Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

CMC Minutes May 5, 2015

Tuesday May 5 2015 @ 12:00 pm

May

5

Tue

2015

12:00 pm

Event Type
Meeting
Availability

Closed to Public

Audience
  • CIRES employees
  • Host
    CMC

    CMC – Post Rendezvous Meeting

    May 5th (Cinco de Mayo)

     

    Rick Tisinai

    Nate Campbell

    Lucia Harrop

    Linda Pendergrass

    Anne Sheehan

    Amanda Morton

    Christina Holt

    Pallavi Marrapu

    Amy Stryker

    Gloria Hicks

    Katy Human

    Robin Strelow (via Skype)

     

    Rick – Let’s start

    Rendezvous Meeting

    Let’s talk about everything – except anything related to the inSideCIRES web interface. What you heard from people anything

     

    Gloria – I didn’t get much feedback, but I think we can eliminate the early morning set-up poster help crew.

    Linda – Do you think that 9am would be sufficient?

    Gloria – Yes. I think we could add poster hanging time on Thursday afternoon (because it was mostly CMC folks) but we’re there anyways.

    Linda – I think so, we can let folks know that we’re not 100% set up but that they can still hang posters because their board/space will be there.

     

    Gloria – I didn’t like the food as much. All I heard was that the polenta was great.

    Lots of murmuring about food.

    Linda – I want to bring up something about the food. Can I just say that one side of the buffet ran out? We ran out 22 minutes into the lunch on only one buffet. They said folks were taking 3 chicken breasts and the meat! They had to run down stairs and get 5-6 more pans and overall we paid for 10 more pans of food.

    Nate – See I thought that you get one or the other.

    Anne – Can we tell folks somehow to take one or the other on their first pass?

    Linda – Yeah I think a nice sign could work well. And Waleed has a different concept than Koni. He’s okay with us running out of food towards the end, compared to Koni who wanted an endless supply.

    Gloria – Could we do a sit down? How does the price compare?

    Linda – The issue is all of the various dietary needs of everyone

    Gloria – Yeah, I heard vegetarians get upset about the prosciutto around the asparagus.

    Palavi – I was bummed

    Anne – As a vegetarian myself, I appreciate that asparagus basically never is alone.

    Linda – UMC catering loves CIRES because we bring lots of work for them, but they cannot believe how much we eat!

     

    Lucia – Some folks who didn’t RSVP were people who would not normally attend the Rendezvous but found out late that they were receiving an award or thought they would get an award/recognition for a promotion

    Anne – yeah this is a mess

     

    Rick – one thing that was frustrating to me was the Graduate Student Poster Competition, because that was basically forced on us and I felt it went against the mission of the Rendezvous. I would love a graduate student poster section.

    Amy – I’ll just say since Allen Polk isn’t here and he submitted a poster. He mentioned that he was a little upset that he was separated/segregated from the rest of the division and was off by himself. When I was there I saw that there were lots of conversations and discussions going on and it looked great.

    Nate – I heard that as well.

    Christina – Many large events/conferences have the judges go to you, and you’re not segregated

    Anne – Yeah, I agree. I think it’s fine to have the contest. I think you need more heads-up/discussion about the poster contest in process.

    Rick – where did that discussion come from?

    Linda – They came up early, but it was Kristin’s baby and she insisted on the separate section. How would you feel as a judge – Katy?

    Katy – I would have loved to move around and see the various groups, and it would be easy to hit the various groups divisions and visit them.

    Linda – it wasn’t quiet, hush-hush. It wasn’t a big huge deal, but I think the current small competition was good.

     

    Rick – FOR next year, rendezvous planning will start in September. It sounds to me like we all agree, that the segregation is a bad idea. The competition portion, I don’t like it personally, but since it’s in the spirit of other conferences, but judges have to spend their time doing this, and we need to respect them.

    Robin – I know of some of the judges were running ragged and not getting lunch. Wasn’t it a separate event in the past?

    Linda – We did it at the 45th, and separately in the atrium but the separate event was not very well attended.

    Katy – I love the poster competition. I think it’s a good idea and does a lot of things that CIRES wants to do. I feel terrible that no one asked CMC, so I think that’s a big issue. I do that it is a good fit though.

    Robin – I have no problem with it in the future, but I think it needs to be structured better. I don’t know what the answer would be to restructuring.

    Rick – I think we need to announce it somewhere on the website, so it’s separate, and so they can see that they’ll be separate.

    Nate – yeah it was an after-the-fact situation where we didn’t know about it until after and then they got plucked out.

    Rick – It was restructured on the fly by Nate. If it’s a good thing, then keep it, but we need it clearly delineated on the website, so people know what’s going on. We’ll take a vote and then talk to Kristin about this, then notify her that we should do this as needed.

    Rick – A reason I asked Susan and Katy to talk was because of poor NOAA turnout when they came by the offices and attend meetings.

    Linda – I think Susan talked a little too long.

    Katy – Yeah I think she was a little closer to 10 minutes than 5.

    Rick – I loved your talk.

     

    Rick – I think we’re on consensus, that people can bring posters on Thursday.

     

    Rick – One thing that was not well communicated was that you need to take your poster. That was a mess.

    Gloria – I had some folks ask me if they could leave it up because they had to do something else, and wouldn’t be back until 5:30pm or so.

    Rick – I think that the poster take-down was not very well communicated. Maybe we need to clarify that.

     

    Rick – So I’m think at the latest 5pm on the posters. We need to vote on that in June.

     

    Amanda is eating – NO MORE NOTES

     

    NO MISSING SLIDES FOR WALEED

     

    WE CAN ENFORCE PROGRESS

     

    Lucia – For the promotions to be in the slide, don’t we need to move Rendezvous.

    Katy – That’s not true, and I think that if we submit things earlier Paula thinks that we can get in there earlier. In fact this year’s promotions hit the business day after the Rendezvous.

     

    Rick – I had a colleague comment on Waleed singing, she loved it. She’s never had a boss sing to her.

    Nate – I liked it, I thought it was impressive. As my first rendezvous, I think the whole thing is awesome. It’s more like an appreciation event.

    Gloria – I think it makes him seem more approachable and human.

    Lucia – I think it’s a double edged sword is that it might make him too approachable and make it harder for him to be the boss.

     

    Amy – I think the awards could have been done better, or faster.

    Amanda – Yeah, I think that if people know to stand when folks see their name or stuff like that.

     

    Linda – We could also ask our groups what Waleed should talk about because he kept coming back to us with that question of what should I talk about

    Lucia – Maybe the financial stuff was more interesting to the new people, because I think that makes sense for our increasing town hall meetings. I think maybe there is a better way to get that information out. For me for example, I’ve seen that a bunch.

     

    Katy – I think we need to think about who is the audience, because it is the CIRES employees of course, but there are also a TON of big wigs. Like Stein.

     

    Rick – So it’s not just us?

     

    Could the posters be open to the public, but keep the luncheon private? Since we’re running out of space in the Glenn Miller.

     

    Linda – What did you think about the tables?

    Everyone seemed to like them. I don’t think it had a big impact.

     

    I think we need to draw the line if we can, to get folks into the luncheon that needs to be there and those who want to see the science and get them into the poster session. The CMC needs to be reprised of any guest list and share it in advance.

     

    Should this be more focused on the Science?

    We need more town halls on east campus or main campus. All focus is on NOAA.

     

    AWARDS

    What we’re hearing is that it takes too long.

    Lucia – Can they be done at a town hall?

    Everyone – NO

    Pallavi – Can we put them at their own table?

    Linda – I don’t think they’ll like being told where to sit.

    Amanda – No but it makes things easier/faster.

    Robin – I agree it took an inordinate amount of time. Especially since I think the posters won’t come out well.

    Linda – We could do that at the end when we do the group photo.

     

    Linda – Can we jump into awards and who notifies folks etc.

    We ran into a bind because Waleed didn’t have a chance to notify folks.

    Anne – I emailed him on April 2nd and I heard on April 14th from Waleed that he was going to do it, and then I had my honeymoon. I came back and found out that no one was notified.

    Linda – Yeah it didn’t go out until the Tuesday of Rendezvous when I sent out the email asking who was going to be in attendance and then folks emailed me back saying they didn’t even know they were getting an award.

    Rick – Maybe we need to meet in person to make it happen.

    Linda – Yeah because it should come from Waleed since these are big awards.

    Rick – Yes people need to know in advance. We need a way to have this not be blown off and forgotten.

    Anne – I’m worried that we’re making things too hectic for Rendezvous.

    Linda – And I’m okay being ‘cced on those emails. There should be a more formal notification structure for all of the notifications.

    Katy – Yeah and there was a new tech transfer award that was never conveyed to CMC. I hate to say it but I think the CMC chair for the OPA really needs to pester Lornay, and Paula needs her team to pester Lornay for those other awards/notifications.

    Linda – We can bump up the things like the promotions and years of service because those can be visited sooner. We don’t need to wait on those.

    Rick – I think we need to think about these things, and make less trouble/stress. I think we need a better point of communication with CIRES Admin. We need to talk more.

     

    Linda – When do we decide on chair for CMC rendezvous and OPA?

     

    Chris Clack will be the next OPA chair.

     

    Anne – I think we need longer OPA terms because it’s a quick process.

     

    Robin – I think we need a bigger Rendezvous committee, because 2 is pretty small.

    Linda – I think that makes sense.

    Robin – 4 members plus a chair or 3 members plus a chair

    Linda – I think 3 members plus a chair makes sense. Because everyone has different ideas and skills. I’ve had as few as 1 and as many as 5 and I think the more people that we get the less stress there is for folks. Nate revamped everything, and this is awesome. Lots of things are automated.

    Lucia – There was a problem, with folks not being in the right division, because they end up in the wrong divisions.

    Nate – It should automatically do it it and if it can’t find it, then they get the drop down.

    Is everyone assigned a division? Why don’t some people see their divisions?

     

    The website will be revised and revisited. It should be even more streamlined.

     

    Timing for poster issues.

    In A or B, or select only 2 blocks or somethings. Let’s ask and get feedback from your divisions.

     

    Could we not use sticky paper? It seems a bit wasteful.

     

    People being in cliques etc. People didn’t go back and forth between the two sections and a bit at lunch. Everyone was sitting all together.

     

    Christina – We have the power! We can break this!

    We talked about the possibility of different color name tags and make people sit at a table of all the same color.

     

    Katy – I love the idea. But I also think the probability for some folks that you’re trying to collaborate.

    Christina – Well folks won’t follow the rules, but if you get half of the folks to follow that rule.

    Linda – We could do different deserts in different areas of the ballroom to get you to walk around and we could do that in the posters.

     

    Can we have them in one room? No we’ve outgrown everything.

     

    Linda – I’m struggling with the Rendezvous dates. Now there’s less we can do because of graduation. Everything is booked for Fridays before. There are a ton of events around graduation etc.

    Should we look at MAY 12th or 13th?

    Will professors be gone?

    Should we ask fellows for their input?

     

    Also – Division directors approving their poster submissions were rather strange and drawn out. It’s a quality and quantity control.

     

    Rick – I think I could have done this better, or earlier. I think that talking to them to get things done right and on time. Some problems were things got missed like early emails said your poster was accepted.

    We made an executive decision to approve them because stuff wasn’t getting done.

    We had 430. How many were invited? 750-950

    372 RSVPs with 430 attending (which was padded for)