EGSA formation meeting minutes

May 19th, 2004, 1pm at BE330
Meeting coordinator: Nacho 

The main goal of the meeting is to form the Engineering Graduate Student Association 
(EGSA). Any SoE registered graduate student is a voting member of EGSA. Nacho, as the 
meeting coordinator, talked about EGSA history, its goals and possible organization.

History: the idea about creating an EGSA came up about last Fall. It was related to 
the fact the CE students needed to hold elections for its GSA representative and there 
wasn't any "entity" to coordinate it. Also, about the same time, Prof. Michael Isaacson 
talked to some Grad Students (Nacho, Marcelo, Cintia, Sina, among others) about forming 
an EGSA. 

Goals: 
The EGSA would represent grad students within school; would organize events (research 
seminars, job fair, among other activities); would be able to provide better input on 
faculty hiring; and would allow a better representation in GSA. 

Possible organization: EGSA board would composed by three officers (president, secretary 
and treasurer) and the representative council (CE, EE, CS, AMS and BioInf).

We discussed the proposed organization, and agreed on it. All positions will be held for 
one year. We still have to decide when elections will be held (so far the suggestion is 
by the end of Fall, since this would give enough time for incoming students get to know 
EGSA). We also talked about the possibility of paid positions, and agreed that, after 
EGSA gets some funding, we could have nominal salary for officers ($50 per quarter?). But,
since we don not have any money know, there is no point in discussing this now. As for 
the election method, department representatives will be elected by students from each 
department. Nacho suggested that the officers were elected by the current board, and 
Cintia was in favor of direct elections for the officers. After some discussion, we 
voted and the majority was in favor of direct elections.

Next, we talked about GSA representatives. Nacho and Sina talked about their experience 
as reps, what is the work like and what are the attributions. Since there were CS students
 presented in the meeting, Nacho and Sina insisted that one student volunteered for the 
position. Then Alise Neeman volunteered for the task. Nacho or Sina will send an email to
 grads list nominating her. Since no AMS or BioInf students were present, these two 
positions still need to be filled. 

Then, we proceed for the officers election, which were secret from the candidates. The 
first position to be filled was president. Javier was the only candidate for the position,
 and after his statement, we unanimously voted for him. The next position was secretary, 
and Cintia was the only candidate. The last position was treasurer, and Renato was the 
only candidate for the position, and after his statement that he did not have any 
experience for the job, we unanimously voted for him.

Since Cintia got elected as secretary, she got the job to send the email nominating Alise
 as CS rep. Also she has also to send an email to grads list about the meeting and the 
EGSA formation.

EGSA board will meet (on a date to be defined) to discuss the constitution and bylaws. 
This meeting will be open to all EGSA members.

Meeting Attendees (in the order the attendance sheet was signed, not sure about all spellings):
Karlthik Kumar (CS)
Sakthi Preethi Kumaresan (EE)
Sanjit Jhala (CS)
Shantanu Kale (CE)
Hemarth Raja (CS)
Shailaja Vats (CS)
Sina Farisiu (EE)
Gauran Vijayvargiya (CS)
Laura Chiticariu (CS)
Renato Moraes (EE)
Alise Neeman (CS)
Cintia Margi (CE)
Kiranmaye Sirigineni (CE)
Ignacio (Nacho) Solis (CE)
Javier (CE)