Three grad reps are needed for the PhD Excellence Initiative Oversight Committee. This committee plays a major role in determining the size of graduate departments going forward. However, the committee has run into a number of road blocks both in navigating the dean’s austerity policies, and in its reliance on an algorithm that has thus far not proven to be without bias. Which is all to say that having strong graduate voices on this committee can help to steer the committee and to make sure that graduate groups, like LSM, GSEU, and GSA, are aware of major decisions being made about graduate education at UB.
New reps would take over in late June. The committee will likely meet intermittently over the summer, and then every two weeks starting in the Fall.
The faculty oversight body has determined that the reps will rotate yearly, need to come from three of the four CAS divisions (Natural Sciences and Math; Social Sciences; Humanities; and Arts), and cannot be from any of the departments previously represented on the committee (so not from Chemistry, English, or Sociology, since the current reps come from those departments).
Please be in touch J Coley, jcoley@buffalo.edu, if you are interested in serving on the committee. And feel free to write to annash@buffalo.edu if you want more details about the committee and your potential role on it.