Undergraduate BE Board:Elections

Elections for the 2010 BE Undergraduate Board will be held during the end of semester study break on Thursday December 9th at 11am!.

Candidate platforms are due on Sunday, December 5th. Platforms should be submitted to Kevin Hu at khu@mit.edu. After submission, platforms will be posted on the page.

Positions
The time commitment for all of the positions is about three hours a week. Responsibilities mainly include attending board meetings, sending emails to students and faculty, and attending events.

President: Faculty go-to person, runs the board and bi-weekly BE meetings

Vice President: A little of everything, FPOP coordinator

Secretary: Sends out emails, takes minutes, reserves rooms for meetings

Treasurer: Orders food, budgets events, handles t-shirts, all other money situations

Platforms
President:

Yuan Zhao '12

Hello, everyone! My name is Yuan Zhao and I am running for President of the BEUB. I believe that my contributions to the BEUB would be valuable given my experience running key positions in a number of clubs here at MIT. Presently, I am the Director of Publicity for MIT AAA and am on the UA Events Committee, which organizes MIT's annual Fall and Spring Festivals. I am also a member of MacGregor HouseComm and am the current social chair for the dorm, as well as the REX chair for the previous year, having coordinated all of the freshman orientation events. Lastly, I am an associate advisor in course 20 and am the only candidate that has experience as a counselor for the BE FPOP, which was inaugurated this last fall. In addition to my background, I am a fun and easy-going individual (or so I like to think), and can work to get things done efficiently and on budget.

Qualifications, however, are only one half of the requirements to be a successful exec. The second half, which is no less important, is the vision for the future of our wonderful major and commitment to that vision. Although Course 20 has firmly earned its place among MIT's majors, I believe there are still many ways to improve cohesion within our major while advancing it in the Institute. As exec, I would encourage bonding events that would allow underclassmen to meet and hang out with upperclassmen, as well as students in their own year. Additionally, I would work to improve the communication between students and faculty, while better providing information about the major to prospective students. I am well acquainted with many members of the faculty, and can leverage social networks developed from my previous exec positions for the BEUB.

I anticipate great things from students in our major and believe that our commitment and initiative will truly make waves in the MIT community. I'm very excited and hope to work for you next year as exec.

(Oh, and there will be lots of free food for everyone. All the time.)

Vice President:

 Anne Ye '12

Hello, Course 20, I'm Anne Ye, and I'm running for vice president of the BE Undergraduate Board. As secretary this year, I had the opportunity to help out with organizing several academic and social events to help prospective and current Course 20 students, an experience that I both greatly enjoyed and learned a lot from. I would love to have a chance next year to continue my involvement in the BEUB, and to use the experience that I have gained this past year to help the BEUB improve even more.

As vice president, I will work to encourage more interaction and discussion between students and faculty, whether it be through student/faculty lunches, faculty panels to share advice and talk about their career paths and research interests, or other ideas for informative, engaging events that you are interested in. I am also very excited about the BE FPOP and the Undergraduate Research Prize. The FPOP was a great success in its first year, and I hope to be able to take a more active leadership role in further developing the program for next summer. The research prize is a newly-proposed event scheduled for next year that I believe is a great way to reward BE students for their hard work, and I would really enjoy helping to put together this event and to make this vision come to fruition. Finally, I will work to communicate students? suggestions and feedback to faculty members, so that Course 20 undergrads can play an integral role in developing a curriculum and department that best meet their needs and interests.

I believe I can make a significant contribution to the BEUB and to Course 20 because I am always really interested to hear the ideas and input of other students, and combined with my own experiences both as a Course 20 student and in various leadership capacities in the department, I believe I have a good feel for common questions and suggestions. I am also highly organized and good at managing time efficiently, and I am good at being proactive in communicating with professors. I have really loved being part of the BEUB, and I hope I can contribute to improving its work even more.

Arvind Thiagarajan '13

Biological Engineering, more than any other field at present, offers a rich and diverse atmosphere, one in which people of different academic backgrounds can find both common ground and a niche for themselves. This is especially evident at the graduate level, where students from electrical engineering, physics, math, biology, and other fields come together to work on interesting problems in biological engineering. At the undergraduate level, however, the range of students, while still somewhat broad, is much more focused: the major still primarily attracts those students with biology backgrounds. Part of the reason for this is the way the classes are structured, but just as important is the existing community and the opportunities it offers. It is at this level that the BEUB can exert the most influence, and it is for this reason that I am running for Vice President.

In particular, I believe that two things must be done in order to expand and strengthen our field. First, we must work to give incoming freshman a really good overview of the opportunities that BE offers, and second we must work to integrate BE more closely with the other departments at MIT. The first goal seems most easily accomplished within the framework of a BE FPOP. The second goal can be approached by organizing joint parties between departments or arranging interdisciplinary talks. Both of these are jobs that are best handled through the office of BEUB Vice President. It is for this reason that I am running for this office, and these are the things I intend to do if elected.

Thank you for taking the time to read my platform, and please vote Arvind Thiagarajan for BEUB Vice President.

Johnathan Gootenberg '13

My name is Jonathan Gootenberg, and I am running for Vice President of BEUB primarily to help with the coordination of the Discovering Biological Engineering FPOP. I feel that there is still some ambiguity surrounding the differences between the “biology” majors (7,10b, and 20), and I think DBE is a great way to distinguish 20 and cultivate excitement for biological engineering. I am currently the Course 20 representative in the Biology Undergraduate Student Association and have attended a majority of the BEUB meetings this semester, so I believe that I already have a good grasp of the responsibilities of the BEUB.

Jingxun Chen '13


 * 1) As a part of BE, I feel excited and responsible of helping to our major become better.
 * 2) I enjoy working closely with a group of people and making impact on our community together
 * 3) I want to apply the leaderships skills that I learned from being the Vice President of American Red Cross Club in my high school and contribute to our BE community
 * 4) I really want to help build a supportive community in our BE student body through:
 * 5) * Helping out the associative advising program, in which upperclassmen mentor lower-classmen in conjunction with their academic adviser
 * 6) * Planning career development events, such as internship/UROP/Grad school panels
 * 7) * Coordinating BE FPOP, which holds professional development workshops and provides current sophomores with internship connections
 * 8) * Holding social event for our BE students, such as study breaks and faculty dinners

Secretary:

Johnathan Chien '14

I'm Jonathan Chien, and I'm running for Secretary of the Undergraduate BE Board. I have familiarity with making mailing lists, experience taking concise minutes, and reserving rooms through VirtualEMS. I'm on the 2014 Class Council, which requires coordinating communication between seven members and planning large scale events so this position should not be too much of a challenge for me.

Nina Jreige '13

Hi, my name is Nina Jreige, and I am a sophomore majoring in BioEngineering. I am interested in running for secretary for the Biological Engineering Undergraduate Board, and have both experience (I am currently the secretary for the Lebanese Club at MIT) and enthusiasm for the position. As a sophomore, I felt that transitioning from general GIR courses to more focused courses in our major was both an enjoyable and difficult experience. We all shifted from classes containing numerous peers to much smaller classes (containing many people we may not know), making p-setting with friends trickier. In order to alleviate such difficulties, I think it would be beneficial to schedule study/p-set sessions, time periods when you know that various students will be working on specific course 20 p-sets, making it easier to find people to work with. In addition, I think it would be a good idea to have more course 20 social events (although, admittedly, I do now know how the budget is distributed, so I do not know how feasible this would be). Thus far, the sophomores have only had an ice cream social event scheduled after the first 20.110 exam (I believe, similarly, the junior and senior classes have only had one major social event scheduled). I would like to see more events like this. We are a smaller major compared to course 6 and 2, so I think that movie events or dinner events could be more feasibly organized.

I am really excited about majoring in BioEngineering, and I would like to channel some of my excitement into the Undergraduate Board. The aforementioned ideas are just some of the things I would try to work on, and I would always be open to suggestions.

Treasurer:

Sonika Reddy '14

I think I would be a good treasurer because I am capable of balancing budgets and I turn things in on time. In high school, I was responsible for the debate team's pizza fundraiser; ordering pizzas, counting the money at the beginning and end, and keeping track of profits. I also served a similar role in our shorter fundraisers. I am organized and responsible ensuring that money will be paid on time so events can happen on time.