Thanks everyone who joined us for our third planning meeting. We started with a recap of the second meeting and progress with the mission statement draft. We then broke into discussion about what kinds of organizational structures we can run with that help ensure we satisfy our objectives discussed in planning meeting 2. We are leaning towards a structure that includes four committees, one for each of our broad goals, with some of the committees co-chaired by a pre-prelim student and a post-prelim student. Any student who wants to help out can participate in whatever committee they want, but the committees would be organized and run by an elected committee chair (or two) who is ultimately responsible for making sure the duties assigned to the committee get done. There are several open questions, such as how to distribute specific duties and whether there should be anything resembling a president, that remain that we didn’t get to and will be discussed in meeting 4.

 

Brainstorming notes:

Broad structure we agreed on towards the end:

• John Boguski’s notes

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday’s meeting. From the sign-in sheet it looks like 18 people were in attendance. We came to an agreement on what we think the broad goals of the council should be:

1. Recruiting and welcoming new students
2. Retention and social cohesion of existing students
3. Career development support
4. Department communication/advocacy

We then talked about the relevant high-priority objectives and long-term goals for each of those categories, so that we have an idea of what the specific tasks for the council will be. We ended with an agreement on how to move forward from here. The two next tasks are to draft a mission statement we can all agree on, and brainstorm potential organizational structures that will help ensure our broad goals are met.

Whiteboard notes:

(click to view full size)

Notes from attendees:

• John Boguski’s Notes

Thanks for coming everyone. Around 30 people were in attendance, with plenty of active discussion on what the council should do and how it should try to do it. During the forum, it sounded like there’s a general consensus about the types of things a grad council should aim to do:

1. Open channels of communication between the department and the students
2. Promote bonding and socializing among the graduate students
3. Professional development.

In terms of the structure of the council, people still have many different ideas so we would like to have a second meeting next week specifically to discuss the structure and details of the council. Details on that to follow soon. The following links include information presented and notes taken at the meeting.

Prepared info slides: UW PGSC Planning Meeting 1 Slides

Whiteboard notes from the brainstorming session:

Notes from attendees:

• Notes from Austin Schneider
• Notes from John Boguski