jpreps

May 11, 2021

Tue 05/11/2021

11 May 2021 – Agenda 

  • Max’s Event – what support is needed from the reps to get the event planned (if anything)?
  • Social Events – Need to do a social event soon since we didn’t have a reps-lead even in April 
  • Jelly talks 
  • Starbucks update – Ramp down? End after finals week? (ZT)
  • Mentorship update – what was discussed at the APO/Joint Program meeting, are we adding a mentorship page to the photoboard? Did Mallory send around a survey? 
  • GSC – Iulia has taken over this position 
  • When and how can we add incoming students to the student listserv?
  • Create a class name (email list serve) for incoming students. I believe it’s tradition that the current 1st years decide on a name. 
  • Thoughts on having a virtual Steinbach Scholar program this year. 1-2 scholars (already decided from last year in PO and BO). Would need commitment and good attendance. Reduced from 3 talks to 2 (Dept one could be in place of the dept seminar to help with attendance and second talk is student focused (career, informal, etc.) 
  • Jing: will be away/not enrolling for the summer. Need a temp PO rep…? Especially if there will be a PO Steinbach Scholar?
  • Noah: APO vs. Rep funds for newsletter promo
  • Cynthia: G&G fund use for generals students
  • Lei Ma agenda items –
    • We need to send Peter de Menocal the summary for the listening session. Noah and I have been working on it but I think it should come from the reps as a whole. There’s a google doc for it.
    • We should complain to WHOI CDEI on the hiring process for the DEI officer. Maybe a strongly worded letter and a vote of no confidence in the potential hire because of the secrecy and lack of engagement with the community

Minutes

Max’s Scicomm Event:

  • Funding Update and necessary support?
    • Max: Sent an email to OGE but most of their grants are for events open to the whole MIT community. MindHandHeart rejected the idea.
      • Likely that the Reps can cover the event still.
    • Zac: If we can include postdocs, it would be nice to get WHOI funding, especially because we’re drawing down the prior funding (didn’t request the $10k last year).
      • Cynthia: Since this is WHOI-focused, it makes sense that most OGE funds are off-limits. This is a kind of tradeoff if we want to open it up to the broader WHOI community. 
    • Kris and Lea: Since postdocs open up their events to students, it’s probably a decent trade to include postdocs in student events.
      • Kris: $10k is usually what we get per year, and it comes from the Student Life fee. This is an MIT-based account, meaning that MIT also definitely knows when we’re actually spending the money. She recommends spending down as much as possible because she’s heard that COVID tanked the normal MIT budgets and we don’t want to face a new budgetary stringency with a ~10k reserve unspent. 
    • Reminder: Max’s total estimate for the event was $1745
    • Logan: How likely is it that we will face cuts next year?
      • Kris: the reason that we didn’t ask for money last year is that there was no student life fee charged last year. 
  • General consensus: fund the event with our funds!
  • Other concerns:
    • Target date is second week of August or late July.
    • Logan: if in July or August, invite SSF/PEP students!
    • Rachel: If this is during the math review (1-2:30 MW) this may be a conflict.
      • A single math review may be moved, plus the scicomm event would likely be in two mornings, followed by lunch anyway
  • Max will email the speakers about the schedule. 

Social Events

  • New schedule is jelly talks one week, trivia the other. 

Jelly Talks!

  • Going great, schedule filled up & more slots added

Zac: Starbucks Update

  • As of May 7, we spent $3200 at Starbucks (!!!)
  • It might be time to start ramping this program down.
    • Kris: before iced coffee season hits (lol)
  • Keep through finals (24-28)
    • End on June 1–Zac will email out around then saying that there is only so much funding left and encouraging summer events. 

Mentorship program

  • Mallory and others have discussed this, and…
    • Action with this will happen in the fall. 
    • Keep Mallory apprised of what’s happening. 
    • MPOWIR : mentoring women in physical oceanography? This is a program Meg is working on, potentially modeling ours on that. 

GSC Rep Position:

  • Iulia is taking this on, and we have confirmation from her and Henri. 

How do we start adding first-years to Slack and listservs?

  • The current first-years, of course, name the incoming students. 
  • How does this work digitally? Ask Max, maybe. They were largely responsible for last-year’s naming. 
  • Have a Rep ask the current first-years for volunteers.
    • Noah will do this and loop Max in. 
  • Jing: This may happen in July, so it may be prudent to add them to the Slack ASAP.
    • Logan: Can’t we just create a first-year listserv and change the name later?
    • Kris: It involves duplicating work, largely, which we were hoping to avoid. Was thinking that maybe if people are remote, push the naming party earlier?
    • Zac: When are they assigned MIT and WHOI addresses? Can we use their personal emails for now?
      • Kris: Students have already been sent instructions to set up MIT emails and all but two have done so. I can send you that list, at least. 
    • Logan and Rachel: Okay, so let’s do the name early maybe, and focus less on the giant reveal party. 
    • Lea: Maybe even shoot for the beginning of June. 
  • Noah will get the MIT emails for students that have made them, and add them to the slack. 

Virtual Steinbach Scholar:

  • Meg proposed last week that we do a virtual Steinbach program. 
  • Past concerns (last year it was cancelled) have included low attendance. Maybe we could do one informal student talk rather than three virtually. 
  • Bio/PO were supposed to happen last year, and so we’d bring back the same people who we had to cancel. 
  • Jing will be gone for the summer. Maybe we only bring in the BO scholar?
    • Lea: Then PO would happen next year. 
  • Consensus: Definitely do BO, and see if there are any volunteers for PO (Jing will email PO students). 
  • July/August are the ideal times for this, and we will start with BO. Cynthia will take the lead on some of this, given that Zac is gonna have a literal child. 

Lei’s items: Letter to Peter RE: Vision Statement listening session.

  • Vision Summary will need to be edited by Reps and signed by Reps and postdocs. 

Lei’s Items: DEI Officer

  • EAPS/Chem at MIT is hiring a DEI officer too, and WHOI’s process is far less staff-involved and far less transparent. The candidates for WHOI’s position don’t meet with/answer questions from the community, and we don’t know who they are.
    • MIT departments have the candidates give a seminar, talk to students, send out their resumes, etc. 
  • Word is that WHOI’s hiring process will wrap up early June (memorial day), so this is time-sensitive. 
  • Write a letter that encourages some of these positive changes to the process.
  • Kris: I thought that there was a DEI committee at WHOI that works on this?
    • Lei: The broad CDEI committee that actually interacts with this process only has one student on it, and that’s Eesh. 
  • Lei will reach out to Eesh about this and try to find who’s on the hiring committee. 
  • Noah will add people for updates on Slack/further planning.

Jing will be gone this summer. Do we need a temporary PO rep? 

  • Hopefully we can find a volunteer for the Steinbach scholar thing, if not, we push it. 

Zac is gonna have a  c h i l d. Stewart may take over as Treasurer for a while when that happens. 

Recruitment and the Newsletter (Swag)

  • Noah will write a short summary to Lea about what this plan is.
    • Ask the TtP team about what this is supposed to be.

G&G Generals

  • Use the G&G Rep funds to make care packages/giftcards to the second years (Zac and Cynthia)?
    • 3-4 students.  
    • “Sounds like a good idea” is the general consensus.