jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

I have the following dataInit code inside of a column in my jqGrid.  However, when it fires, it doesn't seem to have a value assigned to the form field.  Am I missing something obvious?  Or is it a bug? 

name: 'categoryId', index: 'categoryId', width: 100, align: 'left', sortable: true, editable: true, edittype: 'select',

         editoptions: { dataUrl: '/Admin/SLA/GetCategories',

         dataInit : function(elem) {

                      alert("value is " + $(elem).val());   ********THIS IS EMPTY***********

         }

         dataEvents: [

              { type: 'change', 

                  fn: function (e) {var v = $(e.target).val();

                       setSubCategory(v);  }

               }   ]      },

editrules: { edithidden: true }, searchtype: "text", searchoptions: { sopt: ['cn', 'eq', 'ne', 'bw', 'ew', 'nc'] }