GSA Presidential Address: Strategic Plan Progress Report

On November 15, 2018, the GSA launched our Strategic Plan Progress Report. At that event, our president, Surya Aggarwal, addressed the attendees. His remarks are below.

Thank you, Provost Weingart for your insightful words; and for being here today.

I also want to thank each of you for being here this afternoon - to celebrate with us our accomplishments over the past few years, to learn more about the graduate student experience at Carnegie Mellon, and brainstorm how we can work together to improve this experience.

You’ve heard this afternoon about why and how GSA embarked on this strategic planning journey. I especially want to thank Carolyn - thank you for your leadership through the strategic planning process and for being here to celebrate with us this afternoon.

Creation of the strategic plan was important in crystallizing GSA’s mission, and outlining a vision for graduate students at CMU - a vision that was created after directly hearing from numerous graduate students about their priorities.

But after the document’s creation, we had to start thinking “what’s next?”  We did not want to put this plan on a shelf and forget about it. Instead, we wanted to diligently follow it through and make the vision, it proposed, a reality. Our predecessors have worked hard towards that end, and I want to thank all of them for their efforts. Many of them are present in the room today - Carolyn, Daniel, Travis, Dacen, Tobi and Brad. Thank you!

As we move forward in this journey, it’s important to pause, take a moment, and reflect on accomplishments - and what still remains to be done. To course correct, if need be. To be accountable. With that in mind, we have put together a 3-Year Progress Report that I hope you’ve had a chance to grab a copy of when you walked in. This report informs the community of our progress while reiterating our commitment to the vision that it has laid down. Today, we are also launching an online platform that can be used to track this progress in real-time.

Since 2015, there have been significant strides taken to enhance the graduate student experience at CMU. Both by GSA and by university partners. I would like to take a few minutes to call attention to some of the goals that have been achieved.

We know that students’ Carnegie Mellon experience is a function of their sense of belonging to the University, the campus environment and its community. However, due to CMU’s decentralized nature, graduate students reported feeling siloed within their respective buildings or floors with no university-wide common space to come together and collaborate. To address that need, GSA invested in building a Graduate Student Lounge, here in the University Center, with help from our Dean of Students. I am happy to report that since its creation many graduate students have expressed their delight in having a place where they can spend time working, to grab a bite between classes, or to come together to socialize.

GSA has also built this sense of community by increasing the amount of campus-wide programming we offer. Last year, we held over 80 events. And this number is only increasing - we are also partnering with many different student organizations to expand the scope of our programming activities - so we can attempt to better cater to the diverse needs of our constituents.

I also do want to acknowledge graduate students’ deep connection to their home departments and colleges - and that their interactions there - are crucial to their Carnegie Mellon experience.  GSA representatives have made great strides in creating their own graduate student experience at the program level. Whether it is Biology & Chemistry grad students coming together to forsake a departmental lounge space to create fitness facilities in Mellon Institute - or EPP reps advocating for a single physical space to unite their decentralized graduate student office locations and spending many hours to turn that space into a beautiful lounge. Students continually leverage GSA funds or support to enhance their own and their peers’ CMU experience.

For many years, GSA had heard numerous stories about students having difficulties with landlords and poor-living conditions but no legal resource. And as you’ve already heard, earlier this year, in partnership with the Provost’s Office and the Undergraduate Student Senate, we launched a program that provides free legal consultations to students.

GSA is committed to promoting an inclusive and equitable climate where students of various diverse identities feel welcomed. We are glad that CMU has taken an important first step in creating the Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion to further promote these ideals. GSA has been delighted by the opportunities for partnership with the Center, and many student organizations to support a diverse community. Whilst an important step, we hope that the cause of promoting diversity & inclusion doesn’t rest solely with the Center. Recruiting a truly diverse class of students and faculty and providing them with the requisite support is a responsibility of all campus units.

On our end, GSA has recognized the need for greater support of some specific student populations and created two new positions to represent the interests of these groups - the International Student Advocate & Family & Partner Advocate. In this space, one area that we still lag behind our peers is in the provision of childcare services or grant programs for graduate students. We believe that accomplishing this unfinished recommendation of the strategic plan will demonstrate our commitment to supporting students from different backgrounds.

Another area that GSA has focused on is - development beyond the classroom. We earmark a considerable portion of our budget to provide opportunities for around 200 graduate students to travel for research conferences each year. We hope that this number can increase with greater support from campus partners.

And how can we forget that it was only last winter, that GSA took a lead nationally in successfully opposing the provisions of the federal tax bill that had proposed to tax graduate student tuition waivers.

It is for all these efforts that earlier this month, Carnegie Mellon’s GSA was awarded the 2018 National Association of Graduate Professional Students’ Northeast Member of the Year award competing with schools such as MIT, UPenn & Columbia as fellow members of the Northeast region. Over the past few years, many CMU graduate students have been elected to serve on both the regional and national boards of NAGPS, highlighting that we do prioritize supporting leadership experiences at CMU & beyond.

I’m also glad that over the past few years there has been significant focus on developing and expanding resources to support general wellness of graduate students at CMU including mental health. I am thankful to the Task Force on CMU Experience for taking a landmark decision of making GroupX classes free for students.

Last week, CMU made another important stride by launching our own, on-campus Pantry to fight campus food insecurity. The launch of the pantry was a recognition by the university that many, many factors play a role in student well-being and academic success - and that we can’t turn a blind eye to the ones outside the classroom. It was almost a year ago that I launched the GSA Basic Needs Working Group - with the charge for the group to focus on food insecurity in its inaugural year. I couldn’t be more proud of the work done by this dedicated group of students led by Sarah & Stephanie in putting together a proposal & supporting the creation of an on-campus pantry. A huge thank you to Gina Casalegno, Liz Vaughan, and the Campus Food Insecurity Committee for helping making the pantry happen.

While there is a lot to celebrate, there is still much that remains to be done.

Something that is central to the success of students is the level and quality of mentorship they receive from their advisors. With the job-market becoming more competitive, this has never been more important. Last year, GSA undertook a massive effort to further understand this space and bring to the fore many questions and conversations regarding mentorship climate at CMU. I want to thank Laurie & the Task Force on CMU Experience for also recognizing this, and creating working groups for examining this space and making recommendations. I remain hopeful that the recommendations made by these working groups, will be seriously considered and implemented - and that advising will continue to remain a focus in the future. Greater career & professional development support for graduate students is also something that needs to be prioritized in the future.

We believe that financial security can have an outsized impact on graduate student population. And with that in mind, we have undertaken annual publishing of a stipend report that details financial support provided to PhD students across different departments at CMU. These reports have highlighted the need for establishing minimum stipend floors and subsidized health insurance across the university. Further, there is a need for more financial support for all our graduate students, especially the currently underserved Master’s student population - this will help expand the accessibility to the much-sought after Carnegie Mellon Education. It has been said that education is the great equalizer - but access to that education is a pre-condition which must be met for that to be true.

These and many other such pending issues that have been laid down by our strategic plan are critical to enhancing the graduate student experience at Carnegie Mellon; and I hope will be accomplished in the years to come. I expect years from now, if future GSAs evaluate our collective progress 6 or 7-years into the Strategic Plan, we’ll have much more to celebrate.

I want to thank our advisors, both former and current in helping us accomplish these goals - Suzie Laurich-McIntyre, Jamie Rossi, Holly Hippensteel, Kaycee Palko, Liz Vaughan, Anne Witchner and Linda Gentile.

A special thank you also to Dr. Amy Burkert who has always provided us with wise counsel, and supported these goals.

We would have never been able to accomplish many of these goals without the partnership and support provided by many of you in this room; but there is much more than we can achieve together. I invite you to engage with members of the GSA Executive Committee following these remarks on discussing ways to enhance the graduate student experience and how you can join us in this journey.

Thank you all for being here, hope you have a wonderful afternoon.