GROUP AND DEPARTMENT RECOGNITION:
Recognition is Worth Your While
Recognition is a University formality. It is critical that student GROUPS and/or ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS apply for recognition. Student groups must be recognized in order to be eligible for GPSS funding. Academic departments and professional schools must be recognized in order to participate in the Senate.
GPSS manages the graduate student programming fee, which is apportioned into five categories: Volunteer, Joint Programming, Discretionary, Sustainability and Conference Travel. Academic departments are entitled to $15.00 per student (for both UPC and HSC departments), if they are recognized. Student groups and Academic departments may submit finance requests to GPSS to meet student programming needs, but only if they are recognized.
Without recognition, academic departments may not participate in the Senate. The consequences of not being an active member of the Senate include the following:
- departments may not solicit funds from GPSS;
- departments may not vote on funding requests of other departments and student groups; and
- departments may not vote on constitutional amendments
All academic departments, student groups, and individual students who are not recognized may do all of the following:
- attend GPSS Senate Meetings;
- attend all GPSS programs
- apply for Conference Travel funding
Here is How to Get Recognized:
The recognition process for both academic departments and graduate and professional student groups is identical.
The requirements are as follows:
- Four students must sign the Recognition Application. The application is available on USC's Recognition Page. Click here for the Student Organization Application Form. Fill out the form and submit online.
- A constitution must be submitted by each department and group. Any department or group may literally fill in the blanks and submit the model constitution as their own. There is a model constitution available on USC's Recognition Page. Click here for Sample Constitution.
- The signature of a faculty advisor is required for all departments and student groups. The advisor form is available on USC's Recognition Page. Click here for the Advisor Form. Fill out and submit online or print PDF and submit to the GPSS office at STU 106.
- For the deadline of recognition process please check USC's Recognition Page. However, if you are a new group or have not gotten recognized in five years, you can apply to be recognized at any time
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All questions regarding recognition should be directed to GPSS Elections & Recruitment Chair at gpsser@usc.edu.
Student Group Recognition
There are two types of USC student group recognition:
- USC recognition
- GPSS recognition
USC recognition
Any group can apply for this recognition and every student group (graduate and undergraduate) has to re-apply annually (by October 1 each year) to receive USC group recognition
For this you need:
- 4 students
- A constitution
- Letter from a faculty advisor
In the graduate student world, this recognition gives you access to two pots of money:
- Discretionary fund
- Volunteer fund
- Sustainability fund
Discretionary fund - this is a big pool of money that comes from every graduate student's programming fee
Examples of groups that have recently accessed this money:
- Turkish Student Association
- The Playground (playwrights group)
Volunteer fund - this money is for funding community service events. The events must be direct service. This money cannot be used to make cash or kind donations to another organization.
Any graduate student group recognized by USC can apply for this money to fund events that serve graduate students.
Sustainability fund – This fund promotes and funds sustainability-oriented event targeting the USC campuses. To qualify for funds, the relevance to graduate and professional students must be justified.
The Executive Board approves funding requests for less than $1,000 from either fund and the Senates votes on requests for greater than $1,000 from either fund.
USC recognition does not give you the right to vote at GPSS Senate meetings; however, a representative is more than welcome to attend any Senate meeting and may speak on issues that affect or concern them.
GPSS recognition:
Each distinct department or degree program on campus has an official student group. GPSS does not decide how many official student groups should have recognition. Instead, this is determined by department listings in the course catalog. The goal is to give groups of students with distinct needs access to individual budgets.
These groups are allowed to vote on the Senate, and depending on the number of graduate students in the represented school/department organizations have a number of votes in proportion to the entire graduate and professional student population.
This recognition requires USC recognition and attendance at a GPSS finance orientation.
Once a group has USC and GPSS recognition, its representatives vote on the Senate and they have access to five program funding accounts:
- Discretionary fund
- Volunteer fund
- Joint programming fund
- Sustainability fund
- Student organization budget
See above for a description of the discretionary and volunteer funds.
Joint programming fund - GPSS established this fund to encourage social events between diverse groups of graduate students. Like the discretionary and volunteer funds, the Executive Board approves requests less than $1,000 and the Senate approves requests more than $1,000.
Student organization budget - this budget is at the discretion of the student organization and its constitution. Neither the Executive nor the Senate has a role in the approval process.
An example:
In the engineering school, GPSS-recognized student group is called the Engineering Graduate Student Association (EGSA).
Within the engineering school there can also be the following USC recognized groups:
- Women in Engineering Association.
- PhD Engineering Students Association
These groups can request funds from the discretionary fund and the volunteer fund. However, to access the joint programming fund and the program budget set aside for the engineering program, they must get money through EGSA, the GPSS-recognized group.
Furthermore, if the PhD students met in a separate building and seldom had few needs in common with the other engineering students, they might make a case to become an autonomous group and apply for separate GPSS recognition in order to have access to a distinct program budget and the joint programming budget.
Currently, for example, the PhD students at the medical school have an organization that is distinct from the students pursuing clinical medical degrees.
Questions? Please contact the Elections and Recruitment Chair at gpsser@usc.edu.
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