BGSA Student Orientation Fall 2011

Hello new and returning bio grad students!

We all hope you had a fantastical summer dodging hurricanes, taking in sunshine, enjoying jazzfest, battling the perils of field sites (and animals!) and are back and refreshed for another semester!

As always, we are hosting an orientation for all new bio grad students. We know what it's like to be starting grad studies. New place, new faces, new papers to fill out, new labs, new advisers - it can all be very intimidating. But fear not! The BGSA will be hosting a fun filled and adventure packed orientation afternoon!

Events start at 1pm in room W4/12 of the Stewart Biology building where speakers will give a brief overview of some of the things McGill has to offer you in including information on the Post-Graduate Student Society (PGSS), Career and Placement Services (CAPS), the biology department and us, the Bio Grad Student Association (BGSA).

Following, teams of you will head off on a photographic scavenger hunt to help you learn a little bit about McGill and where to find some essential things. You just have to take a picture of the items as described on the clue sheet each team will receive. Don't worry - a bio grad student veteran will accompany you to help you decipher clues and figure out where to find things. The winning team will receive a prize!

The scavenger hunt will end at Redpath Museum, where, at 3pm, Dr. Howard Rundle from the U. Ottawa will be giving the organismal seminar. It will be a great talk, and a great way to see how seminars work in the bio department.

After the seminar, everyone is invited to the reservoir for our welcome back bbq. Yunny food will be served, and beer will be available for purchase (at cost).

We hope to see you all there!!
Cheers
the BSGA

BGSAFall2011Orientation

Molecular Symposium!

Hello fellow bio nerds!

Who: you, of course (and your favourite model organism)

What: The Molecular Biology Symposium

When: Friday, August 19th

Where: thompson House Ballroom

Why: Because it will be totally awesome!

Dreading the end of the summer? The influx of new undergraduates? The premonition that winter will be cold and snowy?

Well, what better way to end the summer than to check out the molecular symposium happening this Friday at the Thompson House Ballroom. It is an exciting line up with talks from graduate and undergraduate students as well as a poster session so there will be something for everybody. Talks range from ants on dopamine to work on breast cancer cell signalling to mitotic scaffold proteins. The presentation and posters focus on a wide range of organisms like drosophila, C. elegans, arabidopsis and ants! It promises to be a fun and interesting event.

So drop those pipettes and head over to Thompson House on Friday!

MBSS 2011 Program With Abstracts

Thomson House Permaculture Garden Meet N' Greet

There is an exciting new project that will begin around Thomson House in the coming weeks. It will be a permaculture/container vegetable garden which just received money from the Sustainability Projects Fund. This Thursday, June 9^th there will be a meet and greet starting at 5:30 PM in the Thomson House restaurant. Find out more information about the project and about permaculture, and how you can get involved!

Crash-course in R

We're running a 4-hour crash-course workshop on R, for some students from the Canadian Healthy Oceans Network (CHONe), who are meeting here next week. However, there's a lot of extra room in the workshop, so if you missed our introductory workshops last time around, now's a good chance to come out and see what all the fuss is about! We'll be meeting in Stewart Biology's computer lab, N4/17. The workshop'll run from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm (with a couple breaks) on Wednesday, April 27th. We'll be covering trimmed down versions of our first 3 stats workshops:

1. The basics: Opening and using R for the first time, and some basic commands
2. Creating an R project: creating a script file, management of project files, housekeeping, data import 
3. Plotting in R: an introduction

If you think this would be interesting or useful, contact Eric Pedersen, or show up on the day. We may end up running out of space though, so it'll be first come, first serve!

Department discretionary funds and grad student support

Hey BGSA members, have you heard?

There are some big changes being planned to graduate student support at the University level, which could lead to departments like ours having more discretionary funds to use to support graduate students. This will affect newly admitted graduate students starting next year, not current grad students. This would also affect the same pot that is currently used for top-ups, admission scholarships, and other various departmental awards. The BGSA wants to hear your opinions, suggestions, and ideas on how the department might allocate these funds in the future.

Did you know?

• McGill University is restructuring their graduate student funding model, by transferring more control directly to Faculties and departments. (Note: these changes will apply to future new admits, and will not reduce funding to current graduate students).
  • more info here: http://www.mcgill.ca/files/gps/CGPS.10.02.pdf
  • http://www.mcgill.ca/gps/staff/fellowships/grandfatheredmidas/
• McGill University initially started the MIDAs program to encourage international doctoral students to enroll, by offsetting the additional tuition fees mandated by the province. The MIDAs program was therefore intended to act as a recruitment program, a priority the university has strongly suggested should also apply to the new funding model.
• The biology department often receives "unallocated" funds for graduate students from the Faculty of Science, which must be allocated within a very short period of time.During the past 4 years I've been here, I know of at least 3 occasions, including two for which the BGSA was consulted regarding allocation.
• The biology department will be discussing these and possibly other changes to graduate student funding at the upcoming department Assembly on March 10, 2011.

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The BGSA wants to know what you think about:

• How discretionary funds have been allocated by the department in the past?
  • Do you feel it has been effective?
  • Do you feel it has been fair?
• How can the department improve recruitment and retention of top graduate students?
  • What role can discretionary funds play to best achieve this goal?
• How would you like to see discretionary funds allocated by the department?
  • Should funds be allocated based on financial need, merit, other criteria, or a combination?
• Would you like to see written guidelines that the department could use to decide how to allocate discretionary funds in the future?
  • What priorities, values, or procedures would you like to see in such guidelines?

Feel free to respond to individual questions above by email, or an anonymous note in my mailbox,or come to an informal discussion this Thursday at 5PM in Stewart Biology N5/1
Thanks for your time and input,
Jonathan Whiteley,
PhD candidate
Department of Biology
McGill University
http://jonathanwhiteley.com