Every department in Arts & Sciences with a graduate program gets a yearly allocation for the graduate students to utilize however they see fit. The funds come from the Student Activity Fees that all graduates are required to pay. Each department is allocated a specific amount based on its graduate student enrollment figures. Allocations are made on a yearly basis in the fall semester. Many departments choose to hold graduate meetings to relay information from the A&S GSO meetings to the rest of the grads and to discuss the spending of their funds.

Money is often used to purchase food for grad meetings, fund a happy hour/coffee hour, purchase niceties for the TA offices/labs (furniture, maps, etc.), or to hold graduate picnics. If there are subsets within your department, the funds may be divided between them. This is at the discretion of the department’s graduate student body and must be maintained by the department. The A&S GSO only keeps records of each department’s total balance.

To request a copy of your department’s account information, including the available balance of your account, please contact the Administrative Assistant.

Department Information Sheets are used to establish the two department representatives to the GSO and their contact information. It also establishes the two individuals authorized to sign expense forms (e.g. reimbursement forms). Two additional grads must sign as witnesses to the granting of expense authorization to those individuals. If your department has not submitted this form, funds from the department’s account may not be accessed.

Information is required about the two representatives to the GSO council. Three to four signatures are required (1-2 spending authorizers and 2 witnesses). Typically the primary representative will take responsibility for the form. This means obtaining the necessary information and signatures and submitting it to the A&S GSO Administrative Assistant.

Some departments choose to make their reps the authorizers and some choose to have other grads serve as authorizers. It may depend on how active your department is within the GSO or whether your department has decided to hold its own regular graduate meetings with department GSO officers (i.e. department representatives, president, treasurers, secretary, etc.).

It is a good idea to have TWO people acting as expense authorizers as only the person who has spent the money can have it reimbursed to them, but one cannot authorize their own reimbursement.

All department’s must, each year, submit a Department Information Sheet. The sheet tells us representative contact information, lists out the duties of department representatives, and declares who is responsible for signing off on department reimbursements.

You can submit the necessary information by filling out the google form at the following link.

Department Information Sheet FY21

To be eligible to spend money from your accounts, the Department Information Sheet must be submitted to the Administrative Assistant every fall (usually by the October GSO meeting.)

After the deadline Departments will NOT be allowed to spend any money until the Department Information Sheet has been turned in. These rules are in place for the benefit of the graduate students within each department. It is important to maintain up to date records of the individuals who have access to the accounts. It is also required that departments are active in the GSO to maintain access to their funds.

Most department spending is done by reimbursement. Please follow the instructions on the reimbursement form carefully. You must submit original, itemized receipts to be reimbursed. Once the Administrative Assistant has received the form, reimbursement usually takes 4 to 6 weeks.

*If you purchase gift cards the recipient will need to fill out a W-9 form, for more information contact the SORC office.

Supplemental Department Funding Request

The supplemental department funds are open to the entire constituency of the departmental GSO, adhere to all existing rules for use of departmental GSO funds, and do not exceed the funding limits stated below:

$100: Anthropology, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, English, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology $150: All other A&S departments

Departmental GSOs may opt to apply to receive their entire funding limit at once, or to apply for funds in several smaller increments.

• • Until further notice, applications may only be submitted in full in the form of single .PDF file

• • If you’re not typing your allocation, please print neatly and legibly. Illegible handwriting may prevent successful processing of your payment.

• • You MUST state whether you are an employee of the University. TAs and TFs are employees. If you get regular paychecks from the University, you are an employee. If you are not sure, please check with your department administrator or other appropriate individual.

• • Whether the address you prefer to have the check mailed to is a campus address or home address, please provide the FULL mailing address.

• • You may not leave any section of the form incomplete. If there is missing or incomplete information, it will NOT be processed.

• • Receipts must be scanned or as clear images on a neutral background.

• • Again, all materials must be submitted as a single .PDF file containing the Reimbursement Request Form, a copy of event attendance, and scans of original ITEMIZED receipts.

Part of the reimbursement process requires that you keep track of the people who attended the event. The easiest way is to have people sign-in (.pdf) but you may also create a list after-the-fact if necessary.

Each person who spent money for an event must be reimbursed separately, and so must file a separate reimbursement request but only one list of people attending the event needs to be submitted.

If you know in advance that you will need to spend a large sum of money or if you want to spend money within the University please contact the Administrative Assistant to make arrangements.

One of the department’s expense signatories must approve, in writing or by e-mail, all reimbursement requests or other payments from the department accounts. If a department is not currently in good standing with the A&S GSO then it is not eligible to spend money. Contact the Administrative Assistant for details.