Zachary Zenko will take the place of Arko Mukherjee as president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate for the 2015-16 school year.

Elections, which took place at Monday night’s meeting, introduced the Senate’s executive board for next year.

Zenko, the current vice president for GPSS, ran for president unchallenged and won in an almost unanimous vote, with 95 percent of the Senate in favor.

Zenko does not currently have a specific agenda for next year but said he hopes to serve the interests of the Senate.

“My first question at the beginning of every Senate meeting will be ‘what can I do to serve students?’,” Zenko said.

Zenko has held multiple committee positions and said he will treat his presidency as a third priority to his graduate studies and his job searching.

After serving for three years on GPSS, Mukherjee says he’s happy to have Zenko replace him.

“My last day is April 20.  After that, Zach will take over,” Mukherjee said. “April is a transition month where I pass on my work to him.”

Cory Kleinheksel, the current Professional Advancement Grant chair, was the sole runner in the election for vice president as well. Kleinheksel won with another overwhelming majority of the Senate in favor.

T.J. Rakitan, after serving the last academic year as treasurer, was re-elected to the position.

Chief information officer for the upcoming academic year will be Bharat Agrawal, current senator for aerospace engineering and successor to Sneha Singh.

Senator Maria Mantilla-Perez will replace Cory Kleinheksel as PAG chair. Mantilla-Perez is the current senator for agronomy and member of the Student Affairs Advisory Committee.

In addition, the new URLA chair will be Ardhendu Tripathy, and the GPSRC chair will be Vivek Lawana.

In addition to elections, GPSS voted to become a regular member of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, or NAGPS.

The proposal to revise the Senate constitution, which would change department representation, was not passed.

The Senate decided not to revise the constitution after a lengthy debate on how the graduate student body should be represented in the Senate.

Departmental representation could lead to certain areas being counted twice, whereas representation by major could result in some smaller majors being overlooked by the Senate.

“The problem we face is, do we take double-counting or possible skipping?” T.J. Rakitan said.

Dan Breitbarth, the newly-elected president of the Government of the Student Body for the 2015-16 academic year, spoke briefly with the Senate about the renovations being made in the space where Davidson Hall used to stand. The space will be turned into a parking lot to increase parking available to staff and students after 5:30 p.m.

Breitbarth also mentioned that GSB will be called Student Government starting next year. 

Cabinet elections for GSB are taking place next week, as well, with an open position for a graduate student outreach, in order “to ensure the graduate perspective is being brought to the table,” Bretibarth said.

GPSS will reconvene next month at 7 p.m. April 20 at 1952 Gilman Hall. This will be the last Senate meeting of the semester.