BE Board:Meeting minutes/1/25/2005

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Date: 01/25/2005 Time: 6:00pm Place: 56-302

=Attendees= Kathryn Armstrong, Ricardo Brau, Barry Canton, Diana Chai, Brian Cook, Ben Cosgrove, Jordan Green, Maxine Jonas, Hyung-Do Kim, Nick Marcantonio, Megan McBee, Charles Morton, Samantha Sutton, Nate Tedford, Shan Wu, Ben Zeskind.

=BE Life=

BE Retreat

 * In Portland, ME, from Sunday, March 20th to Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005.
 * Organized by Olga Parkin, JoAnn Sorrento, Drew Endy, Nick, Ben, & Kathryn.
 * The first-year students are expected to attend.
 * A photographer to replace Wanmok is needed.
 * The evening social activities (dancing, card games...) should be combined into a single room so that they don’t take away from one another. Mel from Jacob Wirth could be invited for a piano-bar sing-along night.  A trivia-like event could be reinstituted, maybe made more cross-mingling, more bioengineering oriented.
 * The poster sessions were very appreciated last year. They will be long, multiple, fluid this year.
 * Do we want more talks from students and post-docs? But then, when do we hear talks from the faculty?  Should the keynote speaker be invited from outside MIT?
 * Do we want to organize small-group workshops? About bioethics and policies? About grant writing?
 * The BE Diversity group will prepare a booth/poster/presentation.

Tenure in BE
Division.
 * Should students voice any opinion during the tenure process?
 * Only 40% of professors at MIT do get tenure. Although BE is a growing department, James Sherley’s is the first case of tenure refusal in the BE
 * http://web.mit.edu/policies for information on hiring & firing at MIT at every career stage, on grievance procedures, discrimination, etc.
 * The students have a voice in the tenure process through course evaluations (teaching & community service are thus judged internally to the Institute, while the research is assessed through letters from leading professors in the candidate’s field). The promotion from associate to tenured professor means you’ve reached the goals you defined as yours when becoming associate professor.
 * Is there anything we could do to help James’ students?
 * Ricardo will be meeting with Doug Lauffenburger tomorrow. He will update us on Doug’s comments & suggestions.

BE Diversity (Jon, Nate & Maxine)

 * Doug Lauffenburger was very receptive to the concern expressed by the BE Diversity group, but because of the formal & confidential MIT procedure to handle grievances, he couldn’t provide us with much information.
 * A response forum open to students/post-docs/staff to address questions related to diversity is being planned. Industrial Seminar Series (Nick, Nate & Maxine)
 * The former Drug Industrial Seminar Series offered by Profs. Steve Tannenbaum & Pete Dedon in the context of a class they co-teached last fall and the BE Board-sponsored BE Industrial Seminar Series have been combined into a bi-monthly edition in the spring semester, on Fridays at 1:30pm.
 * Speakers from small & large drug industry companies, as well as from biomedical device companies, IP, consulting, & venture capital firms have been invited and the schedule has been filled up until May 2005 at this point.

Potential Hire in BE

 * Dr. Altschuler will give a BE seminar on February 10th, the BE Board students are invited to have lunch with him.

Social (Kathryn, Megan & Nate)

 * The ice skating TGIF on Friday, January 21, 2005 went very well. A rollerblading event is under way.

IM Sports (Barry & Brian)

 * More hockey jerseys (for $272) have been ordered. The hockey players will be charged a small fee.
 * There will be registration fees for summer softball.
 * Probably 24 regular jerseys will be purchased (about $8 per shirt).

BE Community Service (Bree & Diana)
(The Bread & Jam soup kitchen event was very successful on Sunday, January 23rd, 2005 at the Saint James Episcopal Church on Mass. Ave. We may repeat this event this spring. (We have the option of helping out on Monday, April 18th  during the Boston marathon: either at a water station, or at the finish line (take care of half a block of security), or at a non-medical assistant in a medical tent. If we choose to do so, we should only commit small groups because it’s a day long event on a Monday. =BE Board Organization=

Budget (Diana)

 * Thanks for letting Diana know if there are any errors in the budget summary she handed out. So far so good!

Mediation (Samantha & Charles)

 * A new mediation person just got recruited by MIT.
 * A training session open to BE students could take place this summer.
 * The mediation committee has successfully resolved a case they were contacted for.

GSC (Ben & Jordan)

 * The hierarchy of the Muddy Charles Pub has been modified.
 * The gay/lesbian/transgender group at MIT has been reinforced by the hiring of a staff member.
 * The ASA recognition process is being restructured by the UA and the GSC
 * The ASA recognition of the BE Board will continue being supervised.
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