Made out of people

Getting Stuff Done: A Hierarchy (School Organization, Part I)

Last year, as a graduate student, I joined the Graduate Council. This is a division of the Academic Senate, and is responsible for stamping and approving (or disapproving) issues that may affect graduate life. Student funding and housing are higher-profile work, but don't quite get the depth of time and energy that program reviews, catalog changes, and similar. The vast majority of the Council's decisions end in writing a letter, reccomending that a program provide more information, or approving a particular plan. This isn't budgetary approval (although budgetary issues may be raised); it is instead weighing proposals on their academic, and educational, impact.

In general, of course, graduate students don't know a lot about their schools. I think we all pick up, pretty quickly, the structure of the department--deans and professors and suchlike. There's a hierarchy of getting stuff done and checks written, and we all figure out how it goes.

It goes from God, to Jerry, to you, to me, to the cleaners.
-"Real Genius":http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/quotes

In particular, we learn that administrative assistants know everything; and that anything can be fixed or finessed if an administrative assistant and a professor both agree on it. But I don't think we think much more about the rest of the university, outside our own department or school. Most are generally unaware of roles like the vice-chair for graduate affairs in their own department, much less the higher levels. So while the Graduate Council grinds through the (very imporant) "Graduate Student Rights and Responsibilities" document, I'll throw out a few notes. These apply to UCI; I'm sure there are parallel versions at your institution.

[more inside]

• Association for Graduate Students is a representative body of grad students who are meant to resolve issues that affect students. At UCI, at least, many positions are vacant, so it's effectively self-appointed. (If you run, you'll get in the top few.) This is potentially an effective way to get a message through, partially because the administration is often eager to work through the official channels, and the AGS is an official channel for student voices. This is for generalized issues; ones that might affect policies...
• ... which is distinct from employment issues, which may have to go through the union contract
• ... which is distinct from formal complaints, which go through grievance procedures and possible the academic senate's procedures for issues like discrimination. (Which is, in turn, different from taking legal action).
• Graduate work is generally supervised by Research and Graduate Studies' Office of Graduate Studies (henceforth RGS and OGS). Ignoring most of the stuff on the website (would you really look here to find a list of movies showing in Irvine?) it takes a little digging to find the Staff Publications page, with cool things like the graduate advisor's handbook (ought to be required skimming for every grad student, I think). There's all sorts of cool people there, like various Deans who are the people to Go To when Bad Things Have Happened. And the Graduate Council, which is the academic senate committee most closely relatd to RGS.

(Indeed, the chain--at least for systemic or rules-based problems--is "your advisor, your chair, your dean, the dean of graduate studies or the grad council, vice chancellor for student affairs". Each will be disappointed if you haven't tried to address it more locally.)

There's an ambiguity, there, in which issues are Grad Council and which ones are Dean. I don't really know how to address that--the Council studies curriciula and roles, while Deans deal with people, might be one version of the division of labor. But the distinctions are loosely-drawn, and of the various mysterious mechanisms, the Council flies the most under the radar.

For the record, lots of these organizations are surprisingly answerable to students. For example, Council minutes are a matter of public record. The question is how the public record should be made available. Do students know that they can simply speak to the Council Analyst and get them?

June 4, 2004 10:33 PM | TrackBack | in Other