The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) is honored to formally invite you to our 2023 table. Welcome. Please enjoy. We crave your feedback. Herein, we will go over the voting results from our 2022 National Conference, we will hear from our President, Thad Potter, on NAGPS’s plans for 2023 operations, and we will cover ways you can become directly involved with NAGPS moving forward.

While we intend to hold the programming for our 2022 National Conference virtually this spring, on February 24th through 26th, we have already conducted and counted the voting segment of our 2022 National Conference, including a Board slate, an approved budget for 2023 operations, a stay on membership dues increases, and concrete deadlines for National Conference planning.

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.

Hello everyone,

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:

What will this look like? For events, the primary focus will be on the large, national events: the Legislative Advocacy Days, the Leadership Summit, and the National Conference. We are going to devote our utmost energy into making these events as successful as possible and as valuable an experience as possible for you all. Beyond these events, I want to focus on reestablishing and strengthening communications from and between all our members. We will be reaching out to you all directly over the next few weeks, hoping to open a regular dialogue with each of you. We want to hear about what issues you are facing on your campus and how we can better serve you.

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.

Loyally,
 

Thad Potter
President, NAGPS
 

The NAGPS Board of Directors seeks to fill an assortment of vacancies. Core vacancies include Director of Compliance, Director of Employment Concerns, and Director of Outreach. Regional vacancies include Northeast Regional Director, South Central Regional Director, Southeast Regional Director, and Western Regional Director. Assistant vacancies exist for all NAGPS offices, including the Assistant Directors of Administration, of Communications, of Compliance, of Employment Concerns, of External Affairs, of Finance, of International Student Concerns, of Legislative Affairs, of Outreach, and of Social Justice Concerns. If you are interested in any of these offices, please contact us at your earliest convenience via Communications@NAGPS.org. Next week, we will announce our appointments for Director of International Student Concerns, Director of Legislative Affairs, and Director of Social Justice Concerns.

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.
 

We have lots of exciting things coming your way this year. We are finding new ways to create value for graduate and professional students nationwide, and we intend to foster communication between current, past, and future members. Keep your eyes ahead, and leave it to us to bring fresh content to your inbox.[1]

Fare forward,

Justin Hill
Director of Communications, NAGPS