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Biology Graduate Student Organization

at USF

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BGSO meeting minutes

Biology Graduate Student Organization
Agenda
December 2, 2005
BGSO meeting
Attendees: Susan Hilber, Brian Halstead, Katie Basiotis, Ali Meyers, Lisa Whiteneck., Stacy Villanueva., Brian Badgely., Ganesh Prasad , Gabe Herrick, Nick Curtis, Lance Arvidson, Sam Mulvany, Sarah Smiley, Teresa Piacenza, J.P. Swigart, Neal Halstead, Celina Bellanceau.

Announcements:
1. Gabe gave a demo of how to sign up for BGSO membership through OASIS.
• Log onto OASIS using student number.
• Select “student organizations”.
• This is a new feature of OASIS.
• Transcripts may include organizations you are a member of in future.
• OASIS may be used for BGSO voting in future.
2. Volleyball
• 3 wins, 3 losses
• We lost playoff game. Only 3 people showed up.
3. Snacks in SCA TA lounge and they will also be put in lounge in BSF.
4. Thanks to everyone who has helped with seminar cleanup.
5. SICB participants who are receiving travel funds stay after for paperwork. Susie is in charge of reimbursing travel funds.
6. Green Marshal center email. (Lance?)
7. Homecoming game USF vs. West Virginia, Saturday December 3rd. Come to tailgate. Meet in parking lot of SCA at 3:30pm for carpooling. Game starts at 7:30pm.
8. New TA responsibilities: Stacy emailed Henry a summary of Biology graduate student concerns, comments, and suggestions for proposed new TA responsibilities. Henry responded to Stacy thanking her for taking this position on new TA responsibilities seriously. No formal meeting of the Graduate administration and policy committee has taken place to discuss new TA responsibilities as of now.
9. Eco Area will be burned soon. Do not have exact date.
10. Susie went to the Curriculum Committee meeting. The main topic of discussion was the possibility of adding recitation sections to 2000 and 3000 level classes. How will these recitation sections be manned? One idea the committee came up with wasthat lecture TAs could be responsible for holding recitation sections. Ecology may not require a recitation section. Members of the Committee made it clear that they did not want to lose their lecture TAs.

Volunteer updates:
1. Pace Race. Lisa, Scott, Katie, and Sarah participated.
2. Hillsborough River clean up. Heather participated.
3. Coming in April 2006, “Paint Your Heart Out.” Enough volunteers signed up to reserve a house for BGSO to paint.

Graduate student invited seminar speaker
1. Votes have been tallied. First place: McCann. Second place: tie between M. Main http://www.molc.ufl.edu/wild/main.htm. and R. Baird http://whitelab.biology.dal.ca/rwb/robin.htm.
? A vote was made to have a new vote will take place, including all nominated speakers, to determine our second graduate student invited speaker.
? The list of candidates will be resent to Darwin.
? Votes can be submitted to Sam, smulvany@mail.usf.edu or Heather, hjezorek@mail.usf.edu.
? Neal mentioned that Main and Baird were invited by the Mushinsky/McCoy lab and that our choice in seminar speakers may be less biased if a speaker nominated by another lab was invited.

Fundraising
1. Wine will be distributed ~ December 15th.
a. $240 profit
b. There are still 22 bottles to sell.
c. Need wine bottlers.
d. Nick suggested that a good way to sell the extra wine would be to open a bottle at a seminar reception next semester.
2. Future fundraisers
a. Still debate about whether we need another fundraiser (T-shirts) or if we should just sell them at cost.
b. Fundraising methods
c. Fundraising goals – what would we like to spend money on?
Budget
Activities and Services funds we have left for this year: $788.54
• $154 for meetings
• $200 for brown bag
• $100 for office supplies
• $200 for end of year party.

Non A& S funds: $345 to be spent on end of year party and petty cash for next year.

Funds that have been spent this year.
• $1,379
• includes $900 for travel awards.

Election
Nominations for new officers are being taken now. We may try to meet in January to visit this issue again. We vote on the new officers as early as January or February.

Biology Graduate Student Organization Constitution
The constitution met once last month to discuss potential changes to our current constitution. The constitution, which included potential changes suggested by the constitution committee, was projected on a screen during the meeting and all members still present at the meeting were allowed to suggest comments and changes to the constitution and to the suggested changes to the constitution as suggested by the constitution committee. Because of time constraints we did not get through the entire constitution. The constitution committee plans to meet again soon to continue revising our constitution. The changes will be emailed out to BGSO members, by the constitution committee, with a request for comments and critiques of the changes. This method will hopefully save time during future BGSO meetings.

The following parts of the constitution were addressed at the meeting and suggestions for changes made.
3. Membership qualifications
A. Requirements for membership:
? Active membership is granted to those that sign up. It was suggested that “to those that sign up” should be left vague in case A and S may decide to limit our funds to only members who have signed up on OASIS.
? To remain an active member, individuals must attend a minimum of two BGSO meetings and/or event per year. This includes meetings, brown bags, intramural sports, tailgates, and other BGSO funded events.
? A new section of the constitution, under “Membership qualifications” will be added to address travel funds.
5. Quorum.
? The constitution originally stated that “A quorum is defined as the BGSO officers plus three active members.”
o Several members thought that this was too few people. If something is important enough to vote on, more than 7 people should be present to decide so.
o It was also brought up that in order to avoid decisions being made by members of a clique more than 7 people should make up a quorum.
? The new constitution may state, “A quorum is defined as the BGSO officers plus 6 active members.” There are currently only 4 BGSO officers, we are missing a historian. Therefore the quorum in the future will include 5 officers and 6 members.

6. Officer description: I have included the exact changes that were made at the meeting to officer descriptions. As all sections, this section is still a work in progress.

President: The President, to be elected, must have been an active member for at least one semester with the group. The President’s duties shall be to preside over meetings, oversee organizational functions, and to act as the primary University liaison by attending or designating an attendee to all meetings of the Graduate and Professional Student Council.

Vice President: The Vice President shall assist the President with his/her duties, preside over the organization in the President’s absence, and act as primary Graduate Program liaison by ensuring Biology graduate student representation on all mandatory faculty committees (see section 9C).

Secretary: The Secretary shall record, keep, and make available copies of the meeting minutes, and dispatch correspondence as directed by the President.

Treasurer: The Treasurer shall receive, dispatch, and keep accurate records of all financial matters regarding Biology Graduate Student Organization, and submit the organization’s annual budget to the financial review for A & S allocation from Student Government. The Treasurer is also responsible for disclosing all Biology Graduate Student Organization financial matters to any member that requests it and in a semiannual budget summary.

Membership/Historian: The Membership/Historian is responsible for updating the Biology Graduate Student Organization websites and shall maintain a current membership list and historical records pertaining to meetings, photographic archives of events and assist in the development and dissemination of materials promoting the Biology Graduate Student Organization.

Each of these Members is elected by eligible membership. Each of their terms is one year. Officers are eligible to serve more than one term, if elected.

? Our meeting ended at ~ 2:15pm
? The next BGSO meeting will take place on February 3, 2006 at noon in SCA 202.
? We may meet in January to revisit the constitution and discuss nominations for future officers