BGSA meeting, 7 April 2016
Announcement
Jenna Moore had sent out an email containing the syllabus for the proposed course: Practical Pedagogy for Biology created by Christine Davis and Bill Spencer. (Discussed below)
Proposed Election Procedure Changes
Issues with current procedure in which all nominees are placed on the ballot without accepting the nomination.
- Nominations are unknown and being elected for a position is a surprise
- Refusal to serve when elected OR electee does not do their job
What if no one will run?
- Advertise the position
- Ask for endorsement from faculty members on a corresponding faculty committee (e.g. Public Relations faculty committee can recommend/endorse graduate student for Public Relations BGSA committee)
How do new BGSA officers/committee members learn their responsibilities?
- Encouraged to talk to previous officers
- Responsibilities can change from year to year
IP Course Changes
Lianne Jacobson updated us on the changes that will take place regarding IP.
- One semester 2 credit course
- Some variation of inference module will be covered
- Writing and presenting focus
Open Discussion of issues
- Grant writing course deadlines should match up with grant deadlines
- A wokshop to get help with DDIG’s should be offered because these occur later in graduate career – perhaps BGSA could set up a workshop so that grad students currently writing a DDIG can speak with previous winners and those whose grants were rejected since everyone gets reviews
Proposed course: Practical Pedagogy for Biology
- Bill should not teach it
- Should a workshop be offered rather than a full semester? Should it happen in summer rather than during the semester? International students may not be able to get here in time AND grad students would not be paid yet in the summer so may not be able to live in Gainesville yet. Perhaps offer a 2 day intensive workshop during the first 2 weeks when there are no labs and then have every other week meetings for feedback.
- Concerns about those who don’t teach BSC having to take a course that is designed to teach them how to teach BSC labs specifically. The goal of this course being how to teach intro bio class rather than learning how to teach for future careers is problematic.
- Concerns that there is no control over content in BSC labs, so developing one lecture that grad students are interested in teaching and could potentially use in the future may be a good idea. This was countered that you have control over how you present yourself even if you don’t have control over the content and that can be worked on in this course in order to teach better.
- Concerns about how grad students are graded in this course. Content of the course doesn’t appear to line up with what students will be graded on.
- Some of the content (e.g. FERPA) is already covered in the mandatory University teaching training.
- What are the weekly reflections? It sounds like keeping a diary and those in attendance were not receptive to this part of the course.
- Why aren’t graduate students invited to guest lecture anymore?
- A poll was taken. Would you rather have a class? (1 person voted for this) A workshop? (1 person voted for this and there was discussion about how you might forget information presented in a short workshop) or a combination (7 voted for this option. Jenna will survey the rest of the graduate students via email.
BSC research credit for undergraduates
Chris Krieg is working with Christine Davis to develop a syllabus for this course and wanted to gauge interest in supporting the course
- The fact that the undergraduate research credit is supposed to be a course was a surprise to all of the graduate students that have mentored undergrads
- The course would keep undergrads on top of their data – presenting, writing grants, writing annotated bibliographies, etc.
- People generally seemed supportive
Fundraising Update
Jerald Pinson provided updates.
- Most of the old t-shirts have been sold and there have been a good amount of sales of new t-shirts
- Advertising t-shirts to undergrads went well
- There is a PR and fundraising faculty committee that BGSA fundraising committee can work with
- There was discussion about whether 2 people are sufficient for the fundraising committee, as well as why we fundraise.
URAP grants – why do grad students raise money for undergrads? Does BGSA want to continue funding undergrads
- Welcoming events
- Maybe we should have a biograd appreciation dinner
- In order to know how much our fundraising goal is, we need a budget.
What is the mission of BGSA? Goals should align with the mission.
- Mission/purpose is integrating with faculty committees so we have some kind of say in what happens and organizing URAP and hosting zoocial on Fridays. But does this require a large fundraising effort?
- We need a budget and documents in place. Smooth transitions between officers require documents as well. Can each officer/committee position get a UF email – need to ask Kyle. We should create strategic goals.
Ideas about fundraising
- 3D printing to make items to sell – are there University restrictions on this?
- Increase beverage prices at zoocial. It was noted that better zoocial bookkeeping would be needed if we did this.
BGSA Centralized Location for our items
Joni Wright
- Cabinet with combination lock in Carr 221A
- BGSA t-shirts and other merchandise, as well as cashboxes (e.g. treasurer, fundraising, zoocial) and miscellaneous supplies can be safely stored here
- All officers plus zoocial and fundraising committee members can get a key from Pete. The key must be turned back in at the end of each year and the new electees request their own key (i.e. The key CANNOT be passed down to new officers.)
Announcement: Gordon Burleigh will be the next graduate coordinator.