WASHINGTON, D.C. — Spouses and families of graduate assistants and fellows will be covered by Penn State's healthcare plan starting this fall.

Penn State President Graham Spanier announced the plan during his remarks to the Penn State Board of Trustees at their meeting yesterday in Washington, D.C.

"It has been our ultimate goal to eventually provide benefits equivalent to those of faculty and staff," Spanier said.

Eva Pell, dean of the Graduate School, gave two main reasons for implementing the full coverage program: it makes Penn State more attractive to prospective graduate students, and "it's the right thing to do."

"I think it really gives us a competitive edge," Pell said.

The main change in health care will be that Penn State will cover not only the students themselves, but also their spouses and families. This is estimated to cost $7 million, with funding from both research grants and general funds.

The expanded healthcare will not cover all of Penn State's graduate students. It will only cover graduate assistants, who are students employed by university in teaching assistant and other positions, and graduate fellows.

Currently, there are about 10,000 graduate students at Penn State. More than 3,000 of them are graduate assistants and fellows, and would be affected by the new plan.

Ozgur Tunceli, president of the Graduate Student Association, was at the trustees meeting as a student representative. She said that the future goal of the GSA is to have benefits extended to all graduate students.

"This program only covers graduate assistants," Tunceli said, "so we are still concerned about the other students' health issues."

Pell said she has been pushing for the full health care coverage since June of 1999. However, it was only about a year ago that health care discussions between graduate students and administrators began.

The Graduate and Fixed Term Employment Organization, a group working to unionize graduate students, has also been pushing for improvements in healthcare for graduate students.

"It's great," Jay Silverstein, GFTEO director of organizing, said. "This is one of the things we've been advocating for several years. It is much needed."

Silverstein said the GFTEO had not been informed of the details of the changes yet, so questions still remain about the extent of the improvements.

"At face value, it sounds great," he said.

However, he said the GFTEO should have been involved in the negotiations for healthcare changes since it represents many of the students who will be affected by the changes.

Collegian Staff Writer Chris Buell contributed to this report.