University Senators

Our three senators serve as liaisons between the Columbia University Senate and GSAS graduate students and represent the three divisions of GSAS departments: humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.

Senators attend to monthly Senate meetings, provide updates, and take questions at the monthly ASGC plenary meetings. Senators typically serve 2-year terms (last elections were held in April 2022).

The Columbia University Senate is a university-wide policy–making body representing faculty, researchers, students, administration, administrative staff, librarians, and alumni. The Senate makes policy on a range of issues that affect the entire university.

To contact all senators, please email [email protected]. Alternatively, fill out this contact form if you wish to send your message anonymously.

Mike Ford

Senator Mike Ford (Musicology PhD), GSAS Humanities

Representing...

  • Ph.D. Programs in: Art History and Archaeology; Classical Studies; Classics; East Asian Languages and Cultures; English and Comparative Literature; French and Romance Philology; Germanic Languages; Italian; Latin American and Iberian Cultures; Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; Music (Musicology); Philosophy; Religion; Slavic Languages; Theatre; Yiddish Studies*
     
  • D.M.A. Program in: Music (Composition)
     
  • Standalone M.A. Programs in: American Studies; Art History and Archaeology; Classical Studies; Classics; East Asia: Regional Studies; East Asian Languages and Cultures; English and Comparative Literature; French and Romance Philology; Germanic Languages; Hispanic Studies; Italian; Japanese Pedagogy; Jewish Studies; Latin America and the Caribbean: Regional Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies*; Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies; Philosophical Foundations of Physics; Philosophy; Religion; Russian Translation; Slavic Cultures; Slavic Languages
     
  • Dual Degree in: Art History Dual MA Degree Program (with Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

 

Note 1: (*) indicates that the particular program of study may be represented by more than one GSAS senator because it spans across multiple A&S divisions.

Note 2: Most dual degrees are not listed here since they are not unique programs within GSAS. They might be represented by more than one University senator. Ex: Religion M.A. and Journalism's M.S.
 

Email: [email protected]

Mike has served as the GSAS Humanities Senator since 2018, making him the longest-serving Senator in the Student Affairs Committee (SAC). He has built and continues to strengthen relationships between GSAS students and other silos of the university, at the student, faculty, and administrative levels. He has served as a conduit in the Senate for union matters and has advocated for improvements in graduate student housing.

His biggest legislative success has been ushering in the establishment of the University Senate Task Force on Sustainability, which monitors progress around on-campus sustainability and serves as an information clearing house. After leading the Resolution that established the task force, he has also been the group’s chair since 2020. This position has also allowed him to be involved with inclusion of students, particularly GSAS students, in the planning of the Columbia Climate School.

In addition to SAC, Mike has been a member of the Honors and Prizes Committee, the Campus Planning and Physical Development Committee, as well as the SAC subcommittee on anti-racist education. 

Leonard Mushunje

 

Senator Leonard Mushunje (Statistics MA), GSAS Natural Sciences

Representing...

  • Ph.D. Programs in: Astronomy; Biological Sciences; Chemical Physics; Chemistry; Earth and Environmental Sciences; Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology; Mathematics; Physics; Psychology; Statistics
     
  • Standalone M.A. Programs in: Biotechnology; Climate and Society; Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology; Mathematics with a Specialization in the Mathematics of Finance; Statistics
     
  • Dual Degree in: Earth and Environmental Science Journalism (Dual MA/MS Program)
     
  • CUIMC Ph.D. Programs in: Biomedical Informatics; Genetics and Development; Microbiology and Immunology; Neurobiology and Behavior; Nutritional and Metabolic Biology; Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine (Mechanisms of Disease); Pharmacology and Molecular Signaling; Cellular Physiology and Biophysics (Physiology and Cellular Biophysics); Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies (CMBS) [Including: Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics; Cell Biology; Molecular, Structural, Cell and Genetic Studies]
     
  • CUIMC Standalone M.A. Program in: Biomedical Informatics

 

Note 1: The M.S. in Human Nutrition at CUIMC is NOT represented by the GSAS Natural Sciences Senator. It is likely represented by the P&S Senator.

Note 2: (*) indicates that the particular program of study may be represented by more than one GSAS senator because it spans across multiple A&S divisions.

Note 3: Most dual degrees are not listed here since they are not unique programs within GSAS. They might be represented by more than one University senator. Ex: M.D./Ph.D. (P&S)
 

Email: [email protected]

Leonard is a Masters and pre-doctoral student in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Columbia University in New York, USA, as an MA2PhD fellow. Before joining Columbia University, he graduated from Midlands State University in 2021 with degrees in Mathematics and Statistics and a minor in Computer Science as a Higherlife-ECONET Scholar. He spent his undergraduate years working at the intersection of pure Mathematics and Statistical modeling with applications to Economics and Finance. Additionally, in 2021, he was a Global UGRAD fellow at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, USA. Leonard is a quantitative risk analyst at Dura Capital, working on model building, pricing, and risk management. Before joining Dura Capital, he was a quantitative risk analyst at the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe in the Group CEO office, focusing on risk modeling and pricing. He also spent more than a year as an actuarial research and modeling intern at Zimbabwe Actuarial Consultants and African Actuarial Consultants. His role as a Senator aligns closely with his current position as the Founder and President of the World Mathematical Society (WMS).

Darold Cuba ASGC

 

Senator Darold Cuba (Oral History MA), GSAS Social Sciences

Representing...

  • Ph.D. Programs in: Anthropology; Economics; History; Political Science; Sociology; Yiddish Studies*
     
  • Standalone M.A. Programs in: African-American Studies; Anthropology; Economics; European History, Politics, and Society; Global Thought; History and Literature; Human Rights Studies; Islamic Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies*; Museum Anthropology; Oral History; Political Science; Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS); Russia, Eurasia and East Europe: Regional Studies; Sociology; South Asian Studies
     
  • Dual Degree in: International and World History (MA/MSc with London School of Economics)

 

Note 1: (*) indicates that the particular program of study may be represented by more than one GSAS senator because it spans across multiple A&S divisions.

Note 2: Most dual degrees are not listed here since they are not unique programs within GSAS. They might be represented by more than one University senator. Ex: QMSS and SIPA's M.P.A./M.I.A.
 

Email: [email protected]

As the university's first ever Wikipedia Fellow and Wikimedian-In-Residence, and a Research Assistant in the Engineering School's CGUI Lab, I bring a multi-facted approach to representing the GSAS student body here at Columbia. As a recovering journalist/producer from a multi-generational military family (from Virginia) I intimately understand the values of a critical, patriotic system of democracy. As a multi-hyphenate in cultural, social, and political identity, I would love to represent GSAS as the Social Sciences Senator.