BE Board:Meeting minutes/11/7/2006

For current website see begradboard.mit.edu

Diversity Events (Nancy)

• Diversity Lunch – Nigerian and Zimbabwean Culture scheduled for next week. Presentation on respective countries are planned.
• Interlab lunch is coming soon.
• Diversity discussion will be planned. Input is appreciated. There will be a forum on wiki.

First-Year Matters (Ranjani)

• The BE Board welcomes the new First-Year representative Ranjani.
• Computer room printer is not working.

Faculty Candidate Interviews (Sean)

• Two interviews/seminars are scheduled for 12/7 and 12/14. Candidates’ area of expertise is synthetic amino acid/synthetic biology approaches.
• Graduate student lunches are scheduled for 12:30 – 1:30 in 56-602. Email Sean if you are interested in participating. Candidates will be available at BE.526 for further socializing.
• Feedback will be requested after the interview. BE Board will be summarizing feedback to forward to faculty search committee.

BE T-Shirts (Amy)

• T-shirt orders have been placed. They are scheduled to arrive this Monday.

BE Board Budget/Treasury (Brandon)

• Spending is on track.
• Treasurer will be sending monthly reports to the BE Board, especially the social chairs.

Academic Events (Rachel)

• Post-doc talk scheduled on 11/15, 6-8 pm in 56-154. 6 BE and biology postdocs will share their experiences.
• iGEM was a big success and received lots of press. MIT was very successful, A team from Slovenia received first place.
• BMES will be hosting an intro session on iGEM. BE Board will attempt to recruit graduate student advisors. We will talk to Doug about convincing Drew Endy's TAs to supervise iGEM teams.
• Annual survey results are out. Comments about TAing were helpful in regards of stipend. Results will be put together in a presentable format and sent to Doug for review.

Social Events (Sonia, Justin)

• The Fall Social was a success.
• TGIF is planned for 11/17. There will be a BE game night at 500 Tech Square. Please bring board games.
• BE Holiday Party is scheduled at MIT Musem on 12/14.

Community Service Events (Anusuya)

• Canned food drive will be launched at the end of the month for a week.

Athletic Chair Updates (Mike, Shan)

• We are out of our intramural t-shirts. 25 shirts will be ordered in the future.
• We spent 150 dollars for IM hockey equipment.
• A BE IM locker is underway. Mariann is working on a combo-lock for the door. We expect project completion at the end of the semester.

GSC Updates (Ta-Chun)

• Ranjani accepted the bid to serve as the second GSC rep. We will be receiving additional funding from GSC for the second representative to be spent towards future TGIFs.