Graduate Student Council Meeting
Date: February 28, 2003, 16:00
Location: Darts Lab, 2nd floor of CCB
Attendance
Members Others
Duke Hutchings Chad Hunneycut
Pat Widener Vin Scarlata
Tejas Iyer Brian McNamara
Zack Kurmas
Elaine Huang
Joe Tullio
James Eagan
Xuehai Bian
Jay Summet
Gillian Hayes
Agenda Point 1: Welcome New Members
* GSC welcomes the following new member
- James Eagan [Grad Tea Dude]
* GSC thanks former Grad Tea Capo Joe Tullio for his hard work!
Agenda Point 2: Old Business
* Student Health Advisory Committee (SHAC)
- Somehow Zack and Duke were never contacted regarding this
committee. Duke followed up with Dr. Cindy Smith, who passed the
names onto Dr. Carole Moore, who is the real chair of this
committee. Emails were also sent by Duke to both Cindy and Carole
to express GSC's desire to participate in the committee. GSC
should follow up on this at the next meeting.
* ACM DL Proposal
- Some time was spent gaining comments for the document. The
proposal is scheduled for presentation, editing, and approval by
the Dean's Advisor Committee, and should be submitted to the
administration before the next GSC meeting
Agenda Point 3: Committee Reports
* Honors and Awards [Brendan Hannigan, remotely]
* submitted all the campus wide and external nominations
* selected committee head for next year (Thad)
* Brendan will send an email to PhD list in regard to awards that
need nominations for the college ceremony soon.
* RSI Coordinator [Wei Han, remotely]
* will ask to have department buy a Goldtouch keyboard
* PhD Admissions [Dan Sternberg (remotely), Xuehai Bian]
* see faculty news
* Undergrad Program Committee [Bob Amar, remotely]
* On the table currently are considering first-year courses
* Collaboration policy in 1321 seems not to be hurting (success
rate slightly up, might not be statistically significant)
* would LIKE to talk to the new undergrad education dean and see if
he has any big plans in mind. I haven't seen him at any of the
UCC meetings.
* Second-year courses are up for a big revision, but nobody knows
what's going on with that quite yet.
* New PhD Programs [Amy Voida, remotely]
* committee is now meeting for two hours every week.
* currently working on the design of two or three new courses.
* a theoretical overview of "area-agnostic" ideas relating to
humans and computing (i.e. notions of human agency); might be
the foundation for a new qualifying exam.
* a problem-based learning course.
* an overview of research methods course
* trying to be designed so that they will have relevance to students
not in this new Ph.D. program as well.
* Women's Programs [Delphine Nain, remotely]
* Women@CC would like to have both an undergraduate and graduate
representation. The idea is to have two advisory boards
(undergraduate and graduate) who meet separately once a month and
together once a month.
* Saturday 15th: there will be a tour of the Aware Home for high
school students and several members of the committee will help
* April 16th there will be a panel for the kids of the CS faculty
(middle-school) and a possible tour of the Aware Home. Members of
the committee will help
* PhD Recruiting [Jay Summet, Gillian Hayes]
* There will only be one visitation weekend: March 28-29
* The "grad student only" lunch will be held Saturday
* Grad Teas [Joe Tullio/James Eagan]
* James to take over as "Grad tea dude"
* Faculty Recruiting [Zack Kurmas, remotely]
* many architecture candidates
* theory and databases have candidates coming as well
(possibly an animation candidate)
* developing new ways to encourage student participation
* Seminars [Aparna Ashok Bajaj]
* 3 seminars are upcoming; check the website
* No Reports
* CNS [Pat Widener, remotely]
* DLS [Tejas Iyer]
* Graduate Committee [Elaine Huang]
* Picnic Coordinator [Heather Mahaney]
* Missing Reports
* Masters Program Rep [Nitesh Singh, remotely]
* Int'l Student Rep [Manas Tungare, remotely]
* Space Planning [Heather Richter]
* Faculty Review [Amanda Lyons]
* Grad Student Orientation [Shomari Mosi]
* UROC [David Nguyen]
Agenda Point 4: Faculty News
* no attendance by students at "town hall meeting" of working group
* admissions report: lots of applications and few acceptance letters.
target class size is 40 and target acceptance size is 60
* summer funding will *not* guaranteed for incoming students. Ellen
Zegura told Duke that if there are summer funding cuts for current
students, then we will be informed well before the cuts.
* at the faculty meeting, the was a small discussion of making the PhD
review tighter. Ellen Zegura told Duke that if there is an "extra
harsh" review process, students will be told why and what changes
are to be expected for future years
Agenda Point 5: New Business
* Proposal to alter slush
* after quick discussion of slush and the git.cc.help newsgroup,
which is also available for people to ask general questions, we
decided to make no alterations to the current slush configuration
* GSCs role in admissions
* There was some discussion that since international students aiding
in PhD admissions are paid for their services, that they might not
be appropriate people to represent the GSC at admissions meetings.
Also, it appears that the admissions committee does not want
American student input. GSC decided that at the very least an
independent student should be involved to monitor the process and
disseminate information. This person should be chosen by Grad
Liaison and generally approved of by the GSC as a whole.
* Funding of conference trips
* CoC will now fund two trips per year, granting up to $200 per trip
Contact Barbara Binder for more information
* Faculty Recruiting
* Duke asked GSC members to encourage students to aid in the faculty
recruiting process.
* All grad student lunches are scheduled for Wednesday and Friday
The meeting concluded around 17:00.
These minutes were submitted by Duke Hutchings, and are subject to
change until the February 2003 meeting, at which time they will become
the official meeting minutes.