Hey, everyone!

Based on the results of scheduling poll, the next meeting will take place on Wednesday at 4:30 pm in Sterling B343. We will briefly recap Meeting 3 where we began to talk about potential structures for the organization (summary available here), and then we will continue to discuss the specific goals for each position, to ensure to the broad goals can be achieved. All grad students are welcome to join.

See you Wednesday!

– Kayla

Based on the scheduling poll, Wednesday at 5 pm seems to work the best for people. We’ll meet in Sterling B343 again. We can start by recapping the second meeting (summary available here), then moving on to mission statement and org structure drafts. All grad students are welcome to join, even if you missed the first two meetings.

Based on the feedback from the scheduling poll, having the meeting Wednesday at 4:30 does a good job of optimizing for number of people who can attend, with preference given to those who were unable to make our first meeting. Sorry to those who can’t make it, there was no time that worked for everyone. If you have something from 4-5 or 5-6 feel free to join for however long you can. Unfortunately many rooms are already booked, so we will meet in Sterling B343, which you can get to by taking the tunnel from 2nd floor Chamberlin to the Sterling basement (passing by MST), and then taking a left once you enter Sterling. B343 is at the end of that hallway on the left.

In our first meeting we talked about broad goals we want to work towards as well as some specific objectives, like bringing back cookie time. For meeting two we can recap the first meeting (summary available at pgsc.physics.wisc.edu), then work towards a consensus on what objectives to prioritize, and maybe talk about how to set things up to meet those objectives.

See you Wednesday!

— Adrian

As you may have seen in Prof. Dasu’s follow-up email after last week’s forum, an idea was put forth to assemble a graduate student council. We wanted to start the discussion of what the council should look like and how it should be formed.The council should be a reflection of the needs and ideas of all the graduate students, so we have organized an open forum for all graduate students to participate in a discussion of what they want out of the council and how it should operate. For that reason, we have reserved the colloquium room (Chamberlin 2241) for Thursday April 5th at 5 PM.

This is an idea that has been very successful in other departments. At the meeting we plan to talk about models used at other departments and whether they make sense to adopt here or if there are things we should do differently.

Things we hope to brainstorm on:

• What is the goal of the council? What would you hope to get out of it?
• What positions should exist within the council?
• How often should the council meet, and what should they discuss?
• What sort of timeline for forming the council should we aim for?

For those with schedule conflicts, or those who would feel more comfortable providing input anonymously, we have attached a survey form so that you can provide your two cents before the meeting. We will discuss the survey results at the meeting as well. Please complete the survey by Wednesday April 4th if you want your responses mentioned at the forum.
If anyone has any questions or comments before the meeting, feel free to reach out to us.

See you next week, Thursday April 5th in Chamberlin 2241 at 5pm!

— Adrian Fraser, Sarah Mancina, and Kayla Leonard

Survey Form: https://goo.gl/forms/5zK3Sb0k0TX4LuIl2