GRACS | Graduate Representative Association of Computer Sciences

GRACS Elections Fall 2013

About the Office

GRACS elections are staggered: three representatives have a fall-spring term and two have a spring-fall term. So, the representatives that started at the beginning of this fall will continue in office through 26 Aug 2013.

This election is for three representatives, with a term of office from 28 August 2013 to 26 August 2014.

The purposes of GRACS are to:

1. Represent and further the interests of CS graduate students within the CS department, UT, and the community;
2. Provide for dissemination of useful information to CS graduate students, especially new students;
3. Foster a sense of community within the CS department.

In support of these purposes, the elected representatives will oversee the creation, operation, and dissolution of GRACS standing and project committees and will manage the GRACS budget.

For further details, see the GRACS bylaws: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~gracs/gracs-bylaws.shtml.

Everyone enrolled in a Computer Science graduate degree program is eligible to vote.

Voting closes at noon Wednesday, 08 May 2013.

Amendments

In addition to the above Executive Nominations, we will also be making changes to the GRACS Bylaws. To see these changes, please see this page with the proposed changes: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~gracs/gracs-bylaws-proposed-amendments.shtml. You will be asked to indicate on the voting ballot if you approve of these changes.

Candidates

GRACS elections use approval voting. Vote for one to three candidates.

Deepti Ghadiyaram

2nd year Masters student — Image and Video Processing — UTCS username: deepti

I am a second year Masters student with a research interest in Image and Video Processing and Computer Vision. The potential of this field for impacting a large number of people motivated me to continue my stay here for my PhD. In my past life, I founded a social organization in India with an aim to bring together volunteers, donors and the underprivileged on one platform to exchange information and help each other.

What are my plans for GRACS?

• Spread information: Since I had a friend from my undergraduate school at UT, I knew the affordable places to live and how to go about finding a research assistantship soon as I got here. But I realized that this was not the case with my fellow incoming students and most of them ended up not knowing many prospective funding opportunities atleast for the first few weeks. Thus, it will be very useful to have a better and more interactive way of sharing information with the incoming students about housing, funding and assistantship details.
• For the nerd in us all: There are some excellent groups in other engineering departments like Women in Computing that I plan to organize in our department. Being a CS graduate whose dream superpower is to write perfect code, it saddens me that we don't have an active "hackers" groups or regular events that encourage programming and entrepreneurial interests. That's also something I'd like to plan and organize.

Nathan Clement

3rd year doctoral student — Databases — UTCS username: nclement

For the past 2-3 years, I've been on the GRACS Executive Committee board. On this committee, I've gone on several tours of the Gates building, hosted several events (including bowling/billiards, game nights, a bat brigade, and a foosball tournament), collaborated with faculty to give presentations, and bought loads of pizza. It's been an extraordinary adventure, and I'd love to continue.

Basically, my platform can be condensed into two words: MORE PIZZA

Voting Procedure

1. Log in to a department UNIX host. If you are loging in via ssh, connect with X Windows forwarding enabled, i.e. ssh -X hostname (list of ssh hosts).
2. Run the GRACS voting application: /u/www/users/gracs/election/vote
3. Highlight the items you approve of, then click 'Submit'
4. Note that only the last ballot you cast will be counted -- subsequent ballots overwrite previous ballots.

If you are unsuccessful, send an e-mail message with the problem you had, and optionally containing your vote to GRACS. Note that this voting method is not confidential.