BE Board:Meeting minutes/4/13/2006

Agenda - 4/13/06

1. Coordinators
   • Faculty Candidates
     • Need to have feedback by 12pm tomorrow, mention it to anyone you see, so that we can get as much feedback as possible, feedback will be kept more concrete with specifics of what the students did and did not like about each candidate
   • Visiting Committee
     • Meet next Thursday morning at 10am, basically a QA session, last time the idea was to give overall consensus of opinions and then others would comment in
     • Proposed topic areas – listed on the wiki, expand or contract the list and then assign people to the topics, substrate is already available from the ciriculum review in the fall and the survey results
     • Emphasize career directions, ciriculum, start of the under grad major
     • Space – definite emphasis, Doug had a positive reaction from MIT administration
     • Add ABS/Tox divide, Industrial seminar series and stuff, phase out of industrial seminar
     • Add difficulty in joining lab, CSBi students being added to the mix, time to decide on when students are joining labs, first semester is used to attempt to compete with other departments and but also encourages students to seek out all the opportunities, emphasis that full first year funding is wanted
     • Application pool between TOX verse BE and the trouble of getting students into labs that need them, current divide in the department, cut first year funding to 6 months and increase class size, diversity of opinions in the department
     • Maybe a change in the deferral policy
     • Conversation on the wiki to fill out the details for visiting committee

1. First year representative
   • Hanging in there at the moment.
2. Community service chair
   • Charles River Conservancy event - - details to follow soon. Lisa not present, but Barry mentioned, probably a general clean up effort.
3. Treasurer
   • A lot of funds still left, budget recycles of July first.
   • New events fund has not been used – some ear marked for undergraduate curriculum chat, academic mentoring may also be applying
   • Maxine – a sports Olympics competition within BE
   • BE summer softball BBQ may try to be put on this years budget instead of next
4. Academic representatives
   • Industrial Seminar Series - speakers?
     • Some speakers that they want to come.
     • Bart Hendricks from Phizer, plan for Friday time slot.
   • Additional study breaks
     • Just one more before quals, maybe funding via new events fund
   • Retreat wrap up
     • No feedback yet, the committee has not met yet, the larger poster emphasis was well received, keynote was excellent
5. Social chairs
   • Next TGIF in April?
     • Combined event for April/May - Bowling
     • Plan for june – run another camping trip following quals, quals on June 5th
     • Suggestion for a sailing TGIF in May
6. Diversity representative
   • Yesterday's seminar - Harvard professor talking about diversity in academia
   • Inter-lab lunches - Endy, Manalis, Belcher
   • Chinese cultural lunch planned for next month
   • Jordan has a suggestion for a speaker, Maxine will try to line up for next year
7. Athletic chairs
   • Spring Sports
     • Nothing much to report, if anyone needs anything just let Dave know. We will try to order a bat (Nate will take care of buying a BAT)
   • Investigate doing a more wide approach for “Get Fit”
8. UG curriculum representative
9. GSC representative
   • GSC elections – Shan is the new VP,
   • Continued debate about housing
   • May want to have more than one, can have two representatives
   • Two reps would double our money (500 verses 250)
   • Online proxy forms
10. Other random business
    • Undergrad/ Grad events – try to invite them along, Lunch following 320 in the BATS timeslot, maybe talk to SWE, 109 in the afternoon from 1-6pm
    • GSC funding – we are away for getting funding, request a page on the wiki to explain how to get funding
    • Newsletter – discussion on the wiki
    • [[|BE_Board:T-Shirts_Design|T-shirts]] – ideas on the wiki, maybe hoodies, send out links to the two discussion pages for feedback, some sort of substantial plan by next month, talk to Dave about shirts