Minutes – March 9, 2017

Opening:

The meeting of the BPKSA was called to order at 1:00pm by Megan in the BPK Graduate Students Lounge.

 

In Attendance:

Megan, Jordan, Emily C, Katie, Omid, Arash, Darleen, Jaskarn, Brian, Erina, Crystal

 

Open Issues:

1) Kin Cup Debrief

-65 attended

-Faculty won

-Raised ~ $90 for Jump Start

-Next year have everything by donation, rather than some things free, some things paid

 

2) Core Account

-Possible uses:

-Use more core account money, don’t need to ask for as much in grant

-Buy prizes for Year End Party and future events

-Look into buying pinnies for future Kin Cup events

-Check when fiscal year ends

-Omid will look into prices

-Reversible?

 

2) Trivia Night

-Advertisements

-On monitors in hallway

-Facebook event

-Advertise to grad students

-Currently 8 confirmed, 17 interested

-OzTrekk will provide some funding for prizes

-Brainstorm intermission games

-Brainstorm questions

-Check with Collin’s grad pool trivia questions

-Send Jordan sample questions that can be answered with BPK 142 knowledge (jordano@sfu.ca)

-Trivia question feedback

-More open ended questions

-Consider including more questions from BPK 142

-Make questions a bit more inclusive to first and second years who haven’t taken 326 yet

-Don’t make it feel like less of a test

 

3) Mental Health Discussion

-Portion of departmental meetings dedicated to discuss broader topics – mental health topic of next month

-How the department and faculty can help students cope

-Bring back cohort program

-Career options to relieve stress about competitive GPAs

-Make school less academic-centric

-Have profs advertise social events, not just academic

-Time management

-Acknowledgement from profs – knowing names of students, empathy towards students, recognize how hard students are working

-Being approachable

-Smaller first year lectures

-Main causes of mental illness and stress

-Social isolation

-Societal pressures to get a job

-Commuter campus – no sense of community

-Competition between students for jobs after graduation

-Overloaded and trying to do too many things to individualize and separate themselves from other students

-Don’t have time to do things you actually like anymore; prioritizing school over anything else

-Large first year classes

-More events

-BPK 101 was good

-Create sense of buy in during first year

-Pep rally

-More events for first years

-Weekly SFU wide movie night – Friday in RCB, hosted by a different department each week

-University/faculty wide events, rather than isolating departments

-Make events less formal

-Space

-Proper study spaces

-Social spaces for things other than studying and eating

 

Adjournment:

The meeting of the BPKSA was adjourned by Megan at 2:10pm in the BPK Graduate Students Lounge.  The next meeting will be held on Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 1:00pm in the BPK Graduate Student Lounge.