Duties of the CSGSA Executive Team and Representatives

Duties of the CSGSA Executive Team and Representatives

Executive

President

  • Regularly meets with VPs to discuss upcoming events and makes executive decisions
  • Represents the CSGSA during official events and for departmental/external inquiries
  • Main organizer for the Orientation, the Supervisor Lunch and the AGM
  • Discusses the CSGSA budget with the department in February

Vice President – Finance

  • Keeps track of the CSGSA budget and files reimbursements with the department
  • Gets approval from Joyce for all reimbursements
  • Regularly meets with President/VPs to discuss upcoming events and their funding
  • Discusses the CSGSA budget with the department in February

Vice President – Social

  • Organizes the coffee house and other social events (e.g. BBQs, movie/game nights, hikes, holiday party, …)
  • Regularly meets with President/VPs to discuss and propose upcoming events

Departmental Committee Representatives

Representatives are expected to attend and contribute, where appropriate, to committee proceedings, e.g., commenting when a student perspective will be helpful, raise grad student concerns, and generally work with the committee where grad student interests are involved. When needed and/or requested, the representatives should contact the grad student population on a topic and then report back to the committee.

Faculty Recruiting Committee Representative

As a members of the committee, students are involved in every step of faculty recruiting including (but not limited to):

  • reviewing application, composing an invitation list for possible candidates, attending the recruiting talks and providing a review, making a decision regarding who to make offers.
  • On top of this, the graduate representative is expected to organize and decide a list of attendees for the lunch with graduate students for
    each candidate being interviewed.
  • This committee’s workload is significantly higher than most other committees, and members often even work during the Winter break.
  • The committee meets a handful of times throughout the Fall, and as often as twice a week during the spring until the end of
    the recruiting season.

Graduate Affairs Committee Representative

The Graduate Affairs committee meets every 2 weeks. 

  • In Fall it is mostly adjucating scholarships intended for graduate students. This involves reading students’ letters of reference and transcripts and comparing them to their peers. Confidentiality and being able to make unbiased decisions (or to abstain if necessary) are essential.
  • The committee also plans and discusses other department topics relevant to grad students (e.g. funding, recruiting, wellbeing, supervision, …). It works directly with the Head of Graduate Affairs and the Graduate Program Administrator, and therefore has a lot of influence on department matters. Discussions can however also get quite political so a certain level of diplomacy is required to represent the interests of all graduate students.   

Colloquium Committee Representative

Assists in the advertising and execution of the departmental Invited Speaker Series. Responsibilities may include:

  • creation of a large poster that is professionally printed and used as the main advertising device (a surprisingly big job);
  • creation of a Web page for the current series, including scanned photographs of each speaker
  • posting of announcements to the appropriate mailing lists
  • audio/visual setup for the speaker, based on a list of requirements the speaker provides;
  • video taping and Mbone broadcast of the actual presentation.

Communications Committee Representatives

This committee deals with a broad range of issues including: outreach to stakeholder groups (students, alumni, industry), web issues, newsletter issues, events, etc. This committee meets every second week. The responsibilities are as follows:

  • regularly attend and actively participate at the Communications meetings
  • work on projects (e.g. CS website sub-committee)
  • recruit fellow grad students for one-off events
  • liaise with the Communications coordinator and the Communications chair with any ideas, potential news stories, or awards won by graduate students.

Classroom Operations Committee Representative

The curriculum committee is responsible for the courses and programs of study involving Computer Science, and their formal specification in the UBC Calendar. It recommends specific curriculum proposals to the department, which then takes the decisive vote. The graduate representative:

  • participates in discussions about: existing courses, proposed courses, changes to the program (e.g., number of credits, courses offered by other departments), relationship between EE and CS departments/courses, etc.
  • attends meetings on an ad hoc basis, as the need dictates – most meetings are preceded by extensive e-mail exchanges, in which opinions, suggestions, survey results, etc. are passed back and forth.

Computing Support Representative

The Computing Support committee sets policy and makes major purchasing decisions for department computing resources. It also works to enhance communication between the department technical staff and the user communities. The duties of the grad rep (time commitment varies between 0 and 10 hours/year depending on equipment funding) are:

  • attend once a month meetings
  • investigate and/or evaluate machines/software
  • get feedback from grads
  • lobby for grad equipment

Outreach, Diversity, and Equity Committee Representatives

The Outreach, Diversity and Equity Committee Representatives will be participating in outreach initiatives for high school and undergrad recruitment. Each year, the Outreach committee organizes a wide variety of events that grad reps can become involved in, on a voluntary basis. These include:

  • Welcome back events including welcome first years, welcome transfer students, welcome BCS program
  • The ACM programming contest
  • Tech Trek
  • Visits to local area high schools
  • Host department visits by target recruitment groups such as Science Fair winners and high school councillors
  • Summer camps

The committee meets every week or two and grad students can get involved in as many or few of the events as they’d like. This is a great committee to join if you’re looking for experience teaching or communicating with the world outside UBC.

Program Experience Committee Representative

The committee meets every 2 weeks to discuss:

  • new course proposals, admissions criteria for undergrads, and other issues related to undergrad degrees (like what courses are required, what should be the correct prereq).
  • how to scale our courses with the resources we have.

Graduate student representatives can voice issues regarding what they would like to see from the CS undergrad programs and maybe the grad program. 

Reading Room Committee Representative

  • attend the Reading Room Organizational Meetings which usually meets yearly.
  • be a liaison between the Reading Room staff and the Graduate student population by:
    • informing graduate students of any significant changes or additions to the reading room
    • informing Reading Room staff of any concerns (materials needed, etc.) coming from the students
  • organize the yearly Reading Room/Library resources presentation to the new graduate students during the orientation week

Space And Safety Committee Representative

The space committee representative is responsible for ensuring that the grad student voice is heard with respect to space issues in the department. These issues include allocation of space in labs and offices, relinquishing grad offices back to the department when they are no longer needed, and furnishings for the grad space.  The space committee meets at least once a month. The duties also represent the safety and security of graduate students and their possessions to the department.

Student Development Committee Representatives

This committee handles a broad range of enrichment programs including: career planning and placement, tri-mentoring, CSSS liaison, volunteering, ACM Programming Competition, undergraduate research opportunities. This committee meets every second week. The responsibilities are as follows:

  • regularly attend and actively participate at meetings
  • help organize events
  • collect feedback on programs and events
  • recruit volunteers
  • work on projects, sit on subcommittees.

Other Representatives and Officers

GSS Councillor

The Graduate Student Society represents the interests of grad students with UBC at large. It also manages GSS facilities and Koerner’s pub and organizes social activities and extracurricular classes for grad students. The duties of the departmental representatives are:

  • attend monthly GSS meetings on the 3rd Thursday of every month, 5:30-8:00. Meetings always include free food and a beer or non-alcoholic drink.
  • represent interests of CS students in the GSS
  • report significant GSS events or policy decisions back to CS students
  • opt to participate in many other GSS committees and volunteer to organize GSS events

TA Union Representative

TA Union Reps have a number of jobs:

  1. Give the union address at every TA training session
  2. Compassionately receive TA complaints and worries and help strategize with TAs about what to do about their problems (includes helping to write letters, talking through courses of action, informing them of their
    rights, coordinating with the dept about responses)
  3. Take notes and acting as an advocate for the TAs during disciplinary hearings, work compression negotiations, and other meetings
  4. Advocate for TA rights within the department and enforce the collective agreement
  5. Liase and coordinate with the Union executive and staff to counteract department abuses of TAs/the collective agreement
  6. Coordinate collective responses within the department and promote rights/collective agreement education.

Department Meeting Representative

  • attend department meetings which are typically held less than once per month
  • act as a voting representative for the CSGSA at department meeting
  • time commitment is low (as a grad student you should be attending the department meetings anyway!)

Graduate Student Wellbeing Network Representative

Graduate Wellbeing Representatives attend a monthly wellbeing meeting with other Wellbeing reps across campus, coordinate with the dept wellbeing committee (currently being set up), advocate for structural changes within the department that promote wellbeing, coordinate wellbeing events (check-ins, social events, training), and provide guidance for mental health resources on campus.

Tea Czar

Hosts weekly social tea time for all graduate students:

  • Prepares and ensures supply of tea and treats by preparing or finding volunteers.
  • Communicates tea time reminders weekly via email/slack.

Sports Representatives

At the start of every semester, the Sports Representative sets up a survey with all the various recreational league options and send this survey link to all CS grads, asking them to fill out their preferences of the sport leagues they would like to participate in.
They then speak with the VP Finance to see how many different teams can be
supported. Once they have a number, they figure out teams and a captain that will lead the team on the pitch and more importantly handle the registration and other paperwork.

UDLS Czar

  • Motivates people to sign up for UDLS talks;
  • Communicates with speakers and the Beer Czar and sends weekly announcements to the department;
  • Ensures room bookings for x836 on Friday nights;
  • Maintains the UDLS archive.