UCI Student Government

As part of his efforts to make UCI a better place, Sam became involved in the UCI Associated Graduate Students (AGS) government.

VP Financial Affairs (2007-2008): During the 2007-2008 year, the Anthill Pub and Grille (the Pub) reopened after the UCI Student completed it's Phase III reconstruction. AGS had suffered from the lack of an effective financial vice president during the 2006-2007 year, so the VP Financial Affairs was critical in restablishing the relationship between AGS the Pub. Towards this end I founded and chaired the Pub Advisory Board (PAB). More details are available here.

VP Administrative Affairs (2006-2007): While making meetings run smoothly and the AGS institutional memory more accessible may seem like a boring job, doing so successfully has made AGS a more powerful force for advancing graduate student interests.

During Sam's tenure, Council participation increased to 3-4x as many people attending meetings as during the same time period during the previous year. This lets the council do more business (in 2006-2007 we addressed nearly 4 times as many resolutions as the previous year) and has even allowed council to achieve the 2/3rd majority necessary to amend AGS' bylaws. The procedures Sam initiated during this period allowed the 2007-2008 to be as administratively sucessful as 2006-2007.

• Web Page: Sam made AGS work better by organizing meetings through the AGS web page. This means that for one week before meetings, anyone can look over the AGS agenda to suggest changes and new council business. Huge thanks to the AGS Webmaster Patty Lee, NACS Support John Saska, Michael Schafae and Andreas Gal.
• Meeting Procedure: During council meetings, Sam made meetings more efficient and productive using strictly enforce time limits by letting people know when their time is up (naturally, council may motion for time on any particular issue). Because of this, council meetings have lasted the 2 hours or less that they're supposed to rather than running on for 3 or 4 hours as they would have in previous years.
• Web Voting: To make council meetings shorter, Sam lead a committee that authored a bylaw amendment allowing AGS to vote on council business using the Internet.

Health Plan Advisory Board Chair (2005-2006): During the academic year from 2005-2006 Sam served as the Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan (GSHIP) Advisory Board (GAB) Chair. During his tenure he made the health insurance work better for the student body by:

• Addressing student complaints to fix systemic problems.
• Running a dental plan survey to inform policy. 686/3155 students, 21.7% of the graduate student population filled out the survey.
• Helping graduate students to understand how to use their health plan by improving the GSHIP web page.

Engineering Representative (2004-Present): Since 2004 Sam's represented graduate students in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering on the AGS council.

Resources

• AGS: Associated Graduate Student Web page
• GSHIP: Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan Web page
• Anthill Pub: AGS's pub on the UCI campus.