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Biology Graduate Student Association

Graduate Student Invited Speaker

The BGSA Colloquium Representative is responsible for organizing the invitation of one graduate student invited speaker every year. Prospective speakers are nominated and voted on by department graduate students to decide on who to invite.

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Guidelines for nominating and voting on the Graduate Student Invited Speaker

  1. Nominations
    • Nomination and voting will occur the spring semester prior to the
      academic year of the proposed talk. The Colloquium Representative will
      send an email to the graduate student listserv to collect nominations.
    • All graduate students are encouraged to nominate any person(s) as the potential
      Graduate Student Invited Speaker.
    • Each individual is allowed to nominate a maximum of two individuals.
    • Nominators should provide the potential speaker’s name, affiliation, a link to
      their website, and a 2-4 sentence description of their work and career.
  2. Voting
    • The Colloquium Representative will conduct the vote through an online survey site
      that allows votes to remain anonymous. Each graduate student has one vote.
    • Graduate students will have one week to vote.
    • Voting graduate students will rank five nominees in order of interest. The first
      choice will be assigned a score of 5, the second choice will be assigned a score of 4,
      etc.
    • The first choice speaker will be the nominee with the largest total score.
    • In the case of a tie among any of the top five nominees, a revote for those nominees
      will be taken before invitations to speakers are pursued.
  3. After the vote
    • The nominator of the speaker will be responsible for the invitation.
    • Should the proposed speaker accept the invitation, the nominator of that speaker
      will be responsible for coordinating the speaker’s schedule during their visit.
    • Should the first choice speaker reject the invitation, the second through fifth
      choice speakers will be invited sequentially following the procedure outlined in step 3a
      until a speaker accepts.
    • In the case that each of the top five speakers rejects the invitation, new
      nomination, voting, and post-voting procedures will be undertaken.
    • During the second attempt to secure a speaker, graduate students can nominate new
      and previously nominated individuals.

Previous graduate student invited speakers

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