June Gin is currently a graduate student instructor for Communication Studies 102 and a second-year SNRE doctoral student. Although she has been a Comm 102 GSI several times and her professor would like to hire her again for the fall semester, it is likely she will not teach another term in this department.

Gin and many other GSIs beginning to look for jobs for the fall are concerned about the College of Literature, Science and the Arts" recent implementation of a so-called "bottom line budgeting" plan that will give departments a set amount of money to spend on GSIs for the fall.

"The professor who I"m currently working for is trying to hire me again," Gin said. "The communications department policy is that Professor Travis Dixon cannot hire me again. The LSA bottom line budgeting doesn"t give the communications department enough money to hire me."

The new budget only gives departments enough money to hire LSA graduate students or graduate students whose tuition is comparable to that of an LSA graduate student. Departments keep whatever money that remains after they finish hiring GSIs.

University officials are keeping tight-lipped about the new policy. LSA budgeting department officials would not comment on GSI hiring policies for this story.

Money matters

Darci Dore, graduate program coordinator for the communication studies department, a division of LSA, said students have been hired from outside the department in the past, but the budget leaves little room for that next year.

"We now have a budget only to provide a tuition waiver for LSA students or students whose tuition is lower or equal to the tuition of an LSA student," Dore said.

Mark Dilley, coordinator of the Graduate Employees Organization, said the union is concerned with the growing number of calls from GSIs who are not getting jobs. GEO has filed a grievance with the University"s human resources department about bottom line budgeting.

"We"re getting calls from people saying, "They"re not hiring me because my tuition costs a little bit more than the regular Rackham graduate student"s does,"" Dilley said.

Second-year Law student Harry Mihas has been told he can no longer continue to teach in the history of art department.

Six years of experience at ABC and NBC and his master degree in art history should qualify him to teach film and video classes within the communication studies department, Mihas said, but because he is in the Law School, he will not be hired.

"It"s frustrating that I"m not being looked at or considered. I know I can offer students something. As an individual, I"m very qualified. I have experience teaching as a graduate student instructor," Mihas said.

Mihas said his calls and e-mails to LSA administrators have not been answered.

"You feel like you"re being ignored," he said.

"No one told us"

Sociology doctoral student Cedric deLeon said he is experiencing another problem related to LSA budgeting. The sociology department has decided to only give fellowships to graduate students who reach candidacy by the end of their third year, deLeon said. This will go into effect for current second-year graduate students and all students after that group. "They"re coming up with a compromise for third-year students for a half-year fellowship and a half-year GSI-ship," deLeon said.

But deLeon said third-year students who were counting on a full fellowship are still worried.

"The people in my year are terrified because they didn"t know this would happen. No one told us. It just came at us. We"re scrambling," deLeon said.

Gin said when she was hired in previous years, the departments did not consider what college she was a student in.

"They were doing tuition-blind hiring back then. Now the departments in LSA are constricted by this bottom line budgeting," Gin said.

Gin said departments need to hire graduate students from schools outside of LSA for courses like Comm 102.

"This course historically relies on experienced GSIs outside of LSA. Bottom line budgeting would break that pattern," she said.

"What would this mean for quality of instruction? Currently we have three GSIs working for the class I"m teaching. None of them are returning. He relies on the veteran GSIs to train the new GSIs," Gin said.

"So basically, I"m the only one who has taught this class continuously who is available to teach this class in the fall," she added. "He"ll have to have four new GSIs and none of them will have taught this class before."

Questions of quality

Mihas said he does not think LSA departments will hire the best GSIs available at the University under the new budgeting plan.

"To me, that tells me that you can"t hire the best people out there. You can only hire within constraints. In big departments they need a lot of graduate student instructors." Mihas said.