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The Graduate School’s funding proposal has been approved by the office of the Syracuse University chancellor and Office of the Provost, allocating $1.5 million for graduate student support.

Dean Peter Vanable of the Graduate School announced the approved proposal at the GSO Senate meeting Wednesday. He said the funding would be earmarked for pandemic-related challenges. 

During the summer, 15 students received graduate fellowships for this fall and upcoming spring semesters as part of this funding, Vanable said. 

Small grants of $3,000 or less, used to cover expenses such as travel or small equipment requests that cannot be covered by the student’s home college, will also be available, as will funding for faculty principal investigators.

The number of summer dissertation fellowships will be expanded by 10 to 20, Vanable said. He said he anticipated that requests for funding will be released in the next couple of weeks.

At the meeting, Comptroller Joy Burton broke down the budget for the 2021-22 academic year.

While last year’s budget totalled more than $450,000, this year’s budget will be about $338,000 — $55,000 will be allocated to Registered Student Organizations, Burton said.

Yousr Dhaouadi, the president of GSO, said that the organization is looking at space in Lyman Hall for a graduate student hub on campus after the Marshall Square Mall proved too expensive.

Dhaouadi also announced that rollover funds, the unspent funds from GSO’s budget which have accumulated over the last few years, have been approved for use by SU administration.

The GSO also elected new members of their executive board at the meeting via ranked choice voting. If a candidate received over 50 percent of the first vote, they were automatically elected to the position for the entirety of the academic year.

The nominees for financial secretary included Shiilā Seok Wun Au Yong, a third year Ph.D. student in the School of Education; Aditya Shah, a graduate student in the School of Information Studies, and Irving Gonzalez, a first-year Master’s candidate for public administration in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The three answered questions before the committee before Yong was elected to the position with 15 votes.

Yong brings her experience of six years as a graduate student and time in the GSO Senate to the role.

The nominees for recording secretary were Nirali Kabli, an iSchool graduate student; Benjamin Tetteh, a first-year Ph.D. student at the Newhouse School of Public Communications who previously received his Masters degree at New York University, and Linzy Andre, a second-year counseling department graduate student in the School of Education. Andre was elected with 11 votes.

Andre, who serves as chapter president of her department’s RSO, is part of the Sigma Epsilon chapter of Chi Sigma Iota and runs a private counseling practice outside of school.

The nominated candidates to become University Senators included Ameya Vinod Mahalaxmikar, a first-year graduate student in the iSchool, and Sweta Roy, a Ph.D. candidate for bioengineering. Tetteh, Gonzalez, Shah and Yong had their names put forward for a second time in the meeting.

Since there were fewer nominations than available positions, all five nominees were elected via a simple majority vote of confidence. Five University Senate positions remain vacant.

The final positions up for election at the meeting were for at-large senators. The only nominee was George Zenzerovich, a graduate student for information studies, who was elected by a simple majority.

The GSO Senate will hold elections for every vacant position at future meetings until they are filled.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, it was stated that the Graduate Student Organization proposed allocating $1.5 million for graduate student support, when it was in fact the Graduate School that proposed this funding. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on September 15, 2021 at 11:41 pm

Contact Richard: rcperrin@syr.edu | @richardperrins2