BE Board:Meeting minutes/6/11/2007

Meeting Minutes - 06/11/07

Attendance

• Kristen Bernick, Justin Buck, Sean Clarke, Ta-Chun Hang, Bonnie Huang, Hyung-Do Kim, Ranjani Krishnan, Brandon Kwong, Amy Nichols, Robin Prince, Mike Schmidt, Nidhi Shrivastav, Sonia Timberlake, Rachel Miller, Ranjani Krishnan, Lorenna Lee-Houghton, Shan Wu,

Coordinators

• Update on BE undergraduate organization
  • One undergraduate event in past May, the event was successful. There will be one more in the fall.
  • Organizational structure: undergraduates will attend BE Board meetings for now until they are able to operate independently. Elections will occur in the fall.
  • Undergraduates will be invited to TGIF - BE Board members raised the issue that inviting undergraduates will cause administrative problems in planning social activities. We might have to resort to inviting undergraduates to only a few events.
  • Currently, there is no plan for integrating BMES or conflicting with BMES
• Diversity Lunch
  • Sean is proposing to have an event to increase 'cultural' diversity - art, in this case. Sean's girlfriend is currently a Professor in art at University of Massachusetts and could be invited to give a talk about Neuroscience in art? There would be no restrictions on food.
• Renovations in 56-614/Undergraduate Lounge
  • There exists disparity between faculty and students about which chairs they prefer. Email Amy if you want to be involved in renovation process.
  • Undergraduate lounge will be in the basement of 56. Undergraduates will be contacted about renovation.

First-Year Rep

• Qualifying exams
  • are over and results are in.

Treasurer

• Budget cycle
  • End of budget cycle is approaching (although we are not sure when that is).

Academic representatives

• Curriculum chat
  • Curriculum chat with Natalie went well, additional attendance by synthetic biology experts
• Summer events
  • Stem cell process with Whitehead and Harvard - happy hour with experts in stem cell field?

Social chairs

• TGIF
  • Last month: R&D pub
  • There will be four more TGIFs:
    • Sailing Pavillion, tentatively June 29
    • Softball BBQ at Kresge Pit, tentatively July 21 (Saturday)
    • Beach trip for July/August - budget is an issue.
• BE-ChemE BBQ
  • Last year, we contributed $1000 to split the event with ChemE.
  • Need to check with ChemE since no budget has been allocated.

Athletic chairs

• Current sports
  • Softball teams are in full gear
• Inventory
  • List will be on wiki
  • Should locks be only open to captains?

GSC rep

• GSC Meeting
  • $40 charge for students by DAPER for use of gym during the summer.

Other suggestions

• Alumni and Graduation
  • Should we have alumni come to give us advices about how to get through Ph.D. program.
  • Email list for social events - for alumni.