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Dear Enda, I fully support higher funding per student. However, I am unsure if we should ask the university responsible for the entirety of the funding situation.
As far as I know, with all due respect to the colleagues who have signed the petition, graduate chairs should represent the departments they are from when using the title. A request at this level
certainly would have required some discussion within the departments so that the signature of grad chairs would imply consensus in that department rather than personal opinions.
Another factor I hope the grad chairs already have considered is the distribution of funding sources per department. For instance, could we collect data from all grad chairs on how many grad students
are in each department and how much of the average funding per grad student comes from RA, TA, Fellowships, or other sources? We can then see if requesting the university to fix the funding problem makes sense or maybe we should be looking at other fixes.
Thanks __________________ Behraad Bahreyni, PhD, PEng MSE 4176, 250-13450 102nd Ave Surrey, BC, CANADA V3T 0A3 Tel: +1 (778) 782-8694 Fax: +1 (778) 782-7514 Web:
http://sense.fas.sfu.ca/ From: Enda Brophy <ebrophy@sfu.ca>
Dear colleagues, yesterday Graduate Chairs at SFU released a public letter calling on the university for a rapid and meaningful increase in real funding levels for graduate students across the university. Some of
you will remember that the letter was initially discussed on this mailing list, and my thanks go to colleagues who offered input, helped craft the letter, and signed on. The letter can be found here,
and we are still adding signatures as they come in so please do get in touch if you are a graduate chair and would like to sign. Have a wonderful weekend, Enda Enda Brophy Associate | Labour Studies |