dzackgarza/1-13-2017-minutes.md

## 1-13-2017-minutes.md

      
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              1-13-2017-minutes.md
            
          
    Meeting Agenda:

Get club business moving
Discuss future events, get feedback from attendees

Item 1: Club Business


The club's current status: some efforts were made in October/November 2016 to push things forward, but no further information was available.
Reasons to have an "official" student organization:

Math club vaccuum

Since SUMS ended last year, there is no "official" math student organization
Math is one of the largest majors on campus behind Biology

There are about 2300 majors in the Math dept, 6000 in Biology
UCSD 2016 enrollment is about 28,000 students.
Math, Econ, and CSE departments combined are about 1/3 of total enrollment!


Without any student orgs, these students are all underserved


Access to funding from Associated Students

Up to $150 for events of 1-25 people
But the org needs to apply 5 weeks at minimum
Most straightforward use: free food!

Offering food at events increases student inclusion, helps incentivize attendance


Cohesion and klout

Having a unified front as a club makes it easier to approach faculty, businesses, etc to host talks and events
Also makes it easier to get students involved and attending
Businesses want to be involved too! Looks good for them, gives them ability to connect with a talent pool of smart and analytic UCSD students!


Reasons I personally (Zack Garza) would like a club to exist:

Create and promote a culture of Mathematics at UCSD
Promote learning - many important mathematical ideas are learned outside of class (e.g. discussion sections, office hours, TA meetings)
Facilitate student-run events - allow students to practice their research, speaking, and teaching skills
Learn new things outside of the standard curriculum
My model: Berkeley's EECS Student Organizations

Existed mainly to make events happen
Hosted weekly talks in the Wozniak Lounge - workshops, high profile speakers, panels with faculty and grad students, talks/advice from visiting alumni, speakers from industry
The organization itself mainly functioned to set these up, take care of scheduling & room booking, and informing students of the events


Okay, but how do we make this happen?

Need 4 principal members

Level of commitment is small, but nonzero!
Don't necessarily need to be involved in club logistics, but they do need to be available and communicative
Primary reason: A.S. communicates with the club through principal members. If there are issues with events, funding, or the club's status, e-mails can go to any one of them.


Two main requirements: attend the "HR Workshop", and take online quiz

There is only one workshop slot available this month. Sign up now if you're interested!!


Timeline

To make events happen this quarter, we need to move fast (5 week delay for funding)
A possible goal: Aim to make something happen for Pi Day (March 14th, 2017)
This essentially requires having the club completely set up by February.


Getting Involved

Possible positions I (Zack G.) foresee, based on last quarter's events:

Event Planning and Logistics (Single person or committee)

Come up with events, schedule them, book the rooms
Estimated Commitment: 3-4 hours per month, plus frequent communication with rest of club


Website Stuff

Old SUMS website still exists, there is also a buried UCSD Math Club website that can be salvaged
Most of the current Math website is aimed toward faculty & grad students, so it'd be nice to have some undergrad resources
Ideas for Content:

Test banks for classes (See Berkeley's Math Dept. Website)
Upcoming events (would require someone to regularly do upkeep! At least update 1-2 times per month)
(Not discussed) Math course prerequisite tree, talk to Zack if interested


Estimated Commitment: 5 hours upfront to get old content up to date, plus 2-3 hours to meet with event planning and keep content up-to-date


Outreach

Take steps to reach out and invite faculty members and grad students to give talks
Also work to inform students of events, do advertising, print flyers
Estimated Commitment: Variable, at least 1 hour per event to create and print flyers


Item 2: Events and Feedback


First step: communication and organization!

Need some way to get everyone involved on a regular basis
Question proposed: What kind of communication can we all agree to use?

Issues

Some attendees last quarter do not have Facebook, but attend regularly
Private group on Facebook had momentum last quarter, but no public activity at all since November
Ideas: Group chart? Slack? Regular meetings? Some combination of synchronous and asynchronous would be ideal


MOTION: Use Slack for organization and planning: PASSED

I (Z.G.) have a channel set up, so I collected emails to send out an invite.


MOTION: Hold regular business meetings, at least once a month: PASSED

I (Z.G.) will set up a Doodle to get an idea of everyone's schedules.


Event Times:

Last quarter's events were held on Fridays, end of the month, at 5pm. Is this good/bad?

Feedback: This may not be ideal, since many students will have already left campus for the weekend by Friday at 5pm. Maybe move to middle of week, like Tues/Wed/Thurs.
Feedback: It will be difficult to find a time that works well for everyone simultaneously.


Again, might be easiest to create a doodle to help address this


Events

Requesting feedback from attendees - what should a math club do exactly? If we form a club, what do you envision its purpose to be?
Feedback: (Parenthesized sections are my (Z.G.) responses)

Have a reserved time when members can meet to do puzzles

(This would be easy to set up, just a matter of booking a room!)


Movie Night

Meet up to show a Math-related movie. Example: The Ramanujuan movie
(This was also on my list, also if we are official there is some way to actually book the Price Center Theater)


Find resources for Math-specific career advice

(Events like this have definitely been done previously, we could probably reach out to some of the advisors to come in and give a talk.)
(Also might be worth trying to track down alumni and asking them to come in)
(There is also the general UCSD career center (not Math-specific though))


Get involved in a larger/nationwide organization, e.g. MAA or SIAM

(I (Z.G.) saw some resources for becoming a chapter of the MAA, so this is doable. Would need to look into the specifics.)


Hold social events at the beginning of each quarter

Good way to reach out to students, give students a way to meet each other
(Can also be a good way to inform them of future events!)


General events to increase the overall Mathematical culture:

Want to give students a way to remember that Mathematics can be fun, especially around the middle of the quarter around exam time
Can be easy in Math classes to spend time zoomed in on the details, it can be helpful to have ways to step back and see how mathematics fits into the rest of the world
Give students ways to learn the fun/light-hearted bits of mathematics you might not see in an official class.


Panels or talks that help undergraduate students get involved with research

(A tricky issue, since Math research is so different to e.g. Biology research with a dedicated laboratory.)
(Maybe we can approach the advisors for ideas on this, I think they've run panels / info sessions on this before)
(Would also be helpful to get REU info)


Grad School Panels

General info, how to apply, etc
(Has also been done in the past, so there is a precedent. We could reach out to counselors and/or grad students for this one.)


End of "Official Meeting"

After Meeting, spoke to Abhiraj:

A few people went through the process of attending the workshops and starting the registration process for SUMS last quarter.
They are currently organizing it through a Facebook group chat
Current Status: One of the PMs is meeting with a Student Org representative (Kirsten) at OneStop on Friday (1/20/2017) between 10am and 1pm
We should know that status of the club after this, so it would be beneficial to meet on Friday (1/20/2017) to discuss next steps in person.