BE Board:Meeting minutes/10/3/2006

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Date: 10/03/2006 Time: 12:00pm Place: 56-614

Attendees
Philip Bransford, Justin Buck, Scott Carlson, Sean Clarke, Anusuya Das, Nancy Guillen, Ta-Chun Hang, Bonnie Huang, Hyung-Do Kim, Brandon Kwong, Rachel Miller, Amy Nichols, Chris Pirie, Robin Prince, Luke Robinson, Michael Schmidt, Reshma Shetty, Nidhi Shrivastav, Jamie Spangler, Sonia Timberlake, David Weingeist, Shan Wu.

iGEM (Jason, Reshma)

 * The 2006 iGEM jamboree is taking place this November 2006. MIT almost ended up without a team due to lack of graduate student participation.
 * Drew Endy and the MIT iGEM team is asking for BE Board's involvement in recruiting for graduate student supervisors (also outside of the Endy lab) and advertising. Graduate student supervisors have the responsibility to devise project ideas and supervise a team of undergraduates during project design and execution.  Drew plans to teach a freshman course in the spring to spark interest in undergraduate involvement.
 * Advertising, recruitment, academic improvement, and project planning with BE Board involvement will be explored through Dan Darling and MIT BMES chapter. Email will be sent to students during/before the November jamboree.

Newsletter (Amy)

 * The newsletter intends to distribute information about the BE Board activities and events in the BE division.
 * Draft of next newsletter has been presented at this meeting. This newsletter's topics include the new BE Board members, editing the student directory, IM sports scores, T-shirt orders, and first-year profiles.
 * Distribution of this issue will occur at next BATS (10/4/2006).
 * It has been suggested to upload a pdf-copy on the BE Board wiki.

BE T-Shirts (Amy)

 * T-shirt orders will be taken until the October 12th. Submission of orders will occur on the 16th.
 * For orders, please talk to your class representatives.
 * The writing "est." has been dropped from the design since the Course 20 was established in 1941 and not 2006.

First-year Representative (Amy)

 * First-year rep represents the new incoming class. Nominations will be taken by mid-end next week and elections will occur through email to Sean or Amy.
 * One additional responsibility of the first-year rep this year could be to serve as the second GSC rep.

Spending BE Board Money (Brandon)

 * When you spend money, please remember to use the tax exempt form, get an itemized receipt, and submit the receipt to Mariann Murray. Don't forget to email Brandon with the amount.
 * GSC funding board has additional funds, distributed quaterly. Having a second GSC rep gets us an additional $250.

Faculty Retreat (Rachel)

 * The main discussion during the faculty retreat concerned the changes in the undergraduate curriculum.
 * 20.180 and 20.181 will be eliminated from the curriculum and replaced with 6.00, which can be substituted by 1.00 or 6.001.
 * A BE genetics course is being developed.
 * Doug Lauffenburger asked for student input about increasing TA requirement and mentioned that the requirement could increase to more than 1 semester for interested students. The BE Board survey will attempt to gather student input regarding this matter.

BE Board survey (Rachel)

 * The survey was launched last Thursday. Received submissions with equal representation across all classes.  Reminder email will be sent this and next Thursday.
 * Please, inform your lab members to fill out the survey.

First-year Dinners (Rachel)

 * Will be held on Oct. 11th. 20 upperclass graduate students are signed up.  $10 will be subsidized from each attendee's meal.
 * Restaurant choices include Nine Tastes, Royal East, Spice, Asgard, Penang.
 * Board members may be asked to attend last minute in case of upperclassmen dropping out.

Social Events (Sonia)

 * Brewery Tour has been scheduled on October 20th. The brewery of choice will most likely be Sam Adams
 * The annual fall festival will not be organized by Olga Parkin this year. The BE Board has been asked to organize.
 * When scheduling events, please keep in mind of cultural holidays.

Community Service Events (Anusuya)

 * Bread and Jams event on October 15th, 2 - 5 pm. We need more attendees for this event.  Next event will be a canned food drive.
 * Anusuya & co are initiating a MIT chapter of One, an AIDS awareness group and are asking for BE involvement.

Diversity Events (Nancy)

 * Diversity seminar is on October 4th by Karl Reid.
 * Cultural Lunch Africa is planned for next month.

Athletic Events (Mike)

 * Fielded teams in football, soccer, tennis, badminton, and dodgeball. No bowling team this year.
 * Acquired tennis balls, plan to aquire soccer ball and t-shirts.
 * This year, number of teams fielded by a single affiliation group as well as forfeits will count towards an 'affiliation competition' with prizes.