Last year, the University of Iowa Student Government split into two new and separate student governments: the undergraduates (UISG) and the graduate/professional students (ECGPS).  This means that now all of the student governments for each graduate school (such as Law, Dentistry, Medical, Graduate College, etc.) report to the ECGPS.  This covers all 9,000 graduate and professional students at the University.

The split, however, isn’t finished yet.  ECGPS is designing a process for allocating money to graduate and professional student organizations, and this includes all of the student organizations at the law school.  Nothing is final yet, but it appears that ECGPS will have a budget of around $150,000 per year.  In addition, ECGPS will need committed students to coordinate events across all the graduate schools.

In short, we need people to run this thing. 

There are three ad hoc committees officially opening up on the ECGPS.  Each one needs a chairperson, and the chair of each committee needs to be competent, energetic and ready to invest some time in building a student government from the ground up.  The goal is to turn each committee into a permanent body with its own set of bylaws, budget and possibly office space:

• Finance Committee - This committee will handle the roughly $150,000 ECGPS budget.  This will involve appropriating money to all the student organizations such as ISBA, EJF, OWLs, ISBA, and all similar groups and student councils at all the other graduate colleges.  We will work with this person to design budgeting rules and procedures from the ground up.  This is especially suitable for people interested in business or corporate law.
• Civic Engagement - This will require someone interested in coordinating philanthropy across the graduate and professional schools.  This would be the most open-ended job since nobody has every attempted to do this before.  Preferably, someone going into public interest careers will fill this position.  I think a law student would be especially suitable for this one, since our line of work puts us in a position to help a lot of people.  Also, the law school has invested heavily in community service over the past couple of years.
• Public Relations - This person will reach out to graduate and professional students.  Few students even know that they have a University student government, so we need someone to plan events, spread resources around, and oversee the website.  No technical web knowledge is necessary, as ECGPS has budgeted to pay for someone to actually build the site.  Preferably someone who can comfortably represent ECGPS to the public and to the press will fill this position.

If you want to get involved, you only need to be a graduate or professional student at the University of Iowa in good academic standing.  E-mail me at: steven-wieland@uiowa.edu.