From owner-info@gso.bu.edu Fri Apr 30 16:42 EDT 1999 Received: from gso.bu.edu (GSO.BU.EDU [128.197.60.71]) by cs.bu.edu ((8.8.8.buoit.v1.0)/8.8.8/(BU-S-10/16/98-v1.0a)) with ESMTP id QAA28779; Fri, 30 Apr 1999 16:42:38 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from majordom@localhost) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) id QAA16370 for info-list; Fri, 30 Apr 1999 16:42:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from cs.bu.edu (root@CS.BU.EDU [128.197.10.2]) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) with ESMTP id QAA16366 for ; Fri, 30 Apr 1999 16:42:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from cs16.bu.edu (rip@cs16 [128.197.10.115]) by cs.bu.edu ((8.8.8.buoit.v1.0)/8.8.8/(BU-S-10/16/98-v1.0a)) with ESMTP id QAA28708 for ; Fri, 30 Apr 1999 16:42:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Pitts Received: by cs16.bu.edu (8.8.5/Spike-2.1) id QAA10358; Fri, 30 Apr 1999 16:42:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 16:42:19 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199904302042.QAA10358@cs16.bu.edu> To: info@gso.bu.edu Subject: GSO - summary of Thu, Apr 29, 99 meeting Sender: owner-info@gso.bu.edu Precedence: bulk Content-Type: text Content-Length: 8344 Status: RO Here is a summary of what we did at yesterday's Graduate Student Organization meeting. Our general meeting schedule for the summer will be once a month. Thus, the next meeting will be approximately at the end of May (to be announced). --Rob Summary ======= 1. Committee Reports Financial, Academic and Research Committee ========================================== (Formerly the "Funding Committee". Their new e-mail is far@gso.bu.edu.) Gareth Roberts reported for this committee. - They will try to schedule Wendy Gordon, the speaker for an "Intellectual Property" talk, for the Fall. They felt that a summer talk would be poorly attended. - They are continuing to work on a policy document with "Guidelines and Suggestions for Good Advising," based on their own experiences and on similar documents from Harvard, MIT, Penn State, UCDavis and UMinnesota. The document will be split into 3 categories, which are currently being investigated/written up: 1. Responsibilities of the advisor/rights of the student. E.g., Mutual respect, open communication, regular feedback, a schedule/long-term plan, etc. 2. Responsibilities of the Department/Program E.g., Financial and resource support from the dept., clear requirements for degree, access to attrition rates, objective evaluations, etc. 3. Responsibilities of the School or University E.g., non-discrimination clause, established grievance procedures, informal complaint procedures, oversight of depts., etc. - A web page concerning "funding" (off of the main GSO page) will be coming soon. ---- An attendee suggested that if we can get a definite date for a Fall talk on "Intellectual Property", we may be able to announce it in the mailings to new students. Another asked how advising awards (for undergraduate programs) are determined. They were aware of a situation where an advisor, who was alleged by students to be a bad advisor, received such an award. Healthcare Committee ==================== Rob Pitts reported for this committee. They have: - Updated the income qualifications for Free Care on the Healthcare Pages (http://gso.bu.edu/healthcare/). The new income limits are now present on the write-up of Free Care itself and write-ups of Free Care as implemented at specific hospitals or health centers. The limits changed March 18, 1999; the new ones must be used by healthcare providers by May 17, 1999. - Added "key points" to the write-up of BU's Student Insurance Plan (based on feedback from students and from the discussion with Chickering and Student Health Services representatives). These are provided as a "short version" of information they've provided about healthcare at BU. - A committee member attended a panel discussion entitled "Healthcare in the 21st Century" on April 22, 1999. This discussion was open to issues of healthcare both locally, nationally and internationally and was sponsored by the "National Council for International Health" (NCIH) at Boston University. This is apparently an undergraduate group at BU. The committee member's impression was that NCIH has members from Sargent College of Allied Health and pre-med students. They have sent e-mail to NCIH's new officers in order to see if there are any opportunities for collaboration. They are still waiting for a response. In the immediate future, they will be working on: - Information they want to put in the GSO flyer that will be mailed to new students. - A "site map" for the Healthcare Pages. I.e., something like a set of questions that students can ask themselves in order to direct them to useful information on those pages. There is a need for this since currently there is a lot of information on those pages and students probably won't look through it all. Housing Committee ================= This committee did not report. Liaison Committee ================= Gary Garber reported for this committee by e-mail. GRS is holding an orientation for new foreign teaching fellows during the third week in August: - These students will be staying on campus and going through language evaluation and cultural orientation. - They are also holding a few social events and are wondering whether the GSO would like to run one of those (GRS would pay for the event). - GRS might also have a few continuing students stay with the new students in the dorms. This would mean free housing for a week or so, and perhaps a small stipend. Social Committee ================ Cassandra Celatka reported for this committee. - April's Social (at Boston Billiards) had about 20 attendees. They did not use money to buy snacks for this event mainly because Boston Billiards did not give them enough information about what kinds of snacks were purchasable ahead of time. - May's Social will be Thursday, May 6th, 6:30-8:30pm at "The Dugout" (across from CAS on Comm. Ave.) For this event, they will ask GRS for more than the usual $50 for snacks (since they did not spend money on snacks for the last event and since this is an "end of the semester" event). - As for the summer, they will probably plan one event for students and then another event during the foreign TF orientation, but won't necessarily have an event once a month (attendance is lower during the summer). ---- Some attendees suggested announcing "impromptu" events during the summer, like "some of us are going to a baseball game, etc." Also, the idea of a bar-b-q at an area park, where each person brings some food, was suggested. Steering Committee ================== Dave Morgan and Jen Wenner reported for this committee. Their report consisted of a presentation/discussion of the articles in the "Constitution, Bylaws, etc." section below. 2. Constitution, Bylaws, etc. The "Committees of the GSO" article was voted on and passed with consensus. The "Officers of the GSO" article, with one minor addition (i.e., that committee chairpersons are responsible for making sure their committee reports at meetings), passed with consensus. ---- Note that when articles pass, we will still have an opportunity to make slight adjustments after they are all put together into a constitution. ---- We spent most of this time on the "Meetings" article. Many issues were discussed, including names of the types of meetings, what the purpose of each type is, and who can call, who must attend and who must run such meetings. We also decided to remove the text on elections and put that in an "Elections" article. Election issues were briefly discussed, but we will do so more when we arrive at the "Elections" article. Remember to send your comments on articles (that have already been sent out by e-mail) to steering@gso.bu.edu. 3. Summer We briefly discussed issues concerning the summer: - General meetings will be approx. monthly, although committees can meet as needed. - We need to decide what format to use for the GSO flyer that will be sent out to new students (approx. at end of May). We agreed to have some of the committees include a short piece of text making students aware of relevant issues and pointing them towards the GSO's web resources. We may also put in a short schedule of early Fall GSO events if it is possible to decide on dates for a first meeting, social event or talk soon. 4. Other Gareth Roberts will be planning a dinner event for those who have participated in the GSO in the past year. This will likely be in mid-May. This is something we also did last year in order to celebrate all that we had accomplished. Interested students may contact Gareth about the event. Students will pay for their own meals.