Graduate and professional student issues ranging from funding college-based research, student involvement, child care and health care will be considered in the Graduate Professional Student Council elections, starting today.

The more than 8,600 UA graduate and professional students who comprise about 23 percent of the student body can cast their vote online from 8 a.m. today through 5 p.m. Thursday. Graduate students can vote for representatives in their own college as well as at-large representatives who can respond to student needs and have an impact on the makeup of the GPSC, said GPSC President Amanda Brobbel.

Students will be able to find the candidate or candidates from their college listed first and the listing for the at-large candidates listed second in determining who to vote for on the GPSC Web site, said Brobbel, a fifth-year British literature doctoral student.

The election ballots will be set up the same way to encourage all voters to vote for the at-large representatives since these representatives have an impact on the makeup of the GPSC, she said.

Students are also encouraged to vote for candidates who are running uncontested elections if they approve of the candidate, Brobbel said.

Brobbel said the elections are exclusively held online primarily because graduate students don't come out in large numbers to the Student Union Memorial Center or any other building on campus other than their college of study.

All graduate computer labs will have election notices posted to remind students of the election. Though it's hard to get graduate students involved with something other than their studies, Brobbel said graduate students typically respond well to the issues most pressing to them.

"Whether they choose to vote or not is their decision," Brobbel said. "They seem to have a positive attitude toward it all. As long as each college gets a good leader, they can get things accomplished with the school administration."

Out of the 27 total candidates, 18 are women and at least seven of the candidates are international students. If a college grows or decreases in students, more or less representatives are needed respectively each year.

"The numbers remain relatively stable," Brobbel said.

Colleges like the College of Engineering, the College of Humanities and the College of Science have three candidates running where only one or two students can win the position, whereas the majority of the colleges have unopposed races. Architecture and landscape architecture are the only colleges not being represented on the ballot this year, and medical and law students are still able to vote for at-large candidates in the GPSC elections despite not being represented in the GPSC and not having any candidates to vote for from their colleges.

"Despite recent events, we have not been given sufficient notice in order to

block med students and law students from voting," Brobbel said. "If we blocked them at this point, we would be in violation of the GPSC constitution and elections code."

Each unit or college receives one representative for every 400 graduate-professional students in the unit. This means bigger colleges like the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Eller Graduate School of Management receive more representation because of the amount of students they have, Brobbel said.