August 2021

Meeting Minutes

August 26, 2021

SURPAS Council Meeting Agenda

Thursday, August 26th , 2021 11:30am-1:00pm 

Location: Zoom

 

Quorum:  11

  • Acknowledgment statement, inc group norms/mutual respect (2’) 
  • Welcome, Zoom etiquette (2’) 
  • Introductions and approval of minutes (5’)
  • Welcome

Acknowledgement statement, Introductions and approval of minutes (10’)

8 new postdocs introduced 

Minutes approved- Vimala, Rohini, Julia

  • Updates (10’)
    • Call for nominations for postdoc representatives for Faculty-Senate Committees
      • C-LIB
      • C-ACIS
      • C-RES 
  • Council Member Elections (10’)
    • M Usman Ahmad
    • Jitendra Gurjar
    • Shivali Fulchand
    • Silvia Natale

Usman: Previous leadership experience, looking to get involved in SURPAS. Voted in, 20 yes

Jitendra: Wants to build connections with postdocs, has held representative roles during PhD. Interested in social media leadership role. Voted in, 20 yes

Shivali: Wants to get more involved in postdocs. Voted in, 20 yes

Silvia: Moved here 2 months ago, want to be more involved in postdoc community and promoting events. Voted in, 18 yes

  • Leadership positions voting (10’)
    • Social Media/Web Manager 
      • Jitendra Gurjar
      • Shivali Fulchand

Jitendra: Wants to increase the number of followers on social media accounts. Try to get more people involved in SURPAS events. Wants to offer some incentives, such as career development. Connection with industry, linking social media accounts to career development. 

Shivali: Wants to improve social media content. Has previously started a small journal and has previously overseen the social media for that. Organized events before. 

14 Shivali -Voted in

8 Jitendra

0 abstains

  • Faculty Senate postdoc representative Elections (10’)
    • C-ACIS – Vimala Bharadwaj
    • C-RES – M Usman Ahmad

C-ACIS (Committee on Academic Computing and Information Systems)

Vimala: Interested in learning about computational resources and see how postdocs can benefit from this

Karun: Research is in computational neuroscience so has lots of experience dealing with IT departments. One goal is to increase ease by which postdocs can gain computational research

Kai: Was the representative last year. Also has a computational background

Vimala: 2

Karun: 14 Voted in

Kai: 2

 

C-RES (Committee on Research representative)

Usman: Interested in policy changes for postdocs. Has previous experience in leadership roles

Kun: 2 months in postdoc. Interested in having good research policies

Alaa: new postdoc, has served on many committees in grad school

Usman: 9

Kun: 4

Alaa: 10 Voted in

 

C-LIB (Committee on Libraries)

Nikki: Rerunning for this year, was the representative last year

14 yes- Voted in

1 abstain

  • SURPAS Committees (15’)
    • Postdoc Symposium
    • Long-Range Planning Committee
      • Eamon and Tim

Eamon with LRPC: Committee running for about 1.5yrs. Purpose is to produce a report about what we want our future to look like in 2030. Call for joining the committee, 2-4hr per month. Call for joining a focus group which is 1hr. Can also do a 5min survey that Eamon has posted a link in the chat for. 

  • Upcoming events (10’)
    • August Coffee Hour
      • August 27th 9:00 am – 10:00 am 
  • JEDI committee events:
    • 8/31/2021 – committee meeting
    • 9/8/2021 – Better Ally ep7 – Latinx community
    • SLM – tbd
  • NPAW
    • September 20th – 24th
    • Many activities – Volunteers needed! 
    • Social media content proposal
  • September Council Meeting – Wed, Sept 29th
  • Tim to present on GSC Unionization

GSC voted to sign a letter. Grad student council signed a letter to potentially unionize. Doesn’t say that they have to unionize but that they have the ability to do so. Tim wants to see if SURPAS can sign onto this letter as a collective group. Letter being sent out next Tuesday so asking for signatures by Monday. 

Tim presented a motion for SURPAS to sign letter as an organization

Vivekanandan Ramalingam seconded the motion

Tim asks if we can have SURPAS sign on as an organization without an actual vote? Tim will post in slack channel but did not have time to vote. So will have a vote on slack if we should sign letter as an organization. Will be anonymous.