Selection of Chairperson/Committee Members for Graduate Student Committee AY 2006-2007

This current graduate committee is the 3rd committee in the past 2 years and this committee came together in November 2006 to help ensure continuity in the flow of work in the interim period until the next committee could be formed or elected.

The department and the graduate student committee are all committed to ensuring that the all members on board are capable and committed to their responsibilities, and we have since made suggestions to the department to look the process of 'selection'/electing representatives to the Graduate Student Committee for the upcoming semesters. These concerns have been noted and taken on board positively.

New arrangements and guidelines to the use of the TA/Part-time tutors' Rooms

Based on feedback from various students and other interest parties, both the graduate student committee and the department committee met up to discuss how best to address the usage and allocation of the TA/Part-time tutors’ Rooms. It was decided collectively that new guidelines should be devised and implemented to ensure equity for all students involved. It was decided that the TA rooms should be prioritized to students doing TA work such that they could have a proper work space/venue to conduct their consultation and teaching work etc. These new guidelines were thought of collectively by the committee and then put forth to the department committee for comments and approval, before getting final clearance from the department.

Guidelines for Graduate Students' Room and Lockers

The graduate students’ room was vacated for a short period of time last semester in order to conduct a thorough cleaning of the room to get rid of the grease and food smells that were permeating the room. Due to feedback from faculty members and fellow graduate students, both the graduate student committee and the department committee also discussed and mutually agreed that proper guidelines needed to be in place to govern the use of the graduate students' room. This is simply to ensure the welfare and the best possibly conducive studying environment for the students involved.

Lockers were also cleared out to remove remaining belongings of ex-students who had left the department to make way for locker allocation for new students. After consultation with the faculty committee and department, a formal notice was sent out by the department to all ex-students to clear their lockers within a certain time frame, failing which to do so or respond, the department would then clear all these belongings and then assign these lockers to the new students. Ex-students were given a time frame of 2 weeks, even up to a month to respond. If they were overseas and/or unable to come back in time, arrangements were also made to set their belongings aside. New locker keys were then made and issued to their new holders.

Graduate Students' Website/Profiles

Thank you to all graduate students who took the time to submit the relevant personal information for the revamping of our website and for giving feedback and suggestions on how to improve the website. The information had been compiled much earlier, but was subject to some delays as our website revamp is part of the overall revamp for the Arts Faculty's website and thus had to be coordinated by the faculty. The website should be up running soon this semester.

Graduate Students' Seminars

We have had 3 seminars during the last semester, 1 per month commencing February. Thanks to Yang Ying, Tao and Cuijing who volunteered to share their research work, and also to those who attended these seminars. It was feed-backed by the presenters that they found the seminars and the subsequent discussion/comments very useful for their research project. Hopefully, the seminar series will still prove to be useful next semester and we look forward to your continued participation.

Students' Activities

We're pleased to say that throughout this past semester, many of our fellow graduate students have started taking the initiative to organize ad-hoc and formal social/sporting activities (ranging from bbqs, day-trips to pulau ubin and casual badminton sessions) to relatively good response. As a result, the level of interaction between the students has also improved. We sincerely hope that this trend will continue positively into the new semester, and that more students, both old and new, will be able to participate in our future activities as well.