Graduate Student Council Meeting
Date: October 25, 2002, 16:00
Location: Darts Lab, 2nd floor of CCB
Attendance
Members Others
Duke Hutchings Steve Voida
Pat Widener Mitch Parry
Tejas Iyer Nitesh Singh
Zack Kurmas Vin Scarlata
Elaine Huang Abhishek
Shomari Mosi Chad Hunneycut
Brendan Hannigan Justin Jang
Amy Voida
Dan Sternberg
Daron Vroon
Jay Summet
Gillian Hayes
Heather Mahaney
Wei Han
Heather Richter
Quan Tran
Agenda Point 1: Committee Reports
* DLS [Tejas Iyer]
- DLSs are not coordinated and some occur in such a way that
students cannot attend
- Will look into developing a website or newsgroup to list all DLS
lectures (which might alse stem the tide of email messages)
- May also look into how undergrads are informed about DLSs
* Faculty Recruiting [Zack Kurmas]
- Committee is currently assessing CoC needs for recruiting
* Somewhat in a waiting mode to assess the needs with respect to
the new Dean taking over as of December 1st
* Faculty Review [Amanda Lyons, remotely]
- Held Oct 9th at Spaghetti Factory
- Attendance: about 60 people
- Spent about $600 for the entire event
- IS and PL were the only two areas not represented by students
- RSVPing was an issue: 20 people asked to come the day of the event
and some people came even though they did not have a reservation.
- Considerations for next year:
* Some thought it was too noisy; perhaps find a quiter location
* Many thought that the off-campus location was very good
* Some though a more formal Q/A would be good but most like the
social atmosphere of the event
- Other comments
* might be a good idea to place experts with name tags at table
(experts from similar areas sit near each other)
* might somehow offer opportunity for a general question session
* Graduate Committee [Elaine Huang]
- There is a proposal for a PhD program in BioInformatics that will
be similar in structure to the ACO PhD program, and will be an
issue for discussion and vote at the November faculty meeting.
* New PhD Programs [Amy Voida]
- The committee met and developed a rough plan that used only the
currently available courses across several departments.
- Amy met with students at the HCI seminar and it seems that a
revision to the rough plan will probably be in order
* PhD Admissions [Dan Sternberg]
- A meeting will be held at the end of the month
* PhD Recruiting [Daron Vroon, Gillian Hayes, & Jay Summet]
- PR materials discussed at last meeting are being disseminated
* Seminars [Aparna Bajoj, remotely]
- Aparna has tried mailing lists, personal emails, and asking people
in person to give seminars with no success. Anyone who is
interested is too busy and cannot develop a good time to schedule
the seminar. It may help to generate a (ranked) list of topics
important to the community
* Space Planning [Heather Richter]
- The GVU move to Yamacraw is still not 100% settled (Aaron Bobick
is in charge of the move). The general plan is to complete some
self-construction of whatever space is granted, and move-in is
scheduled for the summer semester.
- The Klaus building is moving along in the design phase
* Undergrad Program Committee [Bob Amar, remotely]
- CS4000 will move from a 2 credit to a 3 credit class
- M2601 will move from a 3 credit to a 3+1 credit class (recitation)
- CS1315 (Media Computation) will be offered as an alternative to
CS1321 for non-CS majors
- CS2130 may move to the 3rd, rather than the 2nd, year, depending
on possible revisions to the core curriculum
* Women's Programs [Quan Tran]
- The Women@CoC group have held several events: Mary Shaw's DLS, a
few social events
- They are also developing an advisory board to address the
male/female ratio problem both in CoC and in the Institute
* No Reports
- CNS [Pat Widener]
- Grad Student Orientation [Shomari Mosi]
- Honors & Awards [Brendan Hannigan]
- Picnic [Heather Mahaney]
- RSI [Wei Han]
* Missing Reports
- Grad Teas [Joe Tullio]
- Int'l Student Reps [Manas Tungare & Fernando Alegre]
- Master's Program [Bessie Yang]
- UROC [David Nguyen]
Agenda Point 2: Health Insurance and SHAC
* SHAC (Student Health Advisory Committee) is the institute committee
for handling the selection of health insurance options for students.
Since this is *the* place where insurnace decision are made, it was
decided to have all CoC opinions on health insurance go through the
SHAC representative. Currently, Zack Kurmas will fill that role,
although questions can also be diected to Duke Hutchings.
Agenda Point 3: Qualifying Exam Advice Document
* Idris Hsi has been maintaining a qualifying exam advice document for
many years now, and it has been adopted by the CoC as an official
advice document to be edited by the students. Since Idris will soon
graduate, GSC decided to take charge of the document.
We are currently awaiting a decision by the CoC about our proposal.
GSC will revisit this issue in the next meeting.
Agenda Point 4: Seminars
* Several ideas were put forward to encourage seminars:
- Have a poll of the community for needs
- Inform community (both potential presenters and atendees) that
small seminars or pieces of a larger seminars are needed
- Perhaps take some time from the 7001 class, if available
* There was also a general request to have note-takers for each
seminar so that information could be passed year-to-year to
presenters and attendees
Agenda Point 5: DAC and Faculty News
* Rich Demillo (the Dean of the CoC as of December 1) may be
scheduling some graduate student meetings this semester to assess
needs and attitudes in the community. He also has some free meeting
slots which can be scheduled by contacting Linda Williams.
Agenda Point 6: Mentors Program
* The GSC decided to let the CS 7001 Professor and TAs handle the
assigning of mentors to first-year students
Agenda Point 7: ACM subscription
* The GSC decided to inquire about a institute-wide subscription to
the ACM digital Library by determining the price and properties of
such a subscription. There was also a possibility of asking for
Institute-funded ACM memberships.
The meeting concluded around 17:00.
These minutes were submitted by Duke Hutchings, and are subject to
change until the November 2002 meeting, at which time they will become
the official meeting minutes.