Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to get to York?
How do I get Free Printing at York?
How can I get more email storage?
How do I sign up for the GSA's student listserv?
How do I unsubscribe from the listserv?
Who do I speak to as a MA or PhD student unable to find a TA/GA contract at Ryerson or York?
What about other funding, such as SSHRC, OGS, Vanier Scholarships?
What are some good, free, bibliographic management tools as alternatives to RefWorks?
How do I edit the Wiki?

Have a question that isn't here? Try adding it by editing the wiki.

How long does it take to get to York?

It all depends on where you start from. Usually it takes 20-40 minutes on the Subway to get to either the Sheppard-Yonge? station or the Downsview Station. There you need to catch the 196A or 196B York Express. Only the 196B travels as far as the the Sheppard-Yonge? station. Depending on the time of day, the bus usually takes 20 minutes to get to York from Downsview & 40 minutes from Sheppard-Yonge?. Usually a trip to York takes 60 minutes and sometimes more.

If you are travelling from the West end, or near the High Park area, the 41 bus can take you to campus from Keele Subway station in as little as 45 minutes, depending on time of day, and is very frequent service.

• TTC Route Maps in PDF format
• Subway travel time PDF
• application essay
• 196S Bus Schedule Info
• 41N Bus Schedule Info (a good option for West enders)
• 41S Bus Schedule Info (a good option for West enders)

How do I get Free Printing at York?

NOTE: As of Fall 2009, there was some contention over this issue as grad students not registered for courses were finding it difficult to access print privileges.

Don't waste your printer ink... PRINT FOR FREE on-campus at York.

Graduate students can print $300 in free pages per academic year. The academic year spans September 1 to August 31. Printing in excess of $300 of graduate quota printing costs 10 cents per page for monochrome printing, and 25 cents for colour printing.

You can print for free from any of the York library or public computer printing stations. You need a York Yu Card (see Student Cards) and a Passport York account. If you are printing from a library computer rather than wirelessly, you need to activate your "AcadLabs" account to sign on to the computer. To activate various services and accounts see Manage My Services on the York website.

Full details on grad student printing: http://www.yorku.ca/computng/students/printing/print_grads.html
Locations for printing and copying at York: http://www.yorku.ca/computing/students/printing.html

How can I get more email storage?

If you are having difficulty managing email with the storage limitations because you have to hold on to all TA class emails for a year, and you don't want to dump all those attachments on a flash drive, or spend a weekend filtering and sorting and deleting, and don't want to deal with Gmail's unlimited storage cause it trolls your message to find things and services you might want to buy, here's one solution:

York staff accounts have larger storage capacities than student accounts. You probably have a student account, but if you check your pay stub and see an employee ID there for your TA/RA/GA, then you can get a second, bigger account. Go to the staff accounts page, create a second passport, then create a second email account for yourself. Best way to dump messages from the one you receive email in to the extra one is to check your email using an email client like Outlook, or Entourage, or Mac Mail, or Outlook Express. Once you have them both setup on your home computer, you can just drag hundreds of emails over easily.

How do I sign up for the GSA's student listserv?

1. Address an email message to .

2. In the body of your email message, issue the command: "SUBSCRIBE comcultgsa LastName? FirstName" (LastName FirstName? is your last and first name). That's it!

3. To send a message to the entire list after you've subscribed, address it to . You will not receive a copy of an email that you send to the entire list.

4. Be careful when replying to listserv messages as any reply to an all-list message REPLIES TO EVERYONE ON THE LIST. If you would like to contact with a specific person in the program, off-list contact will be recommended.

How do I unsubscribe from the listserv?

1. Address an email message to

2. In the body of your email message, issue the command: "SIGNOFF COMCULTGSA"

• More information about LISTSERV commands can be found in the listserv reference card, which you can retrieve by sending an "INFO REFCARD" command to

Does an RA-ship count towards my 130-hour-per-term / 390-hour-per-year funding limit?

Yes, research-assistantships count towards the limit.

Who do I speak to as a MA or PhD student unable to find a TA/GA contract at Ryerson or York?

First, contact your GPD (Graduate Program Director - as of Fall 2009, either Colin Mooers or Steven Bailey) immediately. While additional TA- or GA-ships might be created (particularly at Ryerson), you want to make sure you're getting all the assistance you can in terms of finding work.

Secondly, contact your ComCult? buddy. If you haven't been assigned one, get in contact with a representative from the ComCult-GSA? - try Jeff Biggar (j2biggar <at> ryerson.ca) or Kris Erickson (kris.erickson <at> ryerson.ca) or Alison Harvey (alison1harvey <at> yahoo.ca) for starters.

While both these steps should get you some number of TA/GA hours, the program administration and your returning cohort recognize the continuing disparity between the two schools and are working toward ensuring parity between funding and work opportunities for students regardless of whether one is Ryerson or York enrolled.

One final suggestion is to become active in the unions that represent ComCult? TAs and GAs: CUPE Local 3904 at Ryerson, and CUPE Local 3903 at York. Ryerson's collective agreement, which is coming up for re-bargaining in 2010, could use a few dedicated and critical minds.

What about other funding, such as SSHRC, OGS, Vanier Scholarships?

Both schools officially offer workshops on these first two forms of funding, your main sources of external funding. Typically these workshops happen in mid- to late-September, but you might want to get started earlier on the process, particularly if you need to get letters of reference from a different university/province.

More importantly, ask your peers! There are a number of York and Ryerson students, both MAs and PhDs?, who hold OGS and multi-year SSHRC awards who would be more than willing to offer advice on your proposals; who knows, for a coffee or a drink, they might even give yours a thrashing--er, a read-through!

If in doubt, contact your buddy or a ComCult-GSA? rep.

MOST IMPORTANTLY follow the INTERNAL deadlines for these applications! They are always EARLIER than those posted on the site (which are from "external" applicants - i.e. NOT YOU)!

Some links:
http://www.sshrc.ca/
http://osap.gov.on.ca/eng/Not_Secure/Plan_Grants_full_sepapp_OGS_12345.htm
http://www.vanier.gc.ca/prog-desc-eng.shtml

What are some good, free, bibliographic management tools as alternatives to RefWorks?

Wikindx works on most operating systems. It does require you to set up a web server on your computer.
Zotero is a bibliographic management tool that is a Firefox extension.

How do I edit the Wiki?

The best place to start learning is the demo page on this site.

There is a learning curve to using a wiki. If you want to learn more about wikis, check out the Wiki page in Wikipedia. To learn how to use this particular TikiWiki? software, you may want to read this TikiWiki guide or watch a video on how to edit a page.

My Question Isn't Answered Here!

Why not add your question and once you find an answer, add the information for others? Just click the "edit" button below, and add your question.

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