Graduate students to receive dental coverage

After more than four years of appeals, graduate student academic appointees will receive dental insurance for the 2008-09 school year.\nUniversity Graduate School Dean James Wimbush said he has made it a priority to get the coverage for these students – usually teaching or research assistants – since he became dean in 2006. He said the plan provides for student academic appointees to receive full dental coverage. The University will cover the cost of preventative care, with a maximum benefit of $500 a year. Students will pay deductibles for restorative and major dental work, Wimbush said.\n“We wanted to make sure that the quality of graduate student life was as good as we could make it,” Wimbush said.\nIU employs 3,800 student academic appointees at the Bloomington campus and 650 at IU Purdue University at Indianapolis, according to an IU press release.\nGenerally, student academic appointees are paid to teach or help teach classes as well as carry out other academic duties. \nIn addition, these students’ spouses and children can reap the benefits, Wimbush said.\nPaul Rohwer, moderator of the Graduate and Professional Student Organization, said he is extremely grateful for the coverage.\n“Until now, we’ve been the only Big Ten school to not have this benefit,” Rohwer said.\nAbout half of the Big Ten universities provide full coverage, while the other half give specific graduate students the option of signing up for a plan, Wimbush said. \nMore than $1 million has been added to the base budget to pay for the program, which Rohwer admits is a lot of money for a university to grant. Wimbush said the program will be hard to fund, but the graduate school has “recognized the importance of doing this and showing our commitment to the graduate students.”\nIn years past, and even recently, students such as Ursula McTaggart have shown their desire for coverage in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways.\n“We started our campaign for dental care around 2003, holding rallies and even leaving dental items on administrators’ desks to remind them that we’ve worked hard and this was a benefit we wanted,” said McTaggart, who headed the Graduate Employee Organization petition in 2006.\nAfter hearing the news of the coverage, student academic appointees were ecstatic, Rohwer said. In fact, talks of a dental coverage party began to surface immediately. Rohwer said the student academic appointees at IU are grateful for those who made the coverage happen.\n“Dean Wimbush, Dean (Bennett) Bertenthal and the school deans deserve credit,” Rohwer said. “They listened, then made our life a little sweeter.”