GSA Election results are certified: James Steele, PhD Student in Mathematics, is the next GSA President 

The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) hosted its 2023 General Election on March 13 and 14 with eight candidates running for five Executive positions and the AVP Labour position. The GSA is glad to announce that James Steele, PhD Student in Mathematics, is elected as the next GSA President, alongside with five other graduate students for the four Vice Presidents and Associate VP Labour. 

This year, a total of 5.3% UCalgary graduate students casted their votes for the GSA Executive election. 

James Steele (he/him), PhD student in Mathematics, was elected with 71.03% “Yes” votes of the total casted votes to capture the President role. James is currently the GSA VP Academic for this current academic year and is excited to continue supporting graduate students in this new role as the GSA President. 

Kirsten Neprily (she/her), PhD student in the program Applied Child Psychology, won the Vice President Academic position with 50.69% of the total casted votes. Kirsten was the GSA VP External during the 2021-2022 academic year. The GSA would like to thank the two other candidates, Kasra Soleimani and Arkendu Banerjee, for participating in the VP Academic election. 

The Vice President External position is captured by AC Cameron (he/him), MSc student in Mathematics. AC was elected with 67.67% “Yes” votes of the total casted votes.  

Cameron Armstrong (he/him) ran unopposed for the Vice President Finance and Services position and was elected for a second term as the VP Finance and Services with 67.52% “Yes” votes of the total casted votes.  

Lastly, Masume Akbari (she/her), PhD candidate in Geomatics Engineering, will be the Vice President Student Life position for a second term. 80.37% of the total casted votes voted “Yes” for Masume. 

The newly elected officials are excited to represent the graduate student body at the UCalgary in the next academic year. 

The GSA also hosted the Associate Vice President (AVP) Labour election during the same period and saw a 6.3 percent voter turnout among the academically employed graduate students. Hunter Yaworski was elected 68.60% as the AVP Labour. 

The GSA would like to thank all graduate students who voted and the outgoing President, Saaka Sulemana Saaka, for his dedication to graduate student community during his service term. 

Special thanks to our Chief Returning Officer, Tanille Shandro, for facilitating this election.

Photo by the GSA: (from left to right) Hunter Yaworski, AC Cameron, James Steele, Masume Akbari, Kirsten Neprily, Cameron Armstrong