The Graduate Student Organization (GSO) has had a productive year. We established relationships with the corresponding organizations at ASU and UA; we met with the vice president for research, the provost, and President Haeger; and we were able to maintain the travel award program and funded more than 25 applicants for the fall semester. We received more than 65 applications for the spring semester and were able to fund 49. Clearly the award was well publicized, and NAU graduate students are participating in lots of professional development opportunities!

Although the budget situation was not conducive to GSO’s goal of achieving full tuition remission for graduate assistants, President Haeger is aware of the goal and encourages us to continue working on this issue when funding improves.

We appreciate the responses to the priorities survey we sent out. Based on the information we collected, we chose to focus on establishing more graduate student awards and possibly developing a future faculty program. Though these may not be completed by the end of the academic year they will remain priorities for next year, and we hope to have them established soon so as many students as possible can benefit.

We are also planning a fundraiser. We appreciate the financial support ASNAU has been able to provide the past two years and hope it continues in the future, but also wanted to set a precedent for fundraising and establishing some sort of financial independence. We have several ideas for use of the funds, including dissertation binding fees and adding to the travel award fund. Watch for more information about this and future fundraising opportunities on the GSO website.

In response to several requests we changed our established meeting day. The final meeting for the semester will be held on Wednesday night rather than Tuesday night. The time, 5:30-7 p.m., will remain the same. Meeting days and times for the fall 2009 semester will be decided upon by the incoming officers and department representatives. Offer your input by attending the final meeting on April 22.

Your new GSO officers for 2009-10 will be Citlali Cortes Montano, PhD forest science, president; Alex Perry, MS statistics, vice president; Shona Granillo, MS clinical speech pathology, secretary; and Jessica Gist, MS environmental science and policy, information/outreach.

As always, we are interested to hear from you and would love for you to join us in person or by phone for our meetings. Membership in the GSO is open to all graduate students in good standing at NAU (either through distance or on-campus programs). You can e-mail us any time at gso@nau.edu with comments, questions, or suggestions.

—Camille Naaktgeboren, PhD candidate and GSO president