List of Meeting Minutes
BGSA meeting, 20 January 2012
Agenda
- Grad Forum
- Grad Committee
- Foundation Funds
- Budget
- Elections
Grad Forum
- Goal of grad forum is to foster communication between grad students in department
- Open format for sessions: practice presentations, workshops, experimental design discussions, etc.
- Held in 221 Carr (old Botany Library), Fridays, 12-1pm
- Gaby passed around sign-up sheet, will also send out doodle for sign-ups
- Martijn mentioned that Career Resource Center presented at Graduate
Student Council about their services & it might be good to have them come present a workshop at Grad Forum. - Everyone agreed & Gaby/Martijn will work on getting this scheduled
Grad Committee
- lots of concern about how the changes in implementation of policies on time-to-completion will change culture of department, especially in relation to side projects, collaborations & other efforts that aren’t directly part of a thesis/dissertation
- suggestion to compare requirements/metrics/tracking methods at other large public institutions that are comparable to UF
- agreement that a BGSA meeting with the Grad Committee would be good to improve communication between grad students & faculty on what’s happening (François will contact grad committee to make arrangements)
Foundation Funds
- the special funds that were discussed in the fall will be applied as follows:
- $2,000 towards student travel awards (not sure if this means more awards or larger awards)
- $1,000 towards a new grant for interdisciplinary projects
- $2,000 towards Riewald/Olowo grants
- unclear if these funds will supplement existing funding, or these funds will replace current funding
-
Budget
- Earned $930 from t-shirt sales (didn’t sell any mugs), so this covers two years of BGSA Riewald/Olowo & URAP funding
Elections
- discussion over how to increase participation
- self-nominations vs. peer nominations: conclusion was to have both methods, but peer nominations must be confirmed by nominee
- talked about splitting some jobs fall/spring, to allow those who have lengthy field seasons during one semester to still be involved
- issue is reps to faculty committees need to be for whole year
- most positions that could be shared already have two or more people
- descriptions already include info on time commitment, but should publicize this more, since wide range of time commitments
- publicize BGSA achievements to let everyone know that BGSA positions make a difference
- discussion began focusing on fostering “community building” and communication to increase ties within department
- Grad Forum newsletter: Gaby will compile notes & committee will
distribute - “stall wall” sheet: single page published weekly or monthly that is posted in restrooms: concern about whether this is permissible; when done in past, improved participation (e.g., Grad Forum)
- Grad Forum newsletter: Gaby will compile notes & committee will
BGSA meeting, 6 September 2011
Seminar snack
Seminar snacks are a huge amount of work
- each lab rotating assignments, instead of BGSA committee
- faculty agreed, but apparently forgot, but have been reminded
- faculty working out procedure for rotating
Snack & soda store
Snack & soda store earning money, but not bringing in as much as we
should.
- tracking inventory for one semester (beginning & end) to see if it’s worth to continue running it
- suggestion: email department w/status & let everyone know that we may have to eliminate store
- reminder that we’re missing money
- Francois & Jess will send to both museum & bio lists
- discussion of price change to $0.75/item: decided to hold off on changing prices until after evaluate inventory this semester
- put sign up thanking for supporting research
- coffee: currently space committee task, suggestion to switch to Keurig, but concern about being environmentally wasteful. Decided that coffee pot will be provided, but not coffee
URAP Awards
- research awards for undergrads doing posters/talks at research day
- encourage undergrads presenting research
- suggested small prize, e.g., $25 gift cards or something
- 1 for talk & 1 for poster + “Honorable Mentions”
- $50 (talk), $50 (best poster), $25(honorable mention poster), see how it goes this year
- Gift card to Amazon, since can use for wide variety
Fundraising
- Designing t-shirt &/or mug
- explore option of working with Jamie to find someone from Art dept. to design.
- pre-orders for the bulk of the order
- Daniel presented his (& Julian’s) idea of DNA w/diff. ecosystems in each loop, very favorable response
- Caitlin has a graphic designer friend who might be willing to do it, will check
- goal is having these ready before Christmas
- Francois confirmed that mug & t-shirt came at top of list on survey done in past
- email coming out by early November
Extra money from department
- one-time deal
- not large, but fairly substantial (~$5,000)
- department is giving SIGNIFICANTLY less in travel funds than in the past
- departmental travel awards can be used for research, CLAS only for
conferences - Options discussed:
- more/larger Riewald/Olowo awards
- more/larger travel awards, research or conferences was the concensus
- multidisciplinary projects for collaborative research projects?
- grad student retreat
- will have vote on options
- committee for awards via same mechanism as Riewald/Olowo?
Rustom Antia’s visit
He arrives Sept. 24, leaves Tuesday
- joint with EPI
- Itchetucknee trip on Sunday
- doodle will be sent out
- not sure if grad students will have vote or not, but will find out
Grad student progress letters
- started tracking progress much better last year
- letters going out indicating that status in program may be in jeopardy
- letters go out annually
- concern is that this policy is being applied to senior students in mid-stream
- feeling is that decisions would have been different if the tracking
had been going on from the beginning - providing updates isn’t the problem, but some students feel that the implementation is severely flawed & causing excess stress
- having a discussion with the grad committee & grad students might be
helpful - request for face to face meeting with grad committee/coordinator, not
just via email, perhaps after report to administration is done in November - proactive checklist for each year