Alex Backer, Magali Billen. Ioannis Chasiotis, Catherine Cornu, Bob Gingrich, Ying Huang, Piet Moeleker, Athanasios Nenes, Steven Pracko, Cindy Quezada, Adam Rasheed, Sandeep Sane, Claude Seywert, Georgios Zamanakos

Directors absent:

Marco Casari, James Harrington, Anil Hirani, Fok-Yan Leung, Chantal Morgan

Guests:

Liz Boer, Mike Rubel, Marcel Gavriliu

Chair Piet Moeleker presiding

1. Introduction of Guests and New Directors

Piet welcomes the guests which in turn introduce themselves.

2. Additions to the Agenda

None.

The minutes are unanimously approved.

1. Announcements
• New parking structure: there will finally be a walkway on the North side of the structure
• We will talk to Bill Irwin in the fall about future construction and landscaping projects on campus and how the graduate students can have more/earlier input to them
• Caltech is looking for a grad student recruiter. There’s 4 graduate students on the search committee (Piet, Chantal, Tashica Willimas and Anna Salazar)
• The ice-cream social on July 16 has more than 200 people in attendance and cost about $150.
• The Orienteering club asked for and received $50 in quickfunding for their fox hunt / radio orienteering event.
• During NSO we will have a trip to JPL. If there’s enough interest another trip to JPL (hopefully to get a better look) will take place tentatively on October 22^nd in conjunction with the Alumni association
• There’s a dinner for the GSC with Dean Albee on Wednesday August 11
• Paintball trip will take place on August 21 (besides our $250, Alex got $250 from the Y)
• Piet, Claude and Catherine are on vacation between August 12 and August 24. During that time Steve will be in charge of the GSC
• A PhD career fair will be held on October 7 (Adam, George and Magali are on the organizing committee). In conjunction with that there will be a career conference on September 15-17.
2. CHCC
• They looked into the parking structure and will make sure that there’s traffic mirrors. Linda is also trying to get the drawings (and landscaping plans) to put them on the web. There was a request to ask why they work on Saturdays and whether that could be stopped.
• Last Wednesday the Catalinas had a Pizza and Movie night mainly for the early arriving new students. About 80 people showed up.
• They funded $200 for the Pufrock Luau.
• Next weekend there will be a BBQ and game night.
• The GSC had some questions about what budget the CHCC has. Apparently Linda takes all decisions concerning money. Maybe CHCC needs to get more power.
• For next year the application to CHCC will be open to everyone. Applications will be collected in September. The new term starts November 1^st (has been moved until then since it is favorable to have a committee in place while the new students settle in).
3. Gradiators

Gradiators was very successful with 23 teams and we also kept the budget. Thanks, Ioannis. We also sold quite a few T-shirts (we got 2/5 of our expenses back). Unfortunately someone got injured on the slip and slide – can we make it safer? Maybe by adding some padding? Besides that all the games worked fine and we had no complaints. Ioannis compiled a folder with information for next year. He suggests that maybe 2 persons should be in charge of such a big event (or at least the person on charge should not be the person who has to do all the publicity and the contacting of different people). He had trouble getting enough referees and also expected more help from the GSC BoD. Adam will put the pictures in the Red Door, Catherine and Claude will put some on the web.

4. Funding for Retreat

The retreat cost $415, The grad office sponsors us $250. So the GSC needs to contribute $165. The BoD approved this funding with one abstention (Alex).

1. NSO

The schedule can be found on the web. We probably need to cancel our plans for the last Sunday (September 26) – instead the Y will organize something for undergrads and grads on the Northfield. The brunch with Baltimore is not fixed yet. We need to look at the schedule for Saturday night after the LA trip (dinner in Santa Monica or here?). The Alumni are happy with the idea of Game Night but would like some suggestions.

2. Softball BBQ

A-league final on August 31, C-league final on September 1. We decided to have the BBQ on Wednesday following the C-league final. Sandeep will confirm whether he has time to organize this. Piet will try to get some team captains to help Sandeep.

3. Gushmeister II

Bob would like to have a person helping him with the monthly GUSH. Thanos volunteered to do the job.

4. Flyer Task Force

George proposed to distribute the charge of posting flyers among all directors instead of having the organizer of an event post flyers all over campus. There was some discussion but we finally agreed that this was a good idea. Details still need to be worked out but two things are important: the flyers need to be ready in time (a week in advance the organizer has to mail copies of the flyers to the directors) and everyone needs to post the flyers when he gets them (no slacking). George will distribute the different areas and buildings on campus among the directors.

5. DJ

We want to organize at least one party each term. George proposed to hire a professional DJ for these parties. He thinks he got a good deal with a recommended DJ, but we can get that deal only if we make a contract for the year ($125/hour). Not everyone thinks that it is a good idea to have the same DJ at each party. But we agreed to a ‘trial’ party on the first weekend of the term. George and Ioannis will take charge of that. A final vote on the funding for this party will be taken next meeting. George estimates that each party will cost about $1000. But he wants to get the undergrads involved as well, so maybe we can get cospnsoring from ASCIT.

6. Everhart Lecture Series

Edwin wasn’t at the meeting, but it seems he wants to get help from other people. Adam informed us that the old committee wishes to continue and he will provide the names of those people to Edwin.

7. Planning and Budget

The steering committee will come up with a proposed budget on Monday, August 30. Claude will put it on the web for everyone to see and then we will discuss and vote on it in our next meeting on September 2^nd.

8. Brainstorming results

• Piet send an email with all the results of the brainstorming to the BoD.
• Some points: we encourage more option reps to forward our emails to the graduate student. We will try to get email addresses from options that do not have a rep.
• No action will be taken on our ‘issues’ until next academic year when the GSC2 meets again.
• We discussed about having longer meetings or maybe two per month (the second one possibly optional). A vote was taken and we decided to keep only one meeting per month which might last a little longer than an hour.