Emma W-B ’11 called the meeting to order at 7:10 PM.
Roll Call:
Excused Absences: Deep Singh ’09, Sumedha Niranjan ’11, Weezie Lauher ‘10
Unexcused Absences: Grace Kung ’10, Sofia Nitchie ’09, Christina Wagner ’11, Simran Singh ’10, Noelle Fair ’10, Amanda King ’09, Rachel Brody ’11, Rachel Awkward ‘11
Announcements:
Kendalyn Brown ’09: I have two announcements, the first one concerns Room Draw and the second, Dorm Olympics.
Room Draw: Multiple Occupancy and Hall Group cards are due to the Student Activities Office tomorrow (Monday, April 6th) by 5pm. Hall Group and Multiple Occupancy draw will be on Wednesday, April 8th at 7pm and 8pm respectively. On Thursday, in the Rhoads Quiet Study room we will be holding another “Crappy Room Draw Number Mixer” at 8pm for rising sophomores who do not yet have a roommate and have poor numbers. The mixer will provide both structured activities to help participants meet potential roommates and then socializing time to speak with people that may be good matches. Please contact Kendalyn Brown (kgbrown) or Sofia Nitchie (snitchie) with questions. We hope to see rising sophomores there!
Dorm Olympics: Dorm Olympics will be taking place on Friday, April 17th on Merion Green, in the Campus Center and surrounding areas. We have many exciting events including Tug O’ War, Capture the Flag, Pie your HA, Soduku/Boogle, and more! Ask your dorm presidents more for more details and look to start signing up for events in your dorms soon! The winning dorm will have $100 added to their dorm budget!
Katherine Redford ’10: In the month of March the Academic and Social Honor Board heard no cases. Also, I’m not going to be here on Sunday, April 12th because I will be celebrating Easter at home.
Your Two Cents:
Steph Hilton ‘09: This past week me, Jess Coulter, and Taline Cox went to Princeton for a conference on their alcohol policy. There were a lot of large universities like Duke, Princeton, and Rutgers. What I took away from it is that we are doing a lot of things right, and we have some things to work on like say cutting down on hospital visits but otherwise we’re on the right path.
Kendalyn Brown ’09: I have an announcement from Dining Services saying please return diningware that does not belong to you. We started off with tons of glass mugs and we are down to about 20. As you all know dining services’ budget has been cut and spending the money to replace those stolen goods isn’t how we want to spent.
Liana Donahue ’11: My heart is racing now that I’m up here and I don’t really want to say this but I was told I had to. I’m back from the Posse retreat, which happened this past weekend, and they asked 60 members to stand up if they felt they were being represented and only 2 people stood up. As a member who holds a position within the Assembly that bothered me and I didn’t know how to deal with that so I thought I should mention it to the entire assembly.
Hidden Gems Presentation and Discussion
Alison Cook Schaefer—I am the coordinator of the Teaching and Learning Initiative. I made this powerpoint not to be formal but so that people could see certain images. We have existed since 2006 and we are supported by a number of organizations including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Provosts’ Office at Bryn Mawr College and Haverfrod College, The Office of Intercultural Affairs, The Chief Information and Chief Administrative Officers at Bryn Mawr College. The core commitment of the teaching and learning initiative is to bring staff and students together. There are three arenas of interaction:
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- Classroom based interaction
- Faculty/staff partnerships 88
- 68 faculty members
- 39 student consultants
- Include all sorts of subcategories (partnerships to date are 123)
- Helps broaden perspectives when you participate in this.
- Co-curricular-community partnerships
- Workplace based partnerships—staff working with one another
- Contact: Acooksat@brynmawr.edu if you want to get involved
- Classroom based interaction
Wendy Greenfield—Head of Alumni Association. We are here so we can talk about the student programming and alumni opportunities that are available. There are approximately 23,000 alumni worldwide and they can help you–they are an incredible resource. I’m going to turn it over to Kate Witcomb.
Kate Witcomb 05: I’m in charge of student programming on campus. We program for students; to effectively serve you as alumni we need to start building that relationship from when you arrive on campus. So the first night of customs week we do the Alumni ‘Mugging’ and it just gives us an introduction to you as well as gives you something that hopefully gets you through long nights. We are also thinking about doing something next year that will be ‘Lusty Cup on Us’ during finals week, so that during a stressful time you are able to get some caffeine. So that’s in the fall. In the spring, we focus on Seniors and we host Senior cocktails. Senior Cocktails is very important from our perspective because that’s where we take class officer nominations. We have class officers from 1936 and up. So they are nominated in April and announced at graduation rehearsal. Class officers are very important they keep your class connected to the class and to the college. The last thing we do is the tassel tea where we give you your flutes and tassels and we get your contact information so that we can help you in the future. So ways to get involved now if you’re a student is to come to our events—they’re fun! You can also be on our committee—there are only 3 spots but that’s another venue. And the final thing is to get a job with the Alumni Association in the last week of May so if you want to come see me at the end I would really encourage that.
Wendy Greenfield-We have an event that we hold twice a year that we coordinate with the CDO where we get alumni together and have them speak about their careers. So we have round table networking receptions with desert and coffee and each table hosts a particular career path, like law, or finance, or medicine, and students have the opportunity to sit at a table and learn about career paths. We also host discussions on getting an apartment, finding a roommate, making it in a man’s world, etc. In early April there is an alum who has experience in finance to talk about managing your personal finance. The last thing we do is get/give you business cards. Finally, I just want to mention that there are 36 Bryn Mawr college clubs around the world and we have a faculty exchange program where we send faculty to go speak at these clubs. We also have events called ‘welcome to the city’ and the alumni get together with you and help you find an apartment give you Zagat guides. We also have short-term medical insurance. Once you graduate from Byrn Mawr you aren’t covered under your parents insurance but we can help you get insurance till you get a job. We also publish a magazine. The last thing I want to mention is that we have a travel program where we travel with 25 people and try to connect with the Bryn Mawr alumni in that country and it’s a great experience.
Eliza Bernard—Director of Career Development Office. Michelle Rainey is the associate directory here and is here 99% of the time. The Bryn Mawr CDO is located in the Campus Center. In Haverford the Campus Center is convenient as well, you get off the bus and go to the third floor of Stokes. Also once you come into Bryn Mawr we enter you into the career database named Ocean. Ocean is easily accessible from our website and if you update your interest or create your profile it shapes the types of emails you get from us, so that if you’re interested in the arts you won’t be getting emails about investment banking. We tap our alumni network and we set up externships, career panels and career exploration days where you shadow and meet alumni in your preferred career. We also have updated lists of alumni on our computers in the office so we encourage you to take advantage of that. The online resources page on our website has all kinds of career libraries, general information about different industries, as well as gap year programs. We also house the pre-law in our office. Jane Finkel is our pre-law advisor if you are interested in pre-law. In terms of job searching we do resume review, we look at essays and cover letters, and do mock interviews. We do individual counseling and the tools that we have for workshops are very helpful. Individual counseling customizes this experience. Twice a week we keep the office upon from 7-9 pm. We also have a couple of events coming up: getting a job in this market, making the most of your job/internship when you get there, etc, so keep an eye out for emails that pertain to that.
Stephanie Bell—I coordinate Access Services on campus for faculty, staff, students, or guests of students. So for example, I’m currently coordinating getting a sign language interpreter so that the student’s grandparents can participate in her graduation. So the point is that the college under the Americans for Disability Act has an obligation to accommodate Disabled individuals who wish to participate in different aspects of college life. Access Services is used most by students and within students by those students who have hidden disabilities. And that’s not just a Bryn Mawr thing, that’s across the board. Access Services is completely voluntary—you are not required to participate in it, but you are welcome to and it’s a completely confidential process. Even if you want to find out if you qualify for certain aspects of access services that’s also a completely confidential process. And I think that this confidentially is really important. I have been here 8 years and what’s most impressive to me is that in the last 3-5 years there has been a remarkable increase in student awareness about these concerns and students reaching out to me to find out how to reach out to students in a respectful and meaningful way. That’s impressive and in terms of my role it is to coordinate the access services that the college provides and so that’s a shared responsibility to try to provide that access and I really appreciate the student awareness and acceptance of this shared responsibility.
Ellie Esmond and Julie Zaebst—We are from the Civic Engagement Office and we are located on Cambrian row. We are next to the MCC and the Religious house. We offer co-curricular programs and the academic praxis programs. We also wanted to emphasize that our office operates on a partnership basis and is based on trust and fostering long lasting relationships and we really believe in building these long term relationships. We strive to provide a wide variety of programs. We are also able to do everything that we do because we have student coordinators who really help us execute these programs. We offer work in tutoring/mentoring which matches Bryn Mawr students with students that need tutoring in the near by neighborhoods in Wayne, Ardmore, Narberth, Norristown, among others. We also offer what we call Saturdays of Service, which is basically a voluntary service program that is for four hours every Saturday. We also offer training and skill building programs—effective grant program, and LEAP. We offer a grant class over fall break—non credit, but you can write it on your resume and you get to learn how to write a grant by being matched with a Philly organization that needs to write a grant. LEAP program is in it’s 3rd year and is a cohort program that pulls 15 students each year to go through a series of workshops that builds and strengthens leadership skills on campus. We also offer asset programs such as the income tax program where Bryn Mawr students are certified through the IRS to prepare income tax returns and then Bryn Mawr students uses these skills in the Norristown area volunteering to help residents with their own income taxes. The Praxis course is where the bulk of your coursework in a class is-it’s in an internship that you have during the semester. If you’re interested in this we have drop in hours from 4-7 pm tomorrow—and you can make that a Praxis III course. We also have funded summer internship programs. For the programs that we have mentioned we help arrange transportation to sites and help arrange 100% transportation reimbursement. If you are planning some sort of service events we have a lot of supplies in our office that we want to be able to support you with.
Sadie Marlow ‘11: Motion to extend time for 15 minutes
Emma W-B ‘11: Yes? 17 No? 0 Abstentions? 3 We have lost quorum but since there seems to be an overwhelming majority who wants to stay we’ll stay.
Marianne Hansen—I represent Special Collections in the Library and we have a lot of different types of collections within art, rare books, manuscripts, women’s literature, alumni literature that has shaped the fiction in the US (for example, Katherine White—married to E.B. White and referred to in his quote about Bryn Mawr Women and hummingbirds). We have these resources for classrooms, students, as well as for individual personal use. Three fun facts: we employ students, we run book-collecting competition, and we are responsible for the exhibitions in the book room.
Question and Answer Session
Sadie Marlow ’11: I have a question for you at the end (Marianne Hansen) Do you keep All Friends to Athena?
Marianne Hansen: No
Emma W-B ’11: No other questions but I think we had some games that we wanted to be played
Ellie: How many students participated in praxis program from 2007-2008? Guesses? Answer: 488. How many students participated in service opportunities in 2007-2008? Guesses? Answer: 385. How many volunteer hours did we put in during 2007-2008? Guesses? Answer: 72,246.
Old Business:
Laurel Lemon ’11: Unfortunately I have no old business. I haven’t heard back from USA Today. Just hold on another week.
New Business:
No New Business.
Meeting adjourned at 8:34 PM.