Proceedings of the February 13, 2008 GSC meeting
Agenda
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Anwei!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions (Kristina)
3) 6:05 Announcements (Kristina)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Approve minutes from the last meeting (2/6/07).
iii. Need someone to help with Grad night at Flicks, this Sunday 2/17 at 6:30pm.
4) 6:10 Funding (Polina)
i. Polish Club at Stanford
ii. French Stanford Student Association
iii. Persian Student Association
5) 6:20 Budget Update (Euan)
6) 6:30 Request for food money (Euan)
7) 6:35 ASSU Update (Mondaire)
8) 6:40 Programming update (Adam S. and Justin)
9) 6:45 Stanford Alumni Mentoring Program (Stephanie)
10) 7:05 GSC promotional items (Kristina)
11) 7:20 Brainstorming for elections recruitment (Kristina)
12) 7:35 New Business
Attendance
Voting members present:
At large 1: Maxim Afanasyev
At large 2: Hanna Muenke
At large 3: Kristina Keating
At large 4: Lan Wei
At large 5: Polina Segalova
Business: Rhyan Uy
Earth Sciences: Kyle Anderson
Education: Michelle Brown
Engineering 1: Melahn Parker
Engineering 2: Zeng Fan
Medicine: Yana Hoy
Natural Sciences: Fen Zhao
Social Sciences: Euan Robertson
Voting members not present:
Law: Unfilled
Humanities: George Bloom
Others in attendance: Justin Brown, Adam Beberg, Andrew Park, Susana Montes-Delgado, Maria Spletter, Khanthi Kode, Alex Ene, Yan Yan, Donna Winston, Adam Sciambi, Matt Turk, Matt McLaughlin
Minutes
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Anwei!)
2) 6:02 Welcome with introductions (Kristina)
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We add which school we’re in.
3) 6:04 Announcements (Kristina)
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i. Please be aware that all meetings are recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Approved minutes from the last meeting (2/6/08) by consensus.
iii. Need someone to help manning the table at Grad night at Flicks, this Sunday 2/17 at 6:30pm. Maria and Michelle volunteer.
4) 6:06 Funding (Polina)
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i. Persian Student Association – saw them already for this event, namely a night with Firoozeh Dumas, a best selling author. Had previously asked for money, but would like to expand the event. They were planning on using the Havana room, which was free, but would now like to use Cubberley, which has $300 in rental fee. Also asking for $50 for advertising. Have asked some other sources for money as well. Recommended $350. Giving $350 passes by consensus.
ii. French Stanford Student Association
- Mardi-Gras celebration, serving crepes, expect about 60 students. Will be held in Timoshenko
- Goodbye barbecue.
Total recommended is $800. Giving passes by consensus.
iii. Polish Club at Stanford. They’re a new group on campus.
-Planning BBQ on March 1st at I-Center. Will serve Polish cuisine and drinks. Should be a good chance to recruit new members and socialize. Have also applied for funds from I-Center. Recommended $300. Giving $300 passes by consensus.
5) 6:10 Budget Update (Euan)
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Discussing the part of the budget that we have control over. Most of the time we’ve underspent.
For Retreats and Training, we have $6000 total for the year, and have $3671 left currently. We will have both a transition/training day and a retreat for the new GSC, which will use some of that.
General discretionary is for anything that we want to spend money on that’s not specifically in the budget, other than programming. Have $4620 left out of $5000. Marketing has $3000 total, which we haven’t spent any of yet. Should spend lots on election. This will go towards bottle openers and post-its as promotional items, which we will talk about later.
Advocacy has $1907 left, out of $4000 total.
For constituency outreach we have $1500 ($100 each for elected members) and haven’t spent any of that yet.
Meeting food had $9000 total, $2692 left. Probably need 1500 more till end of fiscal year. Euan will propose to cover this by moving money from general discretionary.
Overall picture, not spending as much money as we have budgeted.
Donna suggests having a big retreat with new group for training/transition, rather than in the fall. The training day that we do is not so exciting, so it might be more fun for new members to have a retreat. Apparently in the past, it was that way. It’s challenging to organize for that many people though (as then the retreat would have all the old and new members.
Rhyan wonders why, given that we seem to have excess, why we don’t lower student fees. Euan’s response is that it’s hard to raise the fees afterwards, so we should perhaps just not make the increase inflation.
Maria points out that the budget we’re discussing actually has nothing to do with student fees – it’s what we get from ASSU as operating budget.
There’s lots of money for outreach! Maria encourages using it. In the past, has been used for things like pizza events (Even just sponsoring a department’s typical night out). Often those events have good turnout, so it’s a good way to get our name out there. Suggestion to bring this discussion up again later, since we did have specific time set aside later.
6) 6:22 Request for food money (Euan)
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Euan requesting that we move $1500 from general discretionary to meeting food money. We want to encourage people to come to meetings, don’t want them to starve while they’re around. Alex wonders whether that will be enough money for food when we have the overlap between old and new members which will mean more people coming to meetings. However, $1500 is probably more than we actually need, so it should be fine.
7) 6:24 ASSU Update (Mondaire)
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Mondaire not here. Matt reports that they met with Andy and Teresa in GLO to talk about babysitting idea. Nothing in particular that’s new.
8) 6:25 Programming update (Adam S. and Justin)
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Things are going well. Tickets are moving well so far. Michelle has recruited lots of School of Ed people. Will have two dance floors again, including formal dance. Yay!
9) 6:26 GSC promotional items (Kristina).
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We talked awhile ago about getting bottle openers and other small things as promotional items. Have in the past ordered 1000 of each item, through the SSE special products, which is enough to get bulk discounts. Items will have GSC logo and website to help get our name out there. We currently have nothing left of small items, so definitely need to order more.
Stanford Store has keychain wallets that would be a good larger item to purchase when we’re next low on them. Would like to increase volunteer base, which the larger items would be good for as prize/thank you, perhaps in a lottery fashion after volunteering at a couple of events.
Proposing to order 1000 pads of post-its at 1.01 each, and 1000 bottle openers at 1.000, so $2010 total. Approving this order passes by consensus.
10) 6:30 Brainstorming for elections recruitment (Kristina)
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Ideas are to:
– sponsor events that go on in schools anyway.
- prizes for voting
- prizes for getting elected (we don’t think Euan was serious).
- co-sponsoring larger prior events.
Try to focus on getting people to run for elections, not just getting our name out there.
- try to specifically target first-year students (get email list of those in our department)
- invite specific people (give each GSC member a couple of nice invites to give out)
- ask CAs about active people in their areas
- approach those who applied to be CAs but didn’t get it.
- ask Jake to tell NomCom applicants that they can be involved with GSC.
- Current NomCom individuals will also be done with their term, so maybe they’ll be free to join GSC.
- Facebook advertising.
- take target individuals out for coffee or something
- ask student group leaders
For next week, everyone should use these strategies to try and get two people informed about the GSC and potentially interested in . Will report back on that next week.
11) 6:39 Stanford Alumni Mentoring Program (Stephanie Ebele and Marlene Stern)
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Stephanie and Marlene from Career Development Center. Have Stanford Alumni Mentoring program in place for Undergrads and want to talk to us about the possibility of expanding it or creating something new for graduate students. Goal today is to show us the existing program, get feedback from us about how it might work for graduate students, get a sense for whether there would be interest among grad alums for an alumni mentoring program.
Not talking about academic mentoring, as the goal would be that advisors fulfill that need. Goal to connect us with an alumni who can offer some career guidance and advice about life after Stanford. Mentoring is about a relationship, not a specific job opportunity, and the program supports that relationship building.
Stanford Alumni Mentoring (SAM) is a registered student group, with CDC counseling staff as advisor. Marlene has been filling that role. The program is available to Undergrads and Co-Terms only, as of now. A pilot was launched in spring ’06 which started with 25 students and 90 alumni, and has grown since then. Fall ’07 had 130 students and 540 alumni. Will have another advertised push for applications soon. Overall has been a positive experience for mentors and mentee.
Website is at mentoring.stanford.edu
Process is that students can apply twice a year, then participate in mandatory orientation, and then get a log-in so that they can enter the program and search for a mentor
In the search for a mentor, can select different criteria (such as degree obtained) and also say how important that feature is to you. Done intentionally so that you don’t know name or title of the mentor, but rather just see the profile, with education background, field of study, general information. Everything remains anonymous until the match is made and both have agreed to the match based on the profile. Only then are names provided, allowing the two to get in touch.
This program is not directly aimed at academic mentoring, though there are probably academics on there, though can’t do a direct search for that. It was designed for undergrads, perhaps why it’s missing things like that, so that’s why our feedback helps as the program thinks about evolving to also match graduate students.
Michelle asks about how the program might be different if opened to graduate students. For grad students looking for a career, it would probably work pretty well as it is, though they could make a greater push for more mentors with higher degrees, who would be more likely to be in similar careers that graduate students might consider.
Polina asks about whether the success of the mentoring relationships are checked in on after the match is made. The program is set-up with only a formal six months of match, though people could separately continue relationship afterwards. After six months students could look for another match. While there isn’t anything to prevent students from continuing the formed relationship, the system is designed to make the match, rather than necessarily maintain it.
Adam B. thinks it’s pretty good for Masters students, but may need to do more recruiting of Masters and PhD level alumni to match with current grad students who want to go into industry. And of course, it is an entirely different issue for PhDs looking to go into academia, which has not been the focus of recruiting for alumni who could mentor for that type of decision. Original goal was to have a system with a 1 student to 4 alumni ratio, such that students have a better chance of finding a mentor with a good fit. Many of the alumni take more than one student, or would at least be willing to. Have about 130 students apply each session, and are looking more for anything that would need to screen people out, rather than let them in. Only rejected 1 previously, because it didn’t seem like that student would follow through on the commitment.
GSC members agree that there’s a need for mentoring. Maria points out that particular groups, such as women in science and engineering, may have particularly strong desire for mentoring relationship.
Would definitely want people who struggled with decision to leave academia (perhaps intending to get PhD but left with Masters) – how do they do afterwards?
Marlene points out that Stanford Career Network is another option, particularly for alumni looking for a fellow alumni mentor. Stems from Alex’s question about whether people could sign up as both mentor and mentee, which the current set-up doesn’t allow for.
Discussion about potential changes to the system. Rhyan suggests option to search by location, since if students know they want to be somewhere else after graduation, it might be helpful to know people there. The system does allow this. Alex asks about age, and there is a proxy in the system of years out. System also allows search by degree in a particular field of study. Discussion about ability to select requested gender or sexual orientation, which could be a valuable resource for students looking for help with particular issues. Students are not asked to fill out these questions, and alumni could also choose not to answer if they’re not comfortable.
There’s at least minor screening for student applicants, but not so much for alumni. However, students can report if alumni are not being responsive, in which case the office can try to get in touch with the alumni.
Search only returns five per page, no ability to scroll through multiple results beyond that, so some people may get left out. Recognize that there’s some programming updates needed for the site. Site does have the functionality for mentors to list multiple degree areas, etc, which makes them more likely to show up on a search. Also, person doing the search is likely to try their search in many ways, which makes it more likely that the search will turn up useful people.
SAM would like more graduate students to be involved both as a focus group, or as a volunteer in the group. SAM doesn’t have funding, which makes this hard.
Though there are similarities to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites, but is more controlled, which perhaps makes it easier and more comfortable to get started, and contact people.
Potential money needs: upgrades (one time cost), and staff person who maintains connections, runs orientations, etc.
They pass around a sheet asking for interested GSC members to sign up. Will get in touch with the volunteers soon, and will potentially have a pilot group of grad students in the spring session for SAM.
Suggestion for us to keep on Provost’s office that we think this tool has potential for graduate students.
So far funding has come from 5 years ago with a start up from alumni group, CDC, and vice provost of student affairs. Has run on a budget of about $12,000. There’s no ongoing budget, and has been made functional with time that the CDC people take away from their other duties, and students volunteers.
12) 7:29 New Business
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i. Bulletin about to go out, send stuff to Yana if you want it go to in, such as advocacy news, etc.
7:30 Meeting adjourned.
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