1:29 am

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu