By ryan
In what some perceive to be an attempt by the administration to discourage unionization, Yale University announced plans in January to increase stipends provided to graduate students next year. Doctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences will receive a nine-month stipend of $13,700 during the 2001-02 academic year. The future earnings represent an approximately 20 percent increase from the current school year compensation for graduate students. The university will also increase funds for doctoral students in the sciences, for whom rates vary from field to field. “This year’s unusually large increase is motivated by our desire to remain competitive with other leading institutions that have substantially increased financial aid for doctoral study over the past two years,” said Susan Hockfield, dean of Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in a letter to doctoral candidates and graduate school faculty in January. “Our general strategy has been to devote as much Graduate School funding as possible to improving stipends for all students, rather than subsidizing particular activities. This approach not only benefits the largest possible number of students, but [it] gives each student maximum flexibility to decide how an increase in funding might be used for his or her specific needs,” Hockfield continued. This increase comes at the height of a decade-long effort by Yale’s Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO) to unionize the university’s 2,200 graduate students. For years, the university has argued that doctoral candidates are not employees, and therefore cannot form a union. However, a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which granted graduate students the right to unionize, rekindled GESO’s efforts. The October ruling classified graduate students at New York University — and other private institutions — as employees of the university, who have the right to bargain collectively since they are compensated for their work as teaching assistants, graduate assistants and research assistants. Yale’s graduate students have cited long work hours and low compensation, among other issues, as their strongest motivations to unionize. “When unions try to get recognized, if an employer has the resources and commitment to fight that union, they’ll try to do what’s necessary to dissuade them from organizing,” said graduate student organizer Rebecca Ruquist, a French doctoral candidate, to the Associated Press. According to university officials, Yale increases graduate student stipends regularly and the recent raise was not an attempt to discourage students from forming a union. “To attract the very best students for graduate study at Yale, we must continue to strengthen our environment for graduate education, improving both our academic programs and our financial aid packages. The recent improvements in financial aid, taken together with the continued growth and diversification of [the] Graduate School’s programs, reflect a commitment to graduate education as a keystone of the university’s future,” Hockfield said. The Yale graduate student organizing campaign has been regarded as one of the most active efforts in the country. At Cornell, despite the NLRB’s ruling, graduate students have no motivation to form a union, according to Patrick Carr grad, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA). Currently, Cornell’s Graduate School pays $12,925 for nine-month positions and $17,233 for twelve-month positions to teaching and research assistants. Graduate students are represented in University governance by GPSA. “There hasn’t been a lot of talk about unionizing for five years. That movement died with the formation of the GPSA,” Carr said. Cornell graduate students are content with the amount of money they receive, according to Carr. He said the administration works well to keep current students happy and attract new students by including health insurance with the stipend, for example. “I don’t think conditions warrant [unionizing],” Carr added. “Between the fact that conditions are equitable and that it’s a temporary position, there’s not much drive to unionize.”Archived article by Stephanie Hankin
By ryan
While eCornell moves forward with plans to offer classes online as early as this summer, it does so without its chief academic officer (CAO), Mary Sansalone. Sansalone resigned her position on Dec. 1. “She was really responsible for all the start-up work,” said Francis Pandolfi, chief executive officer of eCornell. Sansalone has been eCornell’s CAO since last October but had worked on developing eCornell for a year before she took on the official position. The CAO is “a senior person who understands academic affairs and acts as a bridge between Cornell and eCornell,” said Prof. William Arms, computer science, the head of the provost’s advisory committee on distance learning. “The [original] intention was that it would become a career change [for Sansalone],” Arms said. However, just months before eCornell — which Sansalone guided through the Cornell faculty and Board of Trustees — offers its first products, Sansalone opted to leave the company, and took a semester’s leave from the University. Sansalone could not be reached for comment. “She had always been considering going into academic administration, and that’s why she made the decision [to step down],” Pandolfi said. Both Pandolfi and Arms said that there was no rush to fill the position. Sansalone has been with the company since its inception, and she presented the proposal for eCornell to the Faculty Senate last February. The Senate ratified the proposal for eCornell as a for-profit distance learning corporation last March. Although the University owns eCornell, eCornell operates independently. The business is run by a separate board of directors, and employs about 25 people. The Board of Trustees voted to allocate $12 million from the Cornell endowment to eCornell in September as an investment in the start-up company. In November, eCornell opened an office on the ground floor of 312 College Avenue. This is in addition to the corporation’s offices in New York City and the Village Green, located on Hanshaw Road near the Triphammer Mall. Courses offered by eCornell cannot be taken for academic credit. eCornell’s courses are limited to non-degree programs in part because of a suggestion from the Arms Committee. “We’re focusing, at the beginning anyway, on the professional schools,” Pandolfi said. Pandolfi promised the first eCornell courses by June of this year. “We’re hoping to bring out products that relate to the Medical School and in ILR [the School of Industrial and Labor Relations],” Pandolfi said. “We want to get out into the market earlier than expected to test market reaction,” he added. Pandolfi would not comment on the actual subject matter of the courses, but he did explain how eCornell courses will be conducted. University faculty members that the company has yet to name will conceive and develop the topics of the course. “They provide the intellectual property, you could say,” Pandolfi said. “We then take these materials and convert them into a format that can be used on the web.” Some of the web-based amenities that eCornell’s learning specialists will include in the courses are streaming video, Power Point slides, chat room-style live discussion groups, simulations, games and personal assessment. “I’m extremely optimistic about the future of eCornell,” Pandolfi said.Archived article by Maggie Frank