November 15, 2017

Student Alumni Advisory Committee

November 15th, 2017

MEETING MINUTES

Present: Carling Barry-Spicer, Marsha Ryan, Trevor Smith, Laura Mele, Carolyn Lee-Jones

Regrets: Pauline Mwangi, Hazel Williams

Updates

New Committee member:

  • Welcome Carling! Carling is a 2016 graduate of the program and the committee is glad to welcome you as a member at large.

Funding update:

  • At our last meeting we outlined a number existing and new initiatives that we hoped to be able to take on this year as student engagement was allot a larger fund. Since the last meeting Paris and Kim have worked on the budget.

Student Engagement Facilitator Salary (existing initiative) $17,000.00

Study Coach (existing initiative) $4,500.00

Accessibility (existing initiative) $3,000.00

Speaker Series –  (new initiative) $ 2000.00

Student mentoring and/or writing support (new initiative) $ 250.00

Orientation for new students (existing activity) $ 500.00

Activist Support (new initiative) $ 350.00

Student Conference Support  (new initiative) $ 300.00

In Person Gatherings (existing initiative) $ 100.00

 

 

  • It is clear from these numbers that the Why Disability Studies at Ryerson video production cannot be funded through this source. Kathryn is going to raise this at the faculty level as an issue of recruitment and hopefully the production can still go ahead but from another budget line. Kim will keep everyone posted on any developments.
  • Esther, Kathryn and Chelsea have posted the Student conference support information (3 $100.00 lottery offerings) to the course shells for DST 88 and 99 and there is already one student interested. If only one student is interested they may be awarded the entire fund.

 

  • The in person gatherings amount is quite small $100.00 but the committee can also mix that with the funds from the student orientation.
  • While there are activities the committee had hoped to host that might be curtailed the committee is  in a better place financially than we have been for the past 4 years.

 

Banner design:

  • The design of the poster is complete and was sent to everyone for review.
  • The design was approved by vote and Kim will order and purchase the banner from Vistaprint.

 

New Business

 

Awards nominations:

  • Trevor was nominated for the Part-Time Student award. Unfortunately Trevor was not selected for the award.
  • Kim was kindly nominated for Alan Shepard Equity, Diversity and Inclusion employee award. She wishes to offer her thanks to all those members of the committee who co-wrote the supporting letter from SAAC on her behalf.

 

Paper publication:

  • The web docs that the committee recently finished have garnered a lot of attention around the university
  • Kim has spoken with Chelsea and she is interested in collaboratively writing with the committee to write a paper for publication.
  • This is a valuable opportunity not only to share the work of the committee and also to gain experience with article writing
  • Some potential journals:
  • Journal of Online Learning and Teaching: JOLT
  • International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education
  • All committee members should decide if they are interested in working on this paper and email Kim if they are interested

 

DST 88 event:

  • The committee has decided to host a pub night after the first DST88 onsite in the new year on Jan 13th.
  • The committee will purchase appetizers at the event.
  • The event will be advertised on all DST course shells.

 

Webinar events:

  • In light of our funding changes and the nature of the students (online, part-time, distance) the committee will host webinar brown bag events.
  • Suggestions:
  • CV preparation (via career centre)
  • Writing/citation workshop (via writing centre)
  • Resumes and cover letters (via career centre)
  • These webinars will be recorded and housed in the D2l orientation shell which all students will be loaded into.

 

Blog post suggestions:

  • Kim has been sending a lot of blog requests with few responses.
  • It was suggested that the funding for the student mentoring be used to pay students for writing posts.
  • The committee vote was deadlocked and will revisit the vote at the next meeting.

 

No new business: