[media id=”106203″ align=”left”/]As this year’s only official candidate for Graduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees, Navin Manjooran, a first-year M.B.A. student at the Booth School of Business, hopes to give a revitalized voice to graduate concerns at UChicago.

Manjooran, who served as a representative on the Board of Visitors as a graduate student at Virginia Tech in 2005–06, highlighted the value of his previous student government background.

“Since I worked on such a forum before, I have the experience,” he said. “I thought this would be a good platform to use the best things from other schools and apply them here.”

For instance, Manjooran highlighted his support for voting privileges for student members on the Board of Trustees. Representatives at Virginia Tech, he said, “participate not just in one committee but in all the committee meetings, and they are considered a board member. But if you look at the Board of Trustees Web site at Chicago, the undergraduate and the graduate liaisons are not even listed.”

Manjooran emphasized the importance of more direct communication between graduate students and both the administration and Board of Trustees through opportunities like luncheons and one-on-one meetings.

He also hopes to keep promoting graduate-specific needs such as the expansion of graduate scholarships, extended residencies, which impact Ph.D. students’ tuition rates and eligibility for University services, and childcare support.