jpreps

April 12, 2021

Tue 04/13/2021

JPReps 12 Apr 2021

Meeting Agenda

  • Max’s proposal
  • Winter meeting debrief 
  • Mentorship – Mallory 
  • Social Events 
  • Jelly Talks
  • GSC Events 
  • Others
  1. Max’s Sci-Comm proposal
    1. Two Speakers: Shannon O’Donnell, sci comm and comedy specialist, host of “Your Brain On” and Virginia Schute, who served as comm. director for [institute I failed to remember the name for]. 
    2. Max wants these two to talk, give a workshop, and have a lunch with the students. Shannon’s talk would be about humor in science communication and “merging your passions” and Virginia’s talk would be about advancing JEDI in the geosciences.
    3. Initial budget quotes:
      1. Total $1745 for the two speakers.
      2. Includes lunch stipend
    4. Noah will look into previous workshop funding.
    5. APO is interested in contributing funds.
    6. Max will look into applying for additional OGE funding. 
  2. Winter Meeting
    1. Went okay—minutes will be emailed out with names removed. There was discussion about posting on the jpreps website, but there is also no precedent for this. We’re sticking to email.
  3. Social Events
    1. Jelly Talks
      1. Noah is in charge of setting this up. Will send form out soon. 
    2. Trivia
      1. Next Trivia will be on the 16th, email will go out today. If there needs to be a move, it will be the 30th. 
  4. Mentorship: Mallory R.
    1. Mallory, as a member of the WCC, has been part of the WHOIs your Buddy program to address a lack of mentorship. At that committee it was implied that students have a good mentorship program already. They really don’t.
    2. Mallory surveyed students about their experience with the current mentoring program, and it seems about 50/50 with who’s missing the program. Students are falling through the cracks, and this inconsistency is important. 
    3. Students want mentors who have been through the program already. There isn’t a great program for connecting alumni, at least for WHOI. 
    4. Lea said that given the EAPS-centric program, it’s often ineffective to pair a JP student who is MIT-only. 
    5. Mallory says that students who aren’t in EAPS are also missed by the program that exists. 
    6. It’s rather unclear which departments within the JP are doing what. 
    7. Lea: How do we get people to volunteer and get matched?
      1. Mallory: at the very least, try to do it by department. Cross-disciplinary stuff is just harder to relate. This is obviously problematic in departments with few students. Things are also hard right now because there isn’t the distinctive request for lunch funding which can mark meetings. 
      2. MR: Formal processes (“you will be assigned a mentor”, as well as this being something that isn’t student-run, because this tends to wax and wane). An informal list would be good, too, where there are contacts who are willing to talk to when the assigned mentor isn’t really available. Some students also cite a conflict of interest with their assigned mentor; for example, talking about lab problems with someone in the lab. 
    8. Mallory might send out a survey generally to get a shape of what is desired.
    9. Stewart: Mentoring is especially difficult for engineering. Labs are small, and students are distributed across multiple MIT depts.
    10. Lea: Part of the reason it’s hard to find a comprehensive list of JP students is because there used to be one and students were uncomfy with having that online.
      1. Kris: We could do as EAPS does and have students sign a release form. 
      2. Lea: Props to the photoboard online!
    11. New idea: a similar list to the photoboard, but with little blurbs about what a given student is willing to be contacted about. This could “solve” the informal problem. 
    12. Zac: Hey, let’s revisit this whole alumni idea. It might be tremendously useful, especially for students who are later on and looking for, say, career guidance.
      1. Mallory has actually been contacting alums from Scripps because we don’t have an online list. 
    13. Lea will send out the survey that Mallory makes.
    14. Rachel: Can you send out the email you intend to send for your first-year mentoring outreach?
  5. GSC bidnus
    1. Iulia has agreed to do this but Logan (and Noah) have not heard anything more from her and Henri. Logan will reach out.
  6. Navy Rep
    1. Brendan couldn’t be here today because he got vaccinated.
    2. Lea: it’s not that easy to add Reps. We could try to make it clear that at-large Reps can be Navy students, or even bring on a Navy student each year to help with the Open House planning. 
    3. Kris: JWest said if we added a Navy Rep ex oficio, they would not be obligated to attend any meetings and wouldn’t need to be officially voted in. 
    4. Zac: These informal options seem reasonable, as Navy students don’t necessarily have the time to mess around with this and requiring there to be a Navy rep seems unfair. 
  7. Next Meeting
    1. Tues, May 11, 2:30pm