GSA Contributes $175,000 to University Endowment

At our regularly scheduled meeting last night, the Graduate Studen Assembly (GSA) decided to contribute $175,000 from our Capital Reserve to the CMU endowment. This is a testament to both the strength of our graduate student body and its leadership. I venture to say that nowhere else in the world is another student government wrestling with such significant decisions that can impact their university communities to such a high degree. I want to thank both our former Vice President of Finance Will Boney for starting this process with Michael Murphy and our current VPF Grace Heckmann for seeing the process to a successful completion. All of our Reps provided valuable feedback throughout the process and even decided amongst themselves to increase the amount of our contribution beyond the initial level that our Executive Committee suggested.

One of my goals when I started my service as GSA President was to spend down our large Capital Reserve. Funds from the Capital Reserve must be used for one-time allocations designed to enrich the CMU graduate student community or graduate student alumni community for 4 or more years. The Capital Reserve had built up over the years from unspent student activities fees, and it was important to me that we use much of it while students who contributed to the Capital Reserve were still here. Over the past two years, GSA has used the Capital Reserve to purchase campus maps ($20K), new weight lifting equipment at Skibo ($3K), and a new sound system for the UC Fitness Room ($4K). Last year, we requested other ideas from the entire CMU graduate community. The response was loud and clear: bike racks. Our Vice President of Campus Affairs, Andy Schultz, is currently leading a group of students and staff to install new and improved bike racks throughout campus. GSA also agreed last night to spend up to $35,000 on the bike rack project. We hope to complete the project by this summer.

Our Capital Reserve is still quite robust, and we encourage all graduate students to send GSA ideas for other campus improvements. We also look forward to the wonderful additions CMU will be able to make to campus with this endowment contribution.

For further information, please contact your department GSA Rep or me at gsa-president@andrew.cmu.edu. Thank you, and we'll see everyone during Graduate Student Appreciation Week in April!

Jason P. Imbrogno
Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University
PhD Student, Economics
President, CMU Graduate Student Assembly