Hey Arts,
In the interest of transparency to our constituents, the AUS Executive will be implementing a few new practices. These include:
- Posting our schedules on a bi-weekly basis
- Posting regular updates from our portfolios, including direct links to our Reports to AUS Council (these can always be found organized by date on the Legislative Council page)
Hopefully this will make it easier for you to keep up with our activities and to know that we are working diligently on your behalf. To this end, below you will find my schedule for the past two weeks, as well as my Council Reports up to October 29th.
I’m also excited to share a few highlights from my portfolio this month:
Departmental Peer Tutoring
Arts peer tutoring programs are generally departmental-based (several years ago they were centralized at the AUS level, but it was decided that departments have different needs and thus should run them independently). However, this term I’ve worked to strengthen these offerings, particularly for smaller programs, by offering grant funding to departmental associations by application. At the beginning of the month I reviewed applications with our VP Finance and allocated funding to several departments for some exciting course-based, language and tutorial projects.
If your program currently doesn’t offer peer tutoring, contact your departmental association to suggest it!
Arts Student Employment Fund
This is a tricky fund because it is actually broken down into two different ones (more info here). The side that we deal with directly has traditionally funded only Research Assistant positions and summer employment opportunities, but this year I’m piloting a Fall application period where units across campus can apply for positions for the Winter term. The ASEF Committee will be meeting in early November to review applications and allocate funding to some exciting new positions, which I will report on by mid-November. In addition, I will be looking at raising the minimum pay of ASEF-funded Casual Research Assistants, since McGill’s rate under the AMURE Collective Agreement is currently below that of other Montreal universities.
AUS–Library Partnership Committee
This committee has met twice: once to get up-to-speed and discuss some current concerns with the Head of the McLennan-Redpath Library, and a second time to tour the branch and look at past AUS projects and areas for improvement. We are currently brainstorming potential seating, technology and other capital projects to fund in these spaces, so please let me know if you have any ideas!
Know Your Rights Project
I posted several weeks back about this exciting project, and am happy to say that it is progressing thanks to the efforts of the working group. Most recently, we met to critique the university’s Student Assessment Policy, which outlines many of our rights as students and is currently undergoing a review by the Associate Dean of Students. Our comments and recommendations will be brought to the Enrolment and Student Affairs Advisory Committee (ESAAC) next week. Following this, another aspect of this project will be to formulate a promotional campaign and different communication channels through which information on these policies can be made more available to students. If you’re interested in getting more involved, please email our Arts Senator, Jacob Greenspon, at artssenator2@ssmu.mcgill.ca.
If you have any questions or thoughts about anything in my updates, reports or schedules, or would like to bring up other academic concerns, please shoot me an email!
Cheers,
Erin
Council Reports:
