Memo on Interdepartmental Collaborations
01/31/2024
Dear Valued Campus Partners,
Welcome to the Spring Semester! We at the University Student Senate are excited to begin another semester of collaboration with you. From funding the Student Emergency Fund in conjunction with Student Success, supporting our military students with the Center for Veteran Affairs, our ongoing work to expand vendor options with Campus Card Services, to our most recent campus-wide Single Use Plastics collaboration with Marketing and Communications, we want to express our deep gratitude for all the work you have done to aid us in our mission to support our students, without which these projects would not be possible.
In response to this increase in enthusiasm for collaborating with the USS, we would like to circulate an official memo to streamline the process and be able to respond to inquiries more efficiently. The USS welcomes all invitations for collaboration from Campus Partners. However, we also take our roles as students and the limited timeslots at our General Meetings very seriously. As such, beginning in Spring 2024, we will be splitting all collaboration requests into the below categories:
Tier 1 - Shared Governance Committees: The USS highly values and prioritizes invitations to participate in shared governance committees, task forces, and working groups as part of our mission to advance student participation in University decision-making processes. If you would like to contact us about your shared governance committee, please include in your invitation a clearly outlined description of the roles and responsibilities of the body (meeting times, etc.) - particularly if you have student representative positions with longstanding vacancies - and we will forward it on your behalf to our Senators. For more information, please reach out to our Chair (shara345@newschool.edu).
Tier 2 - Interagency Projects: The USS welcomes any collaborative project geared towards the betterment of our community. If you are interested in collaborating with the USS on an interagency project, please include in your request a formal description of the concept, timeline, deliverables, and resources your department will be providing. The more detailed the request, the better we will be able to respond to your inquiry. We will pass along the information to one of our Directors, who will evaluate your project with their Committee and decide on the process of sharing it with the wider Senate. For more information, please reach out to our Vice Chair (shers825@newschool.edu).
Tier 3 - Community Feedback/Participation: Although the USS strongly encourages departments to formulate their requests towards the above two categories, we understand that sometimes departments are simply looking for feedback and participation from our Senators. In these instances, depending on the urgency, we may either refer you to one of our Committees or forward your request to our Senators via email upon receipt. For more information, please reach out to our Director of Operations (yangl830@newschool.edu).
Tier 4 - Funding: Please be aware that we do not begin hearing funding proposals until February 5th. An additional memo will be sent out in the coming days reviewing all USS funding opportunities that can be relayed to students in need. Please note that our funding in these instances is meant to be temporary and supplementary. It may be limited, and we cannot guarantee that all requests will be approved. Please note that we are also unable to handle space booking requests. As such, we urge all offices to seek out additional funding sources within their department under their responsibilities to students in their care first before reaching out. Additionally, the USS is more than willing to hear about any existing funding limitations and collaborate with your office to appeal to the Deans’ and President's Office for more sustainable and additional funding resources and will be shifting our focus to this area in the future. For more information, please reach out to our Finance Committee (ussfinance@newschool.edu).
Additional policies:
Point of contact: Please note that our primary points of contact are our advisors Andrade Fearon (fearona@newschool.edu) for all non-specific inquiries, Gilles Stromberg (strombeg@newschool.edu) for student organization and USS collaborations, and Jose Gomez (gomezj2@newschool.edu) for all Senate-funded student initiative funded by Senate, as well as our official secure email uss@newschool.edu. Any requests for collaboration should be forwarded to at least two of these sources. More importantly, please also note that as the USS has our own internal processes, the person who responds to your request may not be the eventual Senate contact for your project.
Presentations: In the event that we invite you to a presentation before the Senate, we request that you provide a presentation document that can be shared with the Senate in advance of our General Meeting so that Senators may have time to understand your proposal and prepare any questions. Presentation slots typically range from 10-15 minutes, with at least half of that slot being reserved for Q&A.
Transparency: To be accountable to the student body, we may mandate agreements and updates in writing on matters of particular importance. For matters of particular impact to students, we may also request meeting minutes and, where possible, recordings to be made public.
Thank you once again for your collaborative spirit, and we look forward to working with you this semester!
Sincerely,
Linfei Yang, Director of Operations