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August 2022 GSO Meeting Minutes

GSO Meeting Agenda

August 29, 2022

Attendance: Ashley, Aaron, David, Riley, Nageeb, Farzaneh, and 17 other graduate students


1. Officer Introductions

  • President: Ashley Elliott

  • Vice President: Aaron Trigg

  • Treasurer: David He

  • Secretary: Riley Dawkins

  • Webmaster: Nageeb Zaman

  • Social Chair: Mari Strong

  • Academic Events Chair: Farzaneh Zohrabi

2. What is the GSO?

  • A support system for physics and astronomy graduate students

3. Future Faculty Searches in the next year

  • Faculty interviews with graduate students (when hiring is going on)

  • There is free food at these!

  • There will be searches for astronomy professors (high energy and astronomy)

  • A good opportunity to get to know potential faculty!

4. New officer position??

  • International Student Liaison

  • Would manage relations between the GSO and the ISO

  • Could help to create a support system for students coming to LSU internationally

  • Will send out an amendment to the constitution, which would require a GSO-wide vote

  • The ISO has been contacted and they are all for this!

  • Discussion:

    • Farzaneh: Starting a new life on another side of the planet is not easy, so this would be very helpful!

5. GSO Mentor Program

  • Mentor program is supposed to help new students have a smooth transition to grad school. Mentors can be your guide or a new friend through grad school.

  • GSO sends a survey for you to sign up as a mentor or a mentee.

6. Still getting info about qual related things

  • Updates from the curriculum committee pending

  • Most recent meeting took place earlier this month, Jeff forgot :(

  • At the next full faculty meeting, the curriculum committee will be making recommendations to the faculty about how to make the qual more equitable and less stressful (not sure what those recommendations will be)

  • Almost everyone passed this semester’s qual! Woohoo!

  • There are some questions which are poorly worded, or don’t have clear solutions, and there are some errors on the equation sheet, so we are looking to get feedback from everyone who took the test about these

7. Social Events

  • We hope everyone enjoyed the social gathering last Friday!

  • Football tailgates/football games

    • Student organizations can reserve sections at football games!

      • We can also tailgate!

      • Single game tickets are around $20/30

      • We will look into trying to reserve a section for tailgating and seeing the game

    • Medphys does tailgates, so we could potentially join them!

  • Game nights

  • Movie nights

  • Karaoke

8. Anonymous Reporting Survey

  • If you have any issues with a professor or a student and you don’t have anyone to talk to, you can use the anonymous reporting survey!

  • They are anonymous, so we don’t see who submits a report

  • You can also reach out to Aaron or Ashley privately if you want something to be discussed in a meeting

  • Can also talk to people who have save-zone stickers on their door!

9. Our next meeting will be a hybrid meeting!

  • It will be in person, but there will be a Zoom option

  • Hoping for room 435

  • Meeting time will likely be different each month

  • David: Are we doing anything with food?

    • Will need to look at financial things

    • Student government might be able to subsidize it??

    • No promises, but we will try to have food!

10. Any questions?? Concerns??

  • Nageeb: GSO website if you don’t know about it! As well as a Facebook group, which is another good way to stay in the loop.

TL;DR:

  • New GSO officers, Newest member Farzaneh Zohrabi (Academic Events Chair)

  • GSO is a support system for physics and astronomy graduate students.

  • New faculty searches next year mostly search for astro faculty. Great chance to interview the prospective faculty, there is free food.

  • Creating new officer position in GSO: International Student Liaison to create support system for the new international graduate students. Will require an amendment to the constitution via a GSO-wide vote.

  • GSO mentor program is supposed to help new students have a smooth transition to grad school. GSO sends a survey for you to sign up as a mentor or a mentee.

  • Efforts to make qual more equitable and less stressful are still going on.

  • More social events to come.

  • Anonymous Reporting Survey is always there if anyone wants to report any issue.

  • Next GSO meeting will be hybrid.


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