January 2010
Women’s Committee Meeting - January 20, 2010
Bigelow 217
Members Present: Dina Pandya, Kim Grodzki, Kristen Davis, Fay Cali, Becky Gast, Danielle Fino, Stephanie Murphy
Membership update: Fay Cali – is the new co-chair elect, Dina Pandya is co-treasurer; Andone Lavery will no longer serve. Carter Esch will be contacted as next elected member.
Budget number - Danielle will investigate what the correct account number is. She will follow up with Laurie Murphy.
Buy Fresh, Buy Local event – Becky has contacted speakers, getting the powerpoints organized. We’re set for refreshments. People can write own tags when they get there. Kim will ask Liz Caporelli if she can be moderator since Becky is losing her voice. Each speaker has 10 minutes and we have to keep to our time schedule. Danielle will help with computers. Dina will take care of Sue Nickerson. Steph will ask Tom Kleindinst or Jayne Doucette about taking pictures.
Womens History Month – Balancing field work and family life. We are holding Clark 5 on March 18 and March 25. We want to put together a panel of women who go to sea or work in the field to tell stories about what it’s like for women. Evie should have an update on whether Susan Humphris has been asked. Lauren Mullineaux and Marti Jeglinski have agreed; Cindy Sellers is tentative. Becky will check with her to see if she’s available. Would like to include a discussion of how to juggle family while at sea; or have a woman speak whose partner goes to sea and is home handling the children. Asking Amy Bower and Dave Fisichella, Christine Charette (as someone whose husband goes to sea), Simon Thorrold could be another. We want to have a slideshow of historical images showing during the event. Dina has worked with Jayne Doucette to put this together. Some of those images could be used for image of the day.
Announcement of Women’s Lounge – could be a good time to announce the photo contest. Still need to get a rug and a radio. Other “lounges” are in Redfield, Smith 3rd floor, Bigelow 2nd floor, Smith 3rd floor. Danielle will draft something and send it around for comments.
Annual Meeting – traditionally held in June. We talked about inviting Sylvia Earle to speak at the event, and if she is available, the event will be held in May. Evie sent an invite to Sylvia; we need an update. Another possibility is to bring NASA astronaut, MIT grad, Navy diver, just retired in July Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper. She is around in June. Regarding the cost of the dinner, perhaps we should subsidize the cost of dinner.
Scholarship – keep it on the radar.
Postdoc update - Kristen Davis is our new rep. She will report to the committee on what’s going on w/postdocs and will think about co-sponsoring events.
Work and Family Life - Danielle and Fay met w/Tina Betti to talk about cross-cutting issues and how to coordinate. Tina recommended the committee chairs meet to regularly update each other.
Diversity Committee – Stephanie has been elected to the committee, so we will have overlap with that committee and be better able to coordinate activities.
HR is putting together a more robust orientation, and is asking the committee to put together a brochure or hand out. Women’s committee suggests they put out a list of committees and point people to the web site.
Web site - Dina will add a resources page on our Web site with links to pertinent policies.
Coffee Hour – let’s talk at the next meeting.
Next meeting: February 17 in MRF 204.