LISSA Officers Meeting 2/29/08
From lissa
Present: Sean Thibodeau, Christian Gillen, Kim Giedd ,Adrian Mitrescu, Barbara Raab
Treasurer’s Report
Kim reported that Cindy is training her on the treasurer duties. They are processing the Professional Development Requests.
Student-Faculty Representative
Christine will be attending the faculty meetings and posting to the wiki. She is unable to attend on May 9 so Adrian Mitrescu will attend.
By-Laws and Constitution
The officers discussed the status of the by-laws and constitution amendment process. There was some discussion about how much to have the job descriptions in the constitution reflect current practice. There was general feeling that the constitution should be general enough to allow specific job descriptions to evolve without having to amend the constitution frequently. The specific job responsibilities should be kept current in separate documentation. But it is important to keep this supplemental documentation current, so that new officers are aware of all of their expected responsibilities. Christine suggested adding a sentence that the by-laws and constitution will be reviewed every 5 years, so that the documents will reflect current practice. Before presenting them to the student body, Barbara will make a list of the substantive changes that are being proposed. We will then post them on the “Official LISSA Bulletin Board” which as Sean pointed out is located in the hallway across from the binders and not in the student lounge. The question was raised whether we needed to do anything “official” after the by-laws and constitution were amended. Barbara will check into this.
There was also some discussion about communication and if there was a need to have an officer officially responsible for coordinating communication, including updating information on e-learning, the wiki and the GSLIS website. Even though it seems to make sense that each officer would be responsible for posting communications directly, it seemed that there might be a need for someone to oversee everything to make sure that everything is getting updated and communicated. We discovered that the constitution actually has the role of Vice-President to “be responsible for coordination of communication among the students, faculty, administration and alumni.” But in practice, the current V-P has lots of other duties (end of semester party, course evaluations, etc.) We talked briefly about splitting the secretary job into two positions. Since there are 2 secretaries now, one could do more administrative type functions (ordering lounge supplies, ) and the other could be in charge of communications (making sure all websites have current information, disseminating information, etc.). This can be discussed more in the future.
LISSA online
The officers continued the discussion of the use of e-learning vs. the wiki for LISSA communication. Barbara will do a clean-up of e-learning to eliminate some of the overlap on e-learning and make clear links to the wiki.
End of Semester Party
Sean suggested having the end of semester party it at the Squealing Pig again, site of last semester’s party. Everyone agreed that it is a convenient location and nice space. The room is not available on Thursday or Friday, so we will aim for having it the Wednesday of the last week of classes.
