TOWN HALL

2023 - 2024

Funding

Is there a way to provide more institutional support by extending funding for more years?

Apply to extend funding ahead of time

  • Blanket six and seven years is impossible. 

  • Apply for funding once you have a prospectus (i.e., two years before the package ends).

  • If you can get fellowship(s) covering about 75% of your normal stipend, SAS can top these out and push your funding to a sixth year. 

  • For some students who have difficulty finding funding, completion grants are available, but students need to apply. 

The new stipend in SAS is $40,500

  • Stipends went up 40,500 in SAS, which is massive, and it also created a more equitable structure (i.e., everyone starts at the same stipend and increases from this number).

  • The original five-year package was only three summers; now, all stipends are 12 months. 

  • Tuition and healthcare are being paid until the end of funding, resulting in reduced tuition and healthcare for later years. 

The precise cost for a year on admissions letter 

  • Currently, it can be confusing. Major reasons for this include…

    • SAS budgets are complicated. 

    • Endowments can’t be touched, and donors have specifications for how their donations can be used. 

    • Each school has to balance its budget.

    • SAS has more doctoral students to pay for and is not homogeneous.

    • The budget is somewhat dependent on the amount of undergraduate tuition.

    • Other inflationary costs come from paying for graduate, faculty, undergraduate, and LPS budgets.

    • Some graduate groups could give an extra year of funding, which means they would take fewer students into their programs. 

Childcare

Is it possible for childcare to be better subsidized and available for students? Is there anything we can do about it? 

  • Students with children should join the Family Center and apply for family grants there. 

  • Back-up childcare is also an issue, and the Family Center provides this to graduate students at discounted rates. 

  • There’s a Parents at Penn Facebook group where parents can collaborate to hire child care and share resources. 

  • The Child Care Center has a massive waiting list, and faculty and staff struggle through the same thing and have no subsidies to help with this. 

Taxes

Would it be possible for departments to let us know how much we receive each month at the beginning of each semester and whom we can contact about details on our taxes? 

  • No one on campus (the Dean, specific Penn admins, etc.) can broadly discuss taxes. 

    • Everyone has an individual tax profile, and each conversation about taxes would differ.

      • Ex) International students have heavy tax burdens related to federal tax treaties with each country. These treaties change regularly. Even showing the most current ones would lead to potentially misleading information.

      • Sometimes, taxes can be mitigated through refunds, but this depends on individual circumstances.  

  • Some should know at least about service and non-service years.

    • Department chairs and coordinators will know about service and non-service years (service years being when you are a research fellow, research assistant, or teaching assistant; non-service years being when you are not teaching or considered an “educational fellow”). Grad coordinators will know when that happens over the year (as some people teach but not in the summer, or people may work across the summer). 

  • Check Workday

    • Go to Workday to see monthly payments and pay attention to taxes.

  • Some resources 

    • These could be sent out, but with the massive disclaimer that neither Penn nor SAS do not and cannot endorse these materials.

    • The IRS also has free resources about free services (based on income). 

    • ISSS does talk about some resident alien to resident tax changes, but they also can’t go too much into the weeds. 

Freedom of Speech & Academic Freedom

What should grad students know about academic freedom? How would you advise graduate students to talk about academic freedom? Aside from “The Living the Hard Promise: A Dialogue Series,” which was really helpful, do you have any other ideas about it? What is the current status of problems for academic freedom brought up by faculty in protest of Marc Rowan’s letter to trustees?

  • Everyone should care about academic freedom 

    • Academic freedom is not just an Israel and Gaza issue or conservative and liberal.

    • Teaching assistants can discuss this issue in many different ways and with different examples, based on what is comfortable and responsible (same for faculty).  

    • Talking to classes about our ideas based on evidence and not just what we feel is vital. 

  • Resisting Marc Rowan’s call

    • Faculty and plenty of people are working to resist Marc Rowan’s call. 

    • Most alumni and trustees are wonderful and support the university and academic freedom. 

    • Some are loud and eccentric. 

  • Limits

    • Academic freedom also may differ based on contexts (e.g., discussing issues in class vs. informal settings). 

    • Academic freedom is hard to compromise but may also need limits.

TA Expectations

Can departments be more specific about TA expectations, as there can be a significant variance between 12-17 or 10 hours per week? Could you clarify the distinction between an instructor and a TA and why students may not receive the same pay for teaching a course as a TA? 

  • Different Training by Disciplines 

    • If students are in their service years, they are teaching fellows. 

    • Differences in teaching amounts or titles (instructor, TA, grader) come from different training by disciplines (like teaching your language courses). 

    • Lab work is more challenging to discuss due to its team-oriented nature. 

    • Only the length of how long the service is usually clear.  

  • Compact in Summer

    • Over the summer, everyone should be receiving a compact of service obligations and what stipend is. 

    • The compact might change some of the lack of clarity in taxes.

Priorities

Dean Wenger, what are your top 3 priorities?

  • Mentorship

    • To get every graduate group to talk with faculty about shared expectations. 

  • Handbooks

    • To standardize handbooks across departments and work with the provost next year on templates. 

  • Holistic admission process

    • To add more holistic evaluation processes in admissions and how to deal with SCOTUS (affirmative action ruling). Many schools/groups within schools are working on how to combat this, but there are large questions about how to do it. 

2022 - 2023

  • The university commitment is to a minimum of $38k over a 12-month period; Within SAS, different graduate groups use different payment structures, so the $38k may be dispersed over 9, 10, or 12 months.

  • No, the new university minimum has no effect on SAS’s three years of summer funding. The university rule stipulates that students must make at least 38K over a period of 12 months, which is already the case for most SAS students years 1-3.

  • SAS would like to help, but cannot control the tax system. The tax treaties between each nation state and the USA determines how one is taxed as an international student. This is similar to domestic students who maintain another residency in another state within the USA, where they are taxed according to rates in different states.

  • No. SAS’s budget also faces budget constraints due to inflation, as nearly all costs have increased.

  • The formula that a graduate group uses to award stipends can vary yearly. Graduate groups may use medians or averages to account for PhD students who stay for 8 years and those who finish in five. There are different ways to gain an additional year of funding. SAS has proposed the option of graduate groups accepting fewer students in newer cohorts in order to disperse more funding for students’ in years 5+. Many graduate groups also encourage students to apply for fellowships before their degree term ends. Higher stipends is SAS’s current priority, and many competing priorities (i.e. sixth year funding) come from the same pot of funds.

  • There is already a discounted dental assistance, and the options are open enrollment if students would like to pay for additional insurances outside of PSIP. PSIP already includes $125 in vision help (contacts, frame assistance, etc).

Funding

Advising and Mentorship

  • There cannot be one universal handbook due to competing demands based on degree requirements and diversity of focus. SAS does want all groups to have access to graduate group handbooks, either as a distributable document or on the graduate group’s website. The graduate division has basic rules, but each graduate group has its own, more specific rules.

  • It is a requirement for students to receive annual feedback and annual self-assessments are an expectation. SAS is not able to monitor the advising of its nearly 1500 students, but it should be a focus in grad groups individually. Students in these situations should first go to their grad chair. Then, if the situation is not resolved, make the issue known to Dean Wenger.