GSO Meeting Agenda
May 2, 2022
Attending Officers: Ashley, Riley, Aaron, Mari, David
1. Feel free to private message me or any GSO officers you feel comfortable with during
the zoom meeting to have your opinions known if you’d like them heard but aren’t
comfortable sharing them yourself.
2. New Officer Introduction!
a. Ashley Elliott - President
b. Aaron Trigg - Vice President
c. David He - Treasurer
d. Riley Dawkins - Secretary
e. Mari Strong - Social Events Chair
f. Nageeb Zaman - Webmaster: at lab :(
3. Updates from April:
a. Faculty/GSO Meeting
i. Crawfish boil happening May 6th!
1. $5 for students
a. Need to reserve a spot by Wednesday at 4:30! (In Nicholson 202-L)
2. At 12:00 PM
4. This month’s discussion
a. Department Committees
i. DEIA Updates from Fox or Shania?
1. Department climate survey (Deadline 13th of May, please fill it out!)
2. Working on plan of action
ii. Outreach committee (extra pay!)
1. Looking for committee members!
b. GSO Officer Interest??
i. Contact Jane/Ashley if you’re interested in being academic events chair aka pizza lunch). We promise it’s never as bad as last month was
1. Aaron has tips and tricks!
c. Faculty Searches
i. Alexi (nuclear) and Francois have accepted faculty offers!
ii. Condensed matter and AMO still waiting on details
d. Discussion about better student space and meeting space
i. Renovations to astro library, Rm 260, and Rm 430
ii. Faculty space is cramped..
1. Making more office space!
iii. Jeff’s intent is to hold a meeting with grad students (he will likely
be organizing that soon!)
1. Together with a survey he is working on for us
e. Mental health survey… Thoughts?
i. Possibly include a question asking what the department can do to
help improve mental health and decrease stress
ii. Can’t hurt to do! Particular issue that some advisor’s expectations
were unhealthy (making an anonymous survey difficult). Might be
part of a longer conversation, but a survey could be a good way of
getting a general gauge of things.
1. Question in Climate Survey about advising!
a. Set up in a way so as to be anonymous
2. APS Idea Team is a good place to talk about these things,
can email Catherine D. to get involved!
iii. Can ask “how important is mental health to your advisor?” to get a
gauge of advisor care for students. “How do advisors respond to
students experiencing life-emergencies?”
iv. Students should be anonymous in this, but maybe advisors
shouldn’t? Can help to identify sources of problems.
1. Possible issue may be identifying the student by identifying
their advisor; depends on student’s comfort.
v. ‘Ombudsman’ person: Good resource to anonymously report
something.
vi. Maybe wait until after DEIA committee finishes their survey
1. Link to DEIA survey.
2. Draft a survey, keep it on hold for later.
vii. A longer discussion about the advisor issue will be necessary.
f. Community issues
i. Any concerns GSO should know about?
g. Remember to fill out course evaluations!
i. They will close on May 8th at 11:59
h. Pandemic
i. University posts updates on the covid dashboard:
i. Socializing
i. Fucking omicron
ii. Crawfish! Friday!
5. Housekeeping
a. Anonymous reporting!! You can now let us know of department issues
anonymously. Great for situations where you’re afraid of retaliation from a
professor or having issues with another student. Please don’t be afraid to use it.
The link is on the GSO website under “Contact Us” and in the meeting minutes.
b. Also on the website (homepage) is a calendar of events. Nageeb keeps it
populated with GSO events and some campus events. Check it out and feel free
to send suggestions to Nageeb or GSO email. Link.
c. Join the discord! https://discord.gg/PryDCYVMYz
6. Anything else?