Friday, December 5, 2008

Meeting minutes from Dec 4 2008

· Community service committee

o Hot Chocolate Run

§ meeting in front of Josh’s house @ 9:15, Anna will be driving through Amherst

§ Wearing “Masters in Relevance” t-shirts

o Idea: associate ourselves with a community org and build a relationship, possibly every Saturday but

§ Possibilities: Amherst Nursing Home, Center for New Americans

§ Plan: Send out email describing orgs

§ Important to keep ears open for more suggestions

o Possible spring break service trips: Habitat for Humanity?


· PAGC is an official group!

o Have a bank account

o Creating a PAGC space on bulletin board


· Social Committee

o Friday at roller skating

o Ice skating for next year?


· Blog: unblocked, everyone will be using full names


· Event committee

o Marco Fantini: went great, CPPA covered all expenses

o Idea is that people will get excited about certain issues, will engage them to come and speak

o Contingency grants available from GSS to bring speakers here

o Tricia wants to bring in someone to talk about the repression of science in the Bush Administration; has contacts at National Renewable Energy Lab

o Minako suggests we invite Amherst town manager; he has a policy degree from SUNY Albany


· Fundraising Committee

o Interest in coffee cups and sweatshirts

o Promulgate design ideas (using a forum?) with a set deadline (possibly at the end of winter break?), decide via SurveyMonkey

o Megan prefers to spend fundraising money immediately and not have a standing budget


· Treasurer Report (Megan)

o Will be setting up bank account

o Idea: put a box on swag order form to allow people to donate extra to PAGC


· Professional Development and Networking Committee

o CPPA student presentation series in the spring: Megan would like to take the lead

§ Should try to make sure that at least one faculty member is present, preferably those who have substantive knowledge of the subject, then ask for feedback for speaker via a form

§ Opportunity to use as a growth experience; engaging communication graduate student to possibly do an independent study and come give feedback?

§ Anna: would love weekend seminar about presentations

§ Planning on sending out email during January term asking for speakers, then following up with individual emails

§ Hopefully try to arrange first presentation for February

o Student/Alum mentoring

§ Has been difficult in the past

§ Tricia will meet with Satu to discuss organizational details; intention is to use Satu as a resource/facilitator to help link up current and former students

§ Possibly establish evaluative mechanism or form so that it can be counted as credit towards our professional development class


· New Secretary election

o Anna nominates: Josh Geyer (Tricia seconds)

o Confirmed by acclimation


· GSS

o Officers will share GSS delegate responsibilities amongst themselves

Friday, November 14, 2008

Welcome!

Welcome to the Policy and Administration Graduate Council Blog! We hope that this blog will serve as a vehicle for sharing information about the organization and events of PAGC.

On Monday, November 10, 2008 we ratified our constitution, and on November 20th it will be going before the Graduate Student Senate for Approval.

We also elected our first crop of officers for November 2008- May 2009.

President: Anna Tomaskovic-Devey
Vice President: Patricia Tillmann
Treasurer: Megan Nagel
Secretary: Josh Geyer


Announcements coming soon!