Minutes from HKN Officers' Meeting of 04/28/2004
================================================

Present were awei kamil angelc casey chan connie ezeng eroller geoffcm hxu
isaac jameslin jele jluo jcliang kevinw kgao mimi nammai nikitas rchen
shihua ttd vperez wsim.

Late were amywung chris sahandn.

None were missing.

Guests were awang atsao andypang brandono cling dhsu quarl rgulati vu
phoebus dkuo kyiu Yangfan_Wang.

========
 Agenda
========

0. Places to go, Props, Reminders, Birthday
1. Faculty Advisor Update
2. 5-year Masters
3. Faculty Retreat Briefing
4. Final Engineering BBQ
5. Donating Exams
6. Election Procedures Revision
7. HKN Structural Changes?



0. Places to Go, Props, Reminders, and a Birthday! (Mimi)
---------------------------------------------------------
Sat:	1PM-3PM, Soccer vs AIChE
Sun:	9AM-4PM, Spring Fair
Next week:
Tues:	7PM-9PM, "I Love the 80s & 90s"
Thurs:	730PM-930PM, Ice Cream Social at Gelateria Naia
Sat:	545PM, Initiation
	730PM, Banquet
Sun:	11AM, Officer elections


Properties of:
. Pub for flyering for grad school infosessions and Yahoo!
  - turnout was good for both grad school infosessions
. IndRel for pulling in infosessions at the end of the semester
. Props to Karl for taking notes at the grad school infosessions
. Everyone for keeping 345 Soda clean!
. Facuty retreat team (Mimi, Isaac, Amy and Ellen) for pulling together 
  the presentation
. Tutoring and DeptRel for grad school infosessions
. All the active members for staying active!!
. Juhi for her work with the hands-on science thaaang
. James for continually updating his duties files throughout the semester

Birthday:
Nikita's 21st birthday!  She received Spongebob band-aids.  Stop hurting 
yourself!!


Reminders: 
. ENLARGE YOUR - I MEAN, UPDATE YOUR DUTIES FILES!
. Deadline will be next Tuesday night.
. Submit Mu Cow award nominations to Mimi by the end of the weekend.


1. faculty advisor update
--------------------------------------
Professor Tse told us that he is overcommitted.
Professor Sahai is our new advisor for the time being.  Woo hoo!


1.5 IndRel Stuff (Hua)
----------------------
Career Fair:
. Stanford's fair is on October 5, so ours should be on the 6th.
  - first week has a lot of midterms, plus the candidate semester begins 
    around then.
  - conflicts with candidate conversation schedule from last semester
    but it seems to be okay.  The Career Fair date will be October 6, 2004.
  - fee waiver for pauley ballroom
    -> need to interface with EJC

. Google Pizza Ambassador:
  - Google wants us to be their pizza ambassador
  - similar to donut runs, but sponsored by Google
  - we'll be doing it in the fall
  - should it be under studrel or indrel?
    -> pizza@hkn = {studrel,indrel}@hkn


2. 5-year Masters of the Universe (Isaac)
-----------------------------------------
Department wants feedback about the 5-year masters program.  It is very 
similar to Stanford's 5-year masters program where undergrads can apply 
for a 5th year to enroll in it.

Logistics:
. Would be adding new classes that are more advanced and focused than 
  regular undergrad courses.
. Perhaps lower the intensity of ugrad courses and make it more general
. It involves a capstone design project, to keep it above the level of 
  other schools.
. It is still in the works, and the department wants to gauge interest
. Ideally for people who are already advanced in their ugrad studies


Concerns:
. Will this lessen the worth of our B.S.?
. Will this water down our grad program / Master's degrees?
  -> Master of Science != Master of Engineering
. Will this water down our undergrad program?
. Could we make it more selective?
  -> this would mean that a lot of resources are used on a small number
     of people.
. Cost - will the price paid by students offset the resources used?
. Why does the department want a 5-year masters program?
. It's important to keep the quality of ugrad education up

If you have more input, email Isaac.


3. Faculty Retreat Debriefing (Mimi)
------------------------------------
. EE went well, CS also went pretty well.
. Centered presentation on the lack of communication between students and 
  their needs and profs and department.
  - going to work on opening up some activities to the general public.
  - putting together a faculty-student committee whose main purpose is 
    to address the needs of students, and look over the implementation of 
    the suggestions that were made during faculty retreat.
    - any eecs student should be given a chance to apply to be on the panel.
    - driving force needs to be the student societies so that the 
      committee gets set up.
  -> Faculty response: 
     - bureaucracy with creating a whole new committee
     - description of position seems vague.
     - would be easier to have a student representative on the 
       Executive Committee, one from EE and one from CS.
       - since a lot of sensitive issues come up, they expressed that they 
         would rather have a representative from one of the societies.
       - revive 'town hall meetings' from before
         -> any student can come by and express their concerns
  - other issues...
    - tackling exclusiveness, and redundacy between societies
      -> create an umbrella society, which anyone would be invited to join


4. Final Engineering BBQ (Rupert)
---------------------------------
. Matt Lowry of EJC wants to put on a BBQ for everyone... for free!
. He needs societies to man the grill; EJC would buy all the food.
. Held on the last day of instructions...
. Opinions?  Funding is secured by EJC, just need manpower


5. Donating Exams (Jin)
-----------------------
. donate your exams... Exam Files is running out of exams to convert!  
  (less than 10~15 exams to convert)
. whatever free exams you have, please donate!!
. please turn it into the examfiles box.

Suggestions:
. consider expanding to lowerdiv reqs outside of EECS?
  -> need their permission.
. email members@hkn as well.
. An incentive system to donate exams...


6. Election Procedures Revision (Mimi)
--------------------------------------
Ideas on how to fix excruciatingly long elections:
. pipeline nominations
. approval voting (reduces re-voting)
. encourage people to self-nominate
. why not nominate people ahead of time?
  -> knowing every position a person wants to run for may influence 
     people's votes... Somewhat assuaged by approval voting?
. Mimi will get a copy of the by-laws, and we need to update if we will 
  indeed institute any new type of election procedure.


7. HKN Structural Changes?
-------------------------------------------
. Indrel proposed 5 officers instead of 4 in the Fall...
  - reasoning:  jobfair + infosessions in one semester = heavy workload
  - vote results:  5 officers in the fall.  However, Indrel needs to have 
                   a clear plan on how to divide up the work before 
                   elections come up

. 2 Deptrel officers in the spring?
  - Give DeptRel candidates?
  - make cal day organization a dept service activity?
  - two contacts for the center for undergraduate matters will be confusing.
  - instead of adding another officer, split some of the work with the 
    Student Relations officer.
  - finding GM speakers could be CSec or RSec's job

. StudRel:
  - Mimi suggests shifting the duty of corresponding with other societies 
    to EJC reps, and have Studrel focus more on serving the EECS community.
  - Have one EJC rep and require Studrel to attend EJC Meetings.
  - The officers all agreed on this system.

. Mentoring program for incoming students: buddy system.
  - would complement CSUA's mentoring program on the EE side
  - how effective would it be?
  - maybe just help CSUA?


==========
 Epilogue
==========

Whew, that was a long meeting.  Well, you know the old adage, 'Haste makes 
paste taste grate!'

---
Cedric Han
HKN Recording Secretary, Spring 2004