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| GSAS establishes research
endowment |
Sam Calhoun
Academic Affairs Beat
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Foster Hunt | The AppalachianGSAS treasurer Cassie A. Rutherford
(l) and President Brad Miller discuss the new Research and Travel
Endowment last Wednesday.
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The 2002-03 Graduate
Student Association Senate (GSAS) has established the Graduate Student
Association Research and Travel Endowment, which will provide funding
for graduate student research and travel in the wake of the current
budget crisis.
“We’re trying to help ourselves,”
GSAS President Brad W. Miller said Wednesday. “GSAS’s
goal at the beginning of the year was to set up this endowment,
then turn around and fully fund the endowment by May, and then make
an award next fall.” |
This endowment
has been established by and solely for Appalachian State University
graduate students, and it will serve as an internal source of financial
support, according to GSAS’s press release.
The reasoning for this endowment began with the current situation
concerning the amount of financial support graduate students receive
for grants, or rather, the lack thereof.
“We had over $30,000 in requests for travel grants this year,
and we only got around $6,000, which is only $90 [per request],”
Miller said.
“[Graduate students] do so much work, and there’s so many
of them, and they’re traveling, and they do these amazing things,
and all we can give them is $90,” GSAS Treasurer Cassie A.
Rutherford said Wednesday. “That’s a frustrating experience.”
Thus, GSAS decided to take action to help itself. Originally an
initiative by the Senior Associate Dean of the Graduate School Dr.
E. D. Huntley, Miller took the idea to GSAS, and it was born.
The endowment is managed by the Appalachian Foundation and requires
$10,000 to start. Once that mark is reached, it will pay out 5 percent
in its first year. The endowment is an annual award, and right now
it will only honor one outstanding graduate student, Miller said.
“We’ll figure out what is the upper level for the grant,
and the additional money will go back into general GSAS grants,”
Miller said. “As it grows, it’ll recognize more outstanding
students and will also fund the general graduate student population.”
An application process will decide who will be eligible for this
grant.
“Students will have to show that the [research] they’re
doing is a worthy project that deserves more than we typically give,”
Miller said.
In the future, six rotating graduate students and a standing faculty
member will head the endowment on a committee, drawing equally from
each department.
Presently, the endowment has been set up and GSAS members, graduate
students and faculty have made donations, but it has not reached
the $10,000 mark.
Although this will be a mainly student-supported endowment, faculty
support is also needed in these times of inception.
“Because the students have come up with this idea, we’re
funding it ourselves and doing the work. The faculty will see that,
and it will encourage them to help,” Rutherford said.
“Basically what we’re asking the faculty to do is to take
the graduate student population out to lunch or dinner,” Miller
said. “Either a $5 or $10 tax deductible donation a month that
will come out of their paychecks.”
In addition to asking faculty to help, going out in the community
and going to alumni, GSAS is initiating the ‘20/20’ club,
Rutherford said.
The ’20/20’ club will ask past members of the graduate
student population to give $20 a year for 2 years after they graduate
to the endowment. This will enable them to further support the program
that put them where they are at, Rutherford said.
“With this endowment, it is our hope that the big research
and big travel work that will really promote the university will
be able to be done,” Rutherford said. |
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