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2023 NAGPS State of the Union: Back-and-Forth
The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) is honored to formally invite you to our 2023 table. Welcome. Please enjoy.<!–
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
NAGPS State of the Union: Back-and-Forth
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Lean Lights: 2022 Voting Resolutions
Open Road Ahead: Peering with President Potter
Seats at the Table: How to Get Involved
Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers
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Lean Lights: 2022 Voting Resolutions
NAGPS’s members have voted to approve a core slate of officers, with further Directors and Assistant Directors to be interviewed and appointed in the coming weeks: Thad Potter was reelected as President; Tiffany Miller was reelected as Vice-President; Luis Irizarry was appointed as Director of External Affairs (previously appointed as Director of Communications); Justin Hill was appointed as Director of Communications; Mac Scully was appointed as Director of Employment Concerns; and Nisha Singh was reappointed as Midwest Regional Director.
In addition to Board elections and appointments, NAGPS membership approved a 2023 budget. Specifically, Potter and Miller, as President and Vice-President respectively, passed a budget which proffered a 5% budget increase — in competitive accomplishment alongside Forbes’s reporting of a 2022-2023 year over year of 7.7% as of October 2022.[1] More specifically: Board Expenses reduced by 17%; Conference Expenses reduced by 17%; Regional Programming Expenses reduced by 67% (e.g., 2/3rd); Workshop and Summit Expenses increased by 159%, due to non-existent funding for the Spring 2022 Legislative Action Day (LAD) — transitioning from $100 to $7,000, on par with current Fall 2023 LAD funding; Financial and Administration Expenses decreased by 5%; Website and P.O. Box Expenses reduced by 18.75%; Fundraising Expenses reduced by 100%; and Extraordinary Expenses remained the same, at $0. Overall, last year’s budget operated at 39.22% of its allocation, representing a 60.78% operations surplus despite a 5% budget increase.
As a fleeting and tangential example which represents our budgetary position, the military and congressional budgets expend all allocated funds to justify equanimous funding in coming years; however, we should avoid such unequitable metrics for funding NAGPS as exemplary of our being proud of prudent management without unfairly concluding NAGPS requires less funds. Instead, we should be allowed to manage greater funds with our prudent discretion in order to return increasing yields from limited funds through efficacious projects and event programming.
Representative of budgetary prudence, membership dues will not increase from 2022 to 2023. Annual dues are set at: an individual rate of $55.00 per year; an organizational rate of $600.00 per year; an affiliate rate of $825.00 per year; and a legacy rate of $11,575.00 per year.
In conclusion of the 2022 National Conference voting results, Article V of the By-Laws was amended to allow for a prudent yet graceful set of extenuating circumstances. Please see the referenced resolution for all pertinent amendments, as summarization would not adequately communicate the particulars of the relevant By-Law amendments.
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Open Road Ahead: Peering with President Potter
I wanted to start off the year with a picture of how I see things with NAGPS at the moment — both a quick look back from this past year as well as thoughts leading into 2023.
NAGPS is admittedly in a bit of a rough spot right now, but we possess the needed resilience to pull through and come back stronger than ever. Since struggling through the pandemic, we have not put out the same level of programming and content which we desire to release and which our membership has come to expect. We also experienced a drop in membership and engagement.
With that being said, however, I believe that we can use this moment to build a stronger NAGPS — an NAGPS that is more suited to the current climate in higher education, where meetings and content are increasingly virtual. This growth potential is primarily what I wish to focus on here.
With a smaller board at the moment (please feel free to reach out if you are interested in joining up and helping out), I believe it would be best for us to focus on and build out from the core vision, principles, and missions of NAGPS:
To develop, sustain, and expand a network that connects graduate and professional students across the United States;
To empower our members to successfully serve their constituents; and
To amplify students’ voices to campus, local, state, and federal policymakers.
This is also, I think, a good time to make some structural changes that I believe to be necessary for modernizing NAGPS, namely the reform of the regions. Regional Directors will serve as primary points of contact for members in their region so as to avoid creating a microcosm of the national board, which introduces structural inefficiencies. I plan to have a proposal in hand by the end of this month and to discuss and finalize it during the rescheduled National Conference.
Look out for some direct outreach from us over the next few weeks, including additional details on the respective programming blocks for the rescheduled 2022 National Conference, on the weekend of February 25th, and for the Spring Hill Day, on the weekend of March 25th.
I look forward to seeing and hearing from you all, and to another year with NAGPS.
President, NAGPS
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Seats at the Table: How to Get Involved
If you want to become more involved but cannot commit sufficient time and energy to one of these offices, your direct feedback to any of our standing committees would also be greatly appreciated. These committees are your public defenders (though we are not legal counsel), and we implore you to contact us with any and all concerns. We need to hear from you in order to help out. As such, please contact: Communications@NAGPS.org for the Administrative and Communications Committee; DISC@NAGPS.org and DSJC@NAGPS.org for the Advocacy Committee; External@NAGPS.org for the External Affairs Committee; Office@NAGPS.org for the Finance and Fundraising Committee; President@NAGPS.org for the Legislative Concerns Committee; and Office@NAGPS.org for the Outreach Committee.
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Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers
Justin Hill
Director of Communications, NAGPS
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