R, Pumpkins, and Grants!

Hello fellow biology minions!

This post comes as announcements of the past, present, and very near future. First up, the ghost of Halloween past shows how to get it done! Congratulations to the returning champions, the Ricciardi lab, who once again, captured first place in the annual pumpkin carving contest. This year's theme was 'mutation' and Susan Bocti and Frank Scopelleti served as our illustrious judges. In second place was the L. Chapman lab, and in third place was the collaborative efforts of the Moon/Lasko/Dancourt lab!!

For photos, visit here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111919271963074240179/2012BGSAIronPumpkinCarvingContest

#-----------------------------R Workshop -----------------------------
#in the very near future, there will be an awesome R workshop that
#will help get you started in the R environment. Come join the
#R Montreal User Group will be checking out the Hadley Wickham
#general awesomness for this workshop.

#location: Notman House (51 Sherbrooke W)
#time: 6pm
#Bring your own laptop!

#------------------------------------------------------------------------

And lastly, congratulations to our BGSA travel grant draw winners!

Rowshyra Castaneda is our lucky winner! The first runner up and second runner up, who will be contacted in the event that the winner declines the award or becomes ineligible, were Michal Wieczorek and Bronwyn Rayfield

Congratulations to all!

Happy midterm marking!

-the BGSA

2012 Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest

Hello fellow bio students!

Feeling competitive? Ready to get into pumpkins up to your elbows? Interested in firing those creative neuronal transfers?

Well, it's about that time. It is time for the BGSA's annual pumpkin carving contest!

For those of you new to the Department or unfamiliar with the event, teams participating in the contest sign up in advance, and arrive the day of the event with tools in hand, and carve the greatest pumpkin of all time.  Teams must pay 6$/team, which covers the cost of the pumpkin (which we will provide) and prizes.   Please sign-up by visiting (with the money) Katie Pagnucco (Redpath Room 303 on the third floor), Scott DeVito (Stewart N5/5; dial 7488), Chelsea Chisholm (Stewart N3/5; dial 6428), Mary-Rose Bradley Gill (Bellini 232; if nobody there, look in lab 270 or call 3565), or Kate Krivy (Bellini 232; if nobody there, look in lab 270 or call 3565) by Tuesday, October 30th so we can purchase supplies.

Teams will have 1 hour to carve the pumpkin related to a surprise THEME that will be announced by the surprise judges on the day of the event.  Judging criteria include: adherence to theme, creativity/originality, use of lab tools, and participation of the lab supervisor (extra points... so convince your prof to come!)

Summary:

WHAT: I think that should be obvious by now.
WHEN: Wednesday, October 31 at 11:30 am (event is 1hr: teams should arrive 15 mins early to prepare: onlookers welcome!)
WHERE: 4th floor lobby, Stewart Biology Building
WHO: Graduate students, postdocs, professors, anyone in the Department with an interest in pumpkins and/or squash carving
WHY: Because October wouldn't be complete without a pumpkin carving contest AND there will be prizes, and wait for it... a TROPHY (yes, a TROPHY) for the winning team.
DEADLINE to sign up: Wednesday, October 30th

So start harassing your supervisors, assemble a team and register with any of the people listed above, we're looking forward to seeing you next Wednesday, October 30th at 11:30 am for pumpkin fun! Teams, don't forget to bring your own carving supplies.

BGSA General Meeting

hello BGSAers!

The leaves are turning, and that means it is time for us to do our first general meeting of the 2012-2013 school year! In case you missed the email from our fearless president, here it is!

Hello,

I am pleased to inform you that your 2012-2013 membership to the Biology Graduate Students Association (BGSA) has been approved. The benefits of this association are many and include:

1. Free food
2. Making new friends
3. Throwing socks at graduate students
4. Seasonal carving of squash
5. Dancing with your supervisor

Would you like to know more about this exclusive association? Then come to the General Meeting next Thursday, October 11 from 4-5pm (following the Organismal seminar) in the Redpath Auditorium. Attached is the agenda for you to peruse. Reply if you would like to have anything added to the agenda. Would you like to become a elite member of this club and are interested in representing the rights of TAs AND get some $$ for it? Then become an AGSEM representative! We have one vacancy available and will be holding elections at the general meeting. If you would like to put forth your name as a candidate have three students support your nomination with the attached form and have them send the form to bgsaelections@gmail.com. You must also submit the candidate form attached to the same address.

I hope you take advantage of all benefits of this association. Your first opportunity is the free snacks at the meeting.


Sincerely,
Monica Granados
BGSA President

AGENDA

1. Committee reports
  a. PGSS (Eric Pedersen)
  b. Organismal seminar (Carly Ziter)
  c. AGSEM (Katie Pagnucco)
  d. Safety (Ted Daigle)
  e. GTC (Zoe Joly-Lopez)
2. Budget (Josie Iacarella)
3. Status of the Graduate level statistics courses (Monica Granados)
4. BGSA website (Kiyoko Gotanda)
5. Amendment to BGSA travel grant (Ben Haller)
6. BGSAiji: The place to buy and sell post-graduate goods
7. AGSEM representative election
8. First-year representative(s) election
9. Events
  a. Pumpkin carving
  b. Trading spaces: Desk edition
  c. Holiday party
10. Other business

BGSA Orientation!

Hello BGSAers old and new!

The leaves are turning, politics are simmering, and it's getting darker sooner... We all know what that means - the start of a new semester! As always, we want to welcome new students (and returning students!) with open arms and get them on the proper path to the maze that's called grad school.

The BGSA will be holding orientation this semester on Thursday, September 6. We've got things going all day, but it will culminate in a FREE BBQ on the reservoir from 4-6pm.

Here's the plan, so we'll see everyone on Thursday!
For new students!
12:30-1:00 The Biology Department and You: A guide to graduate school at McGill
1:00-1:30 Lunch with BGSA officers
1:30-2:30 Scavenger Hunt  

Everyone!
4:00-6:00 FREE BBQ

Cheers
The BGSA

BGSA General Meeting!

Hello students,

Now that summer is already over, the BGSA will be holding a general meeting in the Redpath Auditorium from 4-5 on March 28th. The Agenda is below! See you there.

Cheers

BGSA

Biology Graduate Students Association General Meeting AGENDA

March 28, 2012

4-5pm

Redpath Auditorium

1. Committee reports

a. AGSEM (Justin Marleau)

b. PGSS (Eric Pedersen)

c. Green (Etienne Low-Decarie)

d. Safety (Corey Chivers)

e. Organismal seminar (Andrea Reid)

2. Changes to Molecular Seminar Funding (Aleksandar Vujin)

3. Update on Biodiversity Position Search (Justin Marleau)

4. Petition for Advanced Statistics Course (Kiyoko Gotanda)

5. Announcement of elections (Monica Granados)

6. Travel Grant (Katie Pagnucco)

7. Upcoming events

a. April

i. Egg hunt

ii. CEEB retreat

b. May

i. End of year party

ii. MOC retreat

8. Other business

Montreal R User Group is live!!

Hello UseRs!

We are happy to announce that the Montreal R User Group is now official. You can join the group by visiting the meetup site.

The group has existed since 2010 in a narrower incarnation as the BGSA R/Stats Workshop Series. Previous workshops have featured invited facilitators on topics such as Causal Analysis, GLMs, GAMs, Multi-model inference, Phylogenetic analysis, Bayesian modeling, Meta-analysis, Ordination, Programming and more. Our goal is to broaden the scope of the workshops to incorporate topics from a wide variety of applied fields.

We are kicking off with a meetup on Monday, March 19th with a workshop on building and estimating Maximum Likelihood models and doing model selection.

We look forward to seeing you at the next meetup!

Montreal R User Group Organizers

WordPress Workshop!

Good news! The WordPress workshop has been rescheduled and it's still FREE. See below for registration instructions.

Do you wish you could have your own website so you can disseminate your research, publications or pictures of you in a row boat (http://tinyurl.com/85ry26v)? Well then do I have some good news for you. BGSA is hosting a WordPress workshop on Friday, February 10, 2012 from 10:00-11:30 in Stewart Biology W2/3B. WordPress (http://wordpress.org/) is a user friendly, free, web software you can use to create your own website. Sidra Mamood (http://www.oneseventyfive.com/) a web designer from Toronto will guide you from inception to the publication of your very own website. And best of all, the workshop is FREE!

Space is limited though, so if you want to attend sign-up at the following link (click or copy and paste the link): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Am30GsVd1jhrdGFqNU9HOGpKQTZoWVJfbFJXcjNXWGc

If you are already signed up then your place is reserved. If you can no longer attend the rescheduled workshop please remove your name so that the space becomes available for other participants.

-Monica on behalf of the BGSA Officers

R/Statistics Workshop Series Starts Next Monday!

BGSA R/Statistics Workshop Series Starts Monday February 6.

We are excited to announced the start of the BGSA organized R/Statistics workshop Winter series! The workshops provide an excellent opportunity for graduate students to surmount the seemingly steep R learning curve and advance their statistical skills.

The Winter series, facilitated by invited graduate students and faculty, begins Monday, February 6th 14h-16h in N4/17. It will continue weekly over ten sessions and tentatively cover the following topics:

• Programming in R
• Linear, generalized and additive mixed-effects models
• Path analysis, structural equations and causal inference (invited speaker: Bill Shipley)
• Likelihood estimation
• Bayesian statistics
• Time series analysis
• Spatial statistics

For more information, complete schedule, and workshop descriptions see:
https://sites.google.com/site/mcgillbgsa/workshops

The workshops are free to attend, but space may be limited so students are encouraged to register at:
https://sites.google.com/site/mcgillbgsa/register

Corey, Zofia, Étienne and Eric

BGSA R/Statistics Workshop Series Organizers

Pack the House!

Hello BGSAers!

Thanks to those who participated in our survey about Pack the ~

There is enough interest that we're going to Pack the House!

Who: You!
What: Pack the House! Support our Redmen and Martletts
When: Thursday, January 26th: Pregame 5-7
Where: Pregame at Thomlinson Hall, Game at the gym
Why: Show support, party with friends, have a good time, get out of the lab... take your pick!

Come out and support our Redmen and Martletts in an awesome double header basketball game against UQAM. There will be a pregame at Tomlinson Hall with drink specials and then everyone will head to the gym to make some noise and raise the roof. Bonus points if you know the origins of 'raise the roof' and you can't wikipedia it today!

Tickets are $3 and please sign up in the document below with your name, email and number of tickets you want.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aiihin_-Nu8qdEsxTjdud0llZi13RVNQQ01WMFBxUkE


Cheers
BGSA