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.
Notes from Planning Meeting 2
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:
- Recruiting and welcoming new students
- Retention and social cohesion of existing students
- Career development support
- 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:
Planning Meeting 2
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
Notes from Planning Meeting 1
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:
- Open channels of communication between the department and the students
- Promote bonding and socializing among the graduate students
- 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:
Planning Meeting 1
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:Â https://goo.gl/forms/5zK3Sb0k0TX4LuIl2