BE Board:Student awards

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Intro
Following on from a question raised by Mike Garcia Webb at the BATS seminar 9/14/05, Doug has asked the BE students to suggest a group of awards they would like to see instituted for fellow BE students. What I'd like to do is to get some feedback from the board first on some initial suggestions and by early next week to send a general email out to the BE students requesting their input.

Please add your comments to any of the sections below or create your own sections.

Academic

 * Best TA award (are you still working on these ideas? what was the feedback if any? Endy 13:31, 19 March 2007 (EDT))
 * Best thesis defense in a given year
 * Best BATS talk
 * Most innovative paper with a BE student as first author
 * Student chosen BE faculty teaching/mentoring award
 * Best retreat poster
 * Biggest contribution to improving the BE department

Community

 * Best Halloween costume
 * Best TGIF idea?
 * IM Sports All-Star
 * 1st year who spent more time in the basement
 * Best BE student sponsored party

Funding

 * Industry links
 * Individual donations (alums?)
 * Division (department) funds.

Anybody have any suggestions of how this works in other schools?

Other
Personally, I think awards for academic things seems a little silly, kind of like the stickers I got in first grade when I finished my homework on time. On a more serious note, if academic oriented awards like the ones listed were to be implemented, who would be voting on them? Students, faculty, anyone affiliated with the division? --Amy Nichols 23:55, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I tend to agree with Amy. I understand that benefits of listing an award on your resume, but I feel that awards on an institute or national level make MUCH more of an impact. I just don't know how, in a small department, with the varied research, you can judge whose thesis was best (will we start bribing people with good food?). The exception. I like the idea of best BATS talk or best retreat poster. It can give incentive to work harder on the presentation, etc. As long as it is a measure of your presentation and not a judging of research progress. Also, BE Board student awards, if meant to be entertaining, can be fun... the one caveat is that we don't want to turn it into a "popularity contest."--Diana Chai 16:08, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I agree with Diana and Amy. --Reshma

Ditto. The only awards I could see supporting are those for teaching and mentoring, both on the grad student and faculty level. Those contributions are not often celebrated but I think we'd like to highlight their value in our community. --Sonia
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