Undergraduate BE Board:Elections

Elections for the 2013 BE Undergraduate Board are today at the end of semester study break on Wednesday December 12th.

Positions

• President:

Faculty go-to person, runs the board and bi-weekly BE meetings

Katie Bodner & Nikki Neibloom

Nikki Neibloom and Katie Bodner are running for 2014-2015 BEUB Co-Presidents. As juniors this past year, Nikki has performed as Vice President of BEUB and Katie has been the Secretary. We are both engrossed in course 20 and want to be even more involved in BEUB in the coming semester. One of our goals as presidents is to highlight opportunities for course 20 students after graduation other than going to grad school. We also want to help rising seniors find grad schools and connect them with current graduate students. More importantly, we believe that course 20 really needs some t-shirts and a whole lot more cheesecake. Thanks!

Edgar Aranda-Michel & Kevin Hu

Hi! Edgar and Kevin here. We'd like to be your BEUB Co-Presidents. We're both juniors with plenty of experience working with faculty and extensive knowledge about the current curriculum of BE and related majors like Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, and Computational Biology. Together we will promote changes in the department (especially the curriculum) based upon student feedback and ensure that you can make the most of your time at MIT. To start off, we've already sent out a survey to the current seniors asking for feedback on their experiences in the major. In case that's not enough for you, we'll also be having more of our usual study breaks that we all love. See you there!

• Vice President:

A little of everything, responsible for coordinating FPOP

Deniz Askel

I’m Deniz Aksel, and I would like to be the next Vice President of the BE Undergraduate Board. I find this position to be very important, as it involves organizing the Discover Biological Engineering FPOP; an important resource for the department in terms of getting incoming students excited about the major and expanding the MIT BE community. As someone that has experienced the FPOP from both the incoming freshman and counselor perspectives, I believe I have a clear understanding of what representing our department in a fun and effective way entails. In addition to the FPOP organization, I believe that the VP position has a lot of untapped potential. I would personally like to focus on improving and strengthening the community feeling of our department. I plan on helping organize study breaks with visiting professors to improve faculty-student relations. I will also be very open to other event or improvement suggestions from you. I believe that the VP position entails not only showing incoming freshmen, but also current BE students that Course 20 is the best!

• Secretary:

Takes minutes, adds notes to wiki, reserves rooms for meetings

Jennifer Thornton

Hi there! My name is Jennifer Thornton, and I'm a junior running for Secretary of the BE undergraduate board. I’m excited to get involved with the BE board because I want to work to make the Course 20 student body connected, well fed, and in-the-know! In terms of my secretarial skills, I have experience taking minutes for student groups and I love keeping organized notes and getting things done. Also, I’m specifically aiming to redesign and consistently update our BEUB wiki so that it is easy to navigate and full of information on current events and projects for BE undergrads. The board exists to benefit every Course 20 undergrad-as Secretary, I will work tirelessly to make sure that it does. Thank you! ACG CAC GCA AAU AAA UCG :)

• Treasurer:

Orders food, budgets events, handles merchandise, all other pecuniary needs

Karinna Vivanco

Hi Course 20! My name is Karinna Vivanco, and I am running for BEUB treasurer. This past year, I've acted as the BEUB campus representative and have really enjoyed helping to develop communication within the department. I would really like to continue on the board to help plan even more study breaks and events that could connect the department even further. I know there is so much interest within our major to meet more Course 20s but not as many organized opportunities. I would like to improve upon that with careful event planning to make bonding more practical. Aside from serving on the board, I've been an active leader on the executive boards of both my dorm and dance community. I believe I have the experience and enthusiasm to help improve our department. Thank you! :)

Hannah Kempton

Hey Course 20! My name is Hannah Kempton and I'm a junior running for treasurer of the BE undergraduate board. I'm excited and passionate about course 20--outside of class, I'm a BE associate advisor and I UROP in the Zhang lab in the Broad. I would love to get more involved in the department by combining my two main interests: biological engineering and food! For the past 2 years I have been on the planning board of SWE, where my main responsibility was organizing events for members and (most importantly) ordering food for said events. As a result, I have experience working collaboratively to plan study breaks, budgeting events, dealing with reimbursements, and ordering food from the tastiest restaurants in Cambridge! As your treasurer I promise to plan many delicious study breaks throughout the semester and to work on hopefully getting course 20 tshirts for the department. Thanks! :)

• Campus Relations

Responsible for communicating with the student body, emails, and publicizing events

Jennifer Ibanez

Throughout my time here at MIT, the BE department has shown me nothing but love. Though the major is no doubt one of the more difficult, I have always found the faculty and student body to be very supportive and accessible to each other. I am running for Campus Representative because I would love to become more involved in the BE community, and I believe having students’ opinions represented in the Board is very important. In high school, I was on several planning committees and also served as student representative in various student-faculty groups.