ALC (Academic Life Committee) Minutes Feb 12th 2013

Present:

Rosemary Akhurst: Faculty

Adele Dow: Facilities Manager

Long-Cheng Li: Faculty

Brett Johnson: Grad Student

Kevin Mark: Grad Student

Mary McMahon: Post-doc

Claudia Petritsch: Faculty

Megan Salt: Grad Student

Apologies:

Madhu Macrae: Staff

Gabriele Bergers: Faculty

  1. Minutes of the last ALC were approved by the committee.
  2. Rosemary welcomed Gabriele to the Committee in absentia.
  3. Rosemary mentioned the need to recruit more post-docs to the ALC. An e mail had been sent out via Ovidio, but with no responses. Student members of ALC agreed to persuade some more post-doc involvement.
  4. Rosemary reported that ALC was in surplus to the sum of $8, 721.67 from the last Retreat. The options were to return the funds to contributing Departments, or to roll over funds into next retreat. It was unanimously agreed that we should offer the option of fund returns to Departmental Heads, whilst also asking for additional funds towards the 2013 Retreat. Rosemary indicated that she would write a brief report of the 2012 Retreat to go out with a letter to this effect.
  5. The committee spent some time going over the results of the post-2012 Diller Retreat Questionnaire that Kevin Mark had designed. There were 52 respondents to the questionnaire. Answers to most questions indicated overwhelmingly that the retreat was a success, and that a similar retreat should be organized every year in the same format, with a few suggestions for improvement as follows:
  • to invite a guest speaker (27 in favor, 17 not in favor) (next year this question should be scored on a 1-5 scale)
  • schedule in time for social interactions and discussions e.g. hike, beach volleyball etc
  • include a panel session or break-out session to discuss/present issues of career development, core facilities etc
  • Social evening: improve on the evening social – get a band – or get folks to bring instruments - smaller room, organized games??
  • Poster session: have posters in 2 rooms only, provide beer/wine/non-alcoholic beverages within the poster session rooms, make it more clear that there are two alternating one hour sessions for standing by your posters (or stand there for 2 full hours).
  • The questionnaire showed a 50:50 split for including a weekend day, however the committee members voted unanimously that the retreat should include some part of a weekend, which would also encourage social interaction by organizing group events such as hiking.

Ping Pong Tournament: Need to organize was discussed

Any other business: Kevin Mark brought up the issue of involving student/post-doc participation for Mike Isenberg’s Student-hosted seminar on April 5th. Several suggestion were made by Brett and Megan to encourage participation.

Action items:

Rosemary will write to Heads of Departments for contributions for a repeat Retreat.

Committee should select and invite an external speaker very soon.

Committee should select and reserve a specific date for Chaminade.

Spread the word about organizing Ping Pong

Next Committee meeting to be held in April/May 2013.