GSA Minutes 2008-02-05

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GSA Meeting Minutes
5 February 2008

Food: Giannelli’s pizza (near 4 corners, they deliver) served on our official GSA reusable lime green plates

Attendance: 21

Called to order at 4:50pm


Graduate Research Symposium

Saturday March 1, 2008
Molly Letsch reminds us that it’s coming up, please submit titles
Budget submitted will provide breaks & lunch
Greg Anderson most likely to give opening remarks
Post symposium party volunteers??
Title submission deadline Feb 18th – for talks or speed talks

T-shirt committee

(Kathryn Theiss)
T-shirts, do we want them? Email to be sent soon – designs due this Sunday, looking into organic cotton shirts
We made $322 on tote-bag sales
Need a tote-bag commitment before ordering more
Need volunteer to sell t-shirts on Sympossium day – Em volunteers
If Uconn goes on the t-shirt – do we need Uconn vendor??

Evening Seminar

Next one is Tues Feb 26, 2008
Given by Milica Ivovic probably on Eastern European bird migrations (hosted by Tobias)
Last TES featured Vanessa Boukili talking about gall midges

Grad-Invited Seminar

Thursday, April 3, 2008
Speaker: Maureen Donnelly from FIU -- helps run herpetology class at OTS
Grads need to be involved in lunches/dinners/entertainment/meetings
On Friday she will give a talk just for the students
She will mail around 3 topics and the grads will get to decide
Her schedule will be posted to EEBedia
Volunteers for the position of grad-invited seminar representative??

Officer’s reports:

Treasurer

(Kat Shaw)
We have about $500 in our account
Pre-orders are the easiest way for us to pay for services, so thanks for the tote-bag success

GSS

(Vanessa Boukili)
Free coffee first Tues of every month
Welcome back bar night – email to follow soon
Beginning of April – spring fling formal – 200 person limit
Status of our symposium money – we’ll find out this Wed
People-soft software may be updated soon
Complaints and Suggestions? – send to Vanessa

Faculty meeting rep

(Karolina Fučíková)
Personnel issues in the last meeting, Karolina wasn’t invited
Thiago could go as our grad representative to the candidate search, but can’t talk about it until people have been notified

Collections Representatives

No news from Botanical and Invertebrate Committees
Vertebrate collections (Tobias Landberg):
James Fischer is now gone
Our new vertebrate collections manager is Susan Hochgraf – she works all day Thursdays here at Uconn - Her number is 6-8945

Welcome Committee

(Tsitsi McPherson)
We have a new student in Simon Lab
Welcome information will be available for any potential grads visiting during the symposium
Info will be provided via email and cd this summer to save on paper
Should we be welcoming others like postdocs? Consensus is we should.

CCB

Trina says they haven’t met lately nor does she know if they’re going to soon
See old minutes if you don’t know what the CCB is

Fall barn dance

Work on getting a date set with Greg in advance
Crawdad party or spring picnic? Something to look into.

EEB Departmental Seminar lunch coordinator

(Tsitsi McPherson)
Still not getting enough grad students going to these
Carrie Fyler suggests running it like the undergrad seminar (297)- Suggest reading a paper before, come with like a question to ask. Or also just to look at the schedule and commit to 4 or 5 dates in advance
Pablo likes the feedback on his research when we go around and introduce ourselves, but Krissa thinks maybe that’s best left for individual meetings
Can you just mail the grads the paper for the undergrad seminar too? Will try.
Maybe this could this become a seminar for grads?

Nic Tippery suggests expanding the committee to include people dedicated to coming every week?
Sarah, Kat, Carrie volunteer – but others are encouraged to come to seminar speaker lunch

Undergrad report

(Leah Brown-Wilusz)
Recyclemania sponsored by Ecohusky
600 tons is our goal – competing against other schools (especially Yale) Caught green handed – get prizes for recyling
Contest runs from January 27-April 5, 2008

Other business

EEBedia

(Nic Tippery)
Still going strong – club to reform soon
Under Graduate Student Resources – list of Funding Sources – please contribute if you know of scholarship – there are icons for ease of browsing by subject matter
Pablo suggests a list of conferences and symposia would also be a good idea
GSA Constitution and Bylaws will be added to EEBedia – on file with student activities – should we update?

Green Grads

(Krissa Skogen)
Next meeting – Feb 14th, in Bamford at 5pm
Goal is to create a campus organization (a Tier II organization to get GSS funding) – create constitution and have a number of officers
Work with building managers to get official stickers to promote conservation
Work on getting recycled products used around campus and eliminating plastic bags at coop
Grads from all departments are welcome
Green Grads vs. Ecohusky? – Ecohusky is undergrad while green grads are for grads – utilize different funding sources. Communication will be vital to work together

Biology Club for undergrads

Tobias Landberg is working on this from the grad student side to help establish
Club for all biology depts. in trying to match undergrads up with research labs
Grads, if you have spaces and opportunities in your labs, please keep this in mind
First meeting this Thursday, Feb 7th, 6pm BPB 130 - 10 pizzas will be provided
What about Tri Beta? Science fraternity and nationally recognized


Meeting adjourned at 5:55pm.