Welcome to the home page of the International Student Affairs Committee (ISAC) of the Graduate Assembly at UC Berkeley. ISAC works on improving conditions for international graduate students at UC Berkeley by monitoring University policy regarding admission, tuition, funding and other matters and creating opportunities to build community between international and domestic students.

The major items on our agenda include:

• Lobbying for the neutralization of Non-Resident Tuition (NRT) (compare, for example, UC and other campuses via these webpages at UCLA and Michigan).
  
• Documenting the presence of international students at Berkeley and monitoring changes in international student enrollment
• Fundraising for International Student Fellowships
  
• Addressing issues faced by international student families and dependents (such as health insurance and access to campus facilities)
• Working to expand the academic resources available to international graduate students through the Graduate Division
• And organizing social events to build community between international and domestic students. Our Fall Reception this year is November 17th, 5:30-7pm in the Multicultural Center of the MLK Building.
  

If you are interested in joining ISAC or learning more about our work, please contact the committee.

Committee Reports

ISAC encourages delegates to make sure they respond to the ISAC question in the February GA meeting feedback form so that we can compile data on the rate of representation of international students amongst delegates in the Graduate Assembly.

ISAC will be holding its first meeting of the Spring semester during the week of Feb 2-6, so a report is not yet available. The next meeting will be during the week of Feb 16-20, with our regular meeting day and time posted on our webpage by the end of next week.

ISAC held a successful Fall reception on November 19th – thanks to all those who helped and came out. Our last Fall 2008 meeting will be on December 9th. We’ll be reflecting on the reception, and discussing a possible survey, as well as a long term plan and issues to tackle in the Spring semester.

We met twice in October and discussed plans for the Fall reception in November, which will be on Monday November 17th at 5:30pm in Heller Lounge in MLK. We’ve updated the website and are working on reconciling with the other webpages that are available. We’ll be uploading our minutes soon also. We’ve now got some dedicated space in Anthony Hall in which we can put our materials. Our next meeting will be on November 11th at 12pm in Anthony Hall, and then December 2nd.

ISAC met on Wednesday September 24th. We discussed some of the past activities and the current status of projects and issues. Over the summer we were able to achieve two notable concrete successes: (1) the establishment of a fund/endowment to assist grad students with non-resident tuition. (2) reduction in fees for partners of international grad students to use the sports facilit (RSF). Our next meeting will be: October 7th at 12 noon at Anthony Hall. Future meetings will be every two weeks at Anthony Hall from 12-1pm (meeting times may change to accomodate more people).

• the annual International Grad Student get together (in November)
• library access for dependents
• coordinating with international student groups and the ASUC
• working with BIO and putting together an online survey on international grad views & concerns
• institutionalizing and promoting the NRT fellowship fund
• updating our Working Document
• website updates (including info on post-docs)