SASgov - UPenn - Weeklies

Wednesday

Mar272013

GB minutes 3.19.13

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 2:46PM

Dinner from Qdoba & Roll call
Discretionary Funding Application:
1. Penn Intradepartmental Chemistry Lecture Series (PICLS): by Jerome Robinson from the chem. Dept. Student-run seminar for presentation of grad student research. 5 one-hr seminars for April, through the summer, and into August 2013. Idea is for practice job talks, for job interview prep, or for conference prep, or just thoughts looking toward writing something and looking for advice. Projected attendance 25-40 students each time, with a total of 10-15 graduate presenters (2 to 3 each session).
  1. budget: $100 per session for bevs and snacks; total budget: $500. Requesting from SASgov: $500.
  2. Floor open for questions: none. Abhijit asks in the summer for a realistic number
  3. Ask him to leave so we can discuss.
    1. How much left in our funding budget? Do we anticipate we’ll spend it all? $1400 left in the Student research Discretionary fund. If we exhaust that $, we could appeal to the general discretionary fund which has $1600 in it. And 2 meetings left to use it.
    2. Brandon Kelly (chem. Rep): 25-40 is a low ball estimate. We’l generally have about 60 people. The dept will provide for beer and pizza. So the request from SASgov is just for snacks and more bevs.
    3. Motion to fund in full; seconded; voted in unanimously.
  4. Ask him in: tell he’s been awarded.
VP Updates:
1. Afreina:
  1. website: has been doing overhaul on website, so Afreina looking for feedback. Trying to link together the fb and twitter accts too. We need you to follow on twitter.
    1. Website suggestion: a section just for reps with calendar, etc.
    2. A button on front page that will take directly to funding? No, they can follow ordinary drop-downs. Danielle Hanley: Could an argument be made that grad students will always seek funding on the last minute, so highlighting the funding and making the process as fool proof as possible might be not so bad an idea. Will: telling people about this as early as possible at the beginning of the year. Yes, we’re in an internet age but word of mouth still works: advance notice really is the rule of thumb. One of the missions of SASgov is to get students money, and not enough people know how they can get money for job interviews, traveling, etc.
  2. Photograph to be taken last meeting April 16: of current exec, next exec, and GB. It will be posted on website.
  3. Any suggestions welcome if anyone wants SASgov swag. We’re getting a banner anyway to be hung at events we co-sponsor.
  4. How many have liked fb page? You need to! Evelyn idea: Afreina should select people who’ve been active on the page for random awards each week.
2. Laura:
  1. social event Friday was awesome: Mar 5 happy hour was very chill. Her favorite event so far.
  2. Event on Mar 26 with Penn Design and BGSA. Things are changing every day. If they lose the argument, it means the event is free so don’t buy your tickets yet. But you have to book ticket for the event—Laura will be figuring that out in committees today. Event is “CATALYST” event at Bistro St. Tropez. Lots of heavy hors d’oeuvres and free drink tickets for first 40 people.
  3. GAPSA boat cruise is on April 5. We gave money to them to subsidize tickets so you deserve to get the cheap tickets.
  4. Laura wants ot have at least one more thing and she’ll keep you updated.
3. Will:
  1. The health insurance survey closed and we’re now processing: got over 1500 survey responses. The information we’ll glean through (thank you to Heeju Sohn) will allow us to make some very important choices as we figure out how to have the best plan that’s also still affordable. There are a lot of issues we can talk about and I’m happy to talk to you more about it if you’d like to. Things that could make our health care more expensive if we’re not careful, so we’re advocating for you. The more we know about this the better citizens we can be in general. Eventually it could have a serious effect on different types of students as health care continues to change in the next year and two years.
4. Evelyn:
  1. final GB dinner: will be April 16. Info and RSVP will go out this Friday Mar 22 and I request your rsvp by Mar 29. Likely be at Audrey Claire.
5. Elizabeth:
  1. funding still available for job interviews. Let people in your department know.
  2. If you want funding for anything, to reiterate Evelyn’s emails, you need to contact Elizabeth ahead of time. These are not our rules but SAS Finance’s rules so please contact Elizabeth at least 3 weeks ahead of the event.
6. Abhijit:
  1. the departmental merit funding request needs to be received by April 13 – even if the event is scheduled to happen later. We need your submissions. We need to close our books that day.
  2. Award: New Media & Research Award: up to $3000 for research to occur over the summer related to your research (not necessarily your dissertation specifically) that you want to use new media for and reach out to audiences beyond the field of Academia. Respond to us with a pdf application. If you could send an email to your departments highlighting this that would be great. We’ve had some really interesting projects funded, the info about which are on our website. Deadline April 20.
  3. Rally to Save Medical Research by the Am Cancer Research Assoc will be in D.C. on April 8. If you’re interested get in touch with Abhijit: it’s going out in the next weekly, so if you want info about the rally Abhijit will forward the info to you.
SASgov Exec Slating for 2013-2014: Elections day April 16. Really exciting. We will have, aside from Elizabeth’s position as VP Finance, (because she’s staying til at least December!), we’re inviting candidates for all the other positions at this time. Come to us if you have any questions about what the job entails. The next two meetings we’re trying a new thing to have exec meetings just before the GB meetings, so it’s a flexible thing. Great for your CVs. Some circuits look at it as “service” to the community. Abhijit sees lots of good candidates in the GB now.
1. If you are a nominee for one position, you can be a nominee for another position as well as long as you don’t win the former position.
New Business: none
Motion to close, seconded, go to committees.
Committee meetings!