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11 results found

  1. Maximum graduate assistant workload with research + teaching

    Currently, graduate students are not allowed to have more than 20 hours/week commitment during the academic year (though domestic students are allowed an extra 5 hours hourly), nominally in order to allow students to focus on their studies. However, this means that fully research-based graduate students (0.5 full-time equivalent RAship during the academic year) are prohibited from getting teaching experience, which is important to be competitive for academic careers. Meanwhile, the "focus on studies" rationale doesn't make sense since, for a PhD student done with their classes, their research assistantship effectively is their studies.

    I can understand having some limit,…

    3 votes
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  2. Graduate student stipends across all university departments should be a minimum of $30,000/year

    Graduate student stipends were insufficient to cover cost of living in Golden prior to the pandemic. The meteoric rise in inflation has pushed students further into poverty. We need a campus wide minimum stipend for graduate students that is at a minimum competitive with neighboring universities

    Alternative plan, unionize and force negotiations.

    13 votes
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  3. Lack of Public Transportation to CSM

    Just yesterday the city of Golden made its last free parking area a pay-to-park area. As a commuter student at Colorado School of Mines I now have no options for free parking. Additionally, there is no public transportation option that I can use to commute to campus. There is only one bus line that I can find that stops near enough to CSM for me to walk the rest of the way (the #16) and I have no way to access it from my house in Arvada without it taking hours, this is also the same for the Jeffco Government…

    7 votes
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  4. Grad Student Workload and Expectations

    Working a second job outside of an RA/TA is extremely discouraged at mines, even though the current minimum stipend is not competitive with other R1 universities or ample to cover cost of living in the area. The Graduate Assistantship Policies that every graduate student must agree with include a section under "eligibility" that requires your advisors approval if you want a second job. This comes from the fact that grad students are expected to work 50+ hour weeks regularly, which makes managing a second commitment difficult.

    I understand that we are grad students first, but the current system seems flawed.…

    7 votes
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  5. Summer Parking Permits

    I received a parking citation today, for being parked in the D lot without a permit. I am not trying to contest the citation, because it is in accordance with current regulations, but rather want to raise the issue of students having to pay for parking in the summer.

    I am a PhD student here at Mines, on a stipend. The school does not increase stipends to match inflation. At the highest rate inflation has been in 40 years, I don't think the school should be charging students for parking in the summer, when there isn't the same demand as…

    4 votes
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  6. Thesis submission deadlines

    In order for a masters-thesis student to walk in the May commencement ceremony, we have to submit our thesis by April 11th (Standard May check-out). This is an entire month earlier than commencement. For early summer checkout, the thesis needs to be submitted by May 5th, and this option allows the student to walk in the December commencement, not in the May commencement.

    I went to Mines in undergrad, and was the class of 2020, so I did not get a graduation ceremony, and didn't participate in the late ceremony, since I was getting a grad degree. I know this…

    6 votes
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  7. Mines Parking Pass for Family Housing

    I live in Mines Park Family Housing, and as such I automatically have a Mines Park Parking Pass, but because of this I cannot buy a General/Commuter Mines Parking Pass. I share a car with my partner and need to drive them to work every day before returning to campus for my classes, which cuts down on the time I have to walk from Mines Park down to school. I really need a General/Commuter parking pass for this very reason, and am more than willing to pay for it, but cannot because of the Mines Park/Mines Parking policy. Is there…

    4 votes
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  8. In-person mandatory CBE department seminars for graduate students

    The issue is the current plan to have 70 students gathered inside a closed classroom every Friday for 1h, amid a global pandemic. Then, if you happen to get sick (perhaps for the second time), you are not allowed on campus for 1-2 weeks.

    If the mentality is that we are all going to get COVID anyway, then hey, let us keep doing our work while infected, and stop nagging us to waste time at home. If, on the other hand, the CBE is actually concerned and wishes not to promote the spread of the disease, then CBE can do…

    1 vote
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  9. Outlook sucks

    Outlook is absolutely the worst. I don't know why we switched away from Google. My biggest problem is that Outlook cannot send large attachments, so every time I want to share literally anything (wouldn't even send a powerpoint with 7 slides in it), I have to upload it to dropbox. But the dropbox account associated with the mines email has such little storage capacity that I can only have a handful of files on it at one time. So I have to continuously manage my dropbox account in order to share files.
    It's incredibly annoying and inefficient. Google was way…

    1 vote
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  10. Classes on Career Day

    It seems counterproductive to hold classes on career day. I understand the event seems more popular in the undergraduate population, but it is still an invaluable resource for graduating grad students as well.

    Throughout undergrad it seemed fairly standard for professors to cancel classes to allow students to attend career day, but this doesn't seem to be the case for graduate level courses (at least that I have experienced). When brought up to a professor, I was told that while they did not want to put students in a bad position, they also were not required to cancel class and…

    2 votes
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  11. Transparency in TA assignment workload balance

    Some of us have been noticing during the past two years the inconsistent doling out of TA responsibilities in terms of the number of credits assigned for teaching workloads. What group of faculty/grad students makes these decisions, and how much has advisor advocacy factored into establishing teaching loads for each TA?

    Can we get more grads involved in this process? Do we have 1) an established, formal wording about what constitutes a full workload across a single academic year, and 2) a formal explanation about reasonable adjustments that the deciding body can make after a TA contract is signed?

    7 votes
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