99th Penn Biomedical Postdoctoral Council Minutes, August 04, 2008

Ninety-ninth Meeting August 4, 2008, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104) BPC: Stacy, Arindam, Laurence, Meda, Sebastien, Yu-Chen, Reena, Steve, Yuxing, Arnaldo, Duncan BPP: Yvonne Absent: Kryste, Miku, Matt, Lingli, Tobias, Prema, Ginny, Dave BPP Update from Yvonne: a. Policies—The parental leave and Visa policies were published in the July Almanac. There will be no formal policy on military leave. b. Orientation—should we make orientation mandatory? If so, how would we enforce this? Other institutions have mandatory orientation, but for example, Stanford offers a student ID card for attending orientation, so incentive is provided. We do not have any incentive other than getting a free coffee mug which allows for discount coffee refills at select locations. The issue lies more with requiring the mentors/PIs to enforce orientation then it does with the postdocs. The idea of saying that orientation is mandatory, but not actually policing this is another option. Currently we have three orientations a year. Also, Meda had a good idea for recruitment—we could have committee sign-up sheets at orientation. This stemmed into a conversation regarding how BPP/BPC can have a better relationship with the BA’s in order to publicize the office and council more.

2. BPP Update from Kryste: a. Orientation—September 9th b. Symposium—Sapolsky will be giving the keynote address at the normal time on Friday, October 24th. He will be going to dinner with us. The next symposium meeting is scheduled for the end of August and we should really start getting together the manual at that time.

3. BPC Committee Updates: a. PEC—one article is currently in review. To Steve’s knowledge, no one applied for the JCI internships

b. Diversity—Meda, Arnaldo, and Marcel went to the Leadership Alliance Meeting at the end of July and distributed information on Penn-Port. Diversity meetings will start again in September. Diversity will work in conjunction with the Seminar Series to host a Science Policy speaker from NIH. i. Social—Thomas Jefferson and Penn held a joint happy hour. This was fairly well attended. Other ideas for social activities include bowling, Art after 5, contacting the Art Alliance at 18th and Rittenhouse for space— happy hour or brunch, and attending the West Philadelphia Orchestra at Tritone for the monthly Balkan Dance party. The idea of intramurals was also brought up again. ii. Seminars—these will start again in September with Victoria McGovern. Nov. and Dec. are filled with UCKIZ speakers. Meda and Laurence have secured a speaker for October—a science policy speaker from NIH whose current work focuses on minority health disparity issues. Diversity will work on this in conjunction with seminar planning and will also invite the EE Just Society to participate. c. FNC—one person showed in July d. Website—All additions/information should go to Sebastien at [email protected] Please submit a picture of yourself to him for the members section and updated information corresponding to your BPC tasks. Laurence sent Sebastien a link to the Graduate Student Center to put on the website. We are always invited to their functions. e. Board Development— i. Dave is resigning his position as treasurer. This position will be open and he will help with the transition. ii. It would also be nice to have a Social Committee Chair and an email will go out for this as well. iii. We are still in discussion regarding an exit interview survey and we will talk with Julie Vick in Career Services since they already have a form setup for this. f.

Next Meeting: MONDAY September 8th, 5PM, Stellar Chance Room 104