Alumni Advisory Board Meeting.
Invitees: Alfonso Cardenas, Justin Collins, Eytan Elbaz, Milos Ercegovac, Bill Goodin, Karissa
Grasty, Kim Jiho, Nader Karimi, Anil Kripalani, Laurie Leyden, Jacquelyn
Leong, Andrew Louie, Carey Nachenberg, Jens Palsberg, Sze Ke Pat, Frank
Pearce, Maria Penedo, Daniel Quach, John Rosati, David Smallberg, Jim
Winchester, Ben Zamanzadeh
Agenda & Meeting Minutes
•Introductions
Karissa Grasty,
Development Director, Computer Science
Her contact information is:
Karissa Grasty
Director of Development
Office of External Affairs
(310) 825-8392
Kgrasty@support.ucla.edu
•UCLA Update
Department Update – Milos / Alfonso
– Might get 3 faculty members. We lost 2 and one retired. For the next 3 years we have 6 positions.
– Preparing for ABET accreditation (6 years has passed). If help is needed from AAB Board members, let us know.
– Research Review: we want to bring it in to 21st century. Board members mentioned it was more valuable when CS was separate.
– We have done well with Admissions.
– With the economy improving, some of our students taking jobs at Amazon have left. Amazon is not happy with us. Don’t know why they are blaming us.
Student Group Updates – Presidents of Groups
– Undergraduate: Honors mixer in January. They had twice as many students and companies than last year. They are hosting various Info sessions. In spring will do CS department picnic.
– Graduate: Maria and graduate student club need to connect to talk about the Northrop Grumman competition. They need hardware donations (since their server died). They will send an email to the board so we can look for hardware. Spring picnic coming up (they will send invite to the group).
– Honor Affiliate Mixer in January had 14-15 companies attending. Students came in waves. Feedback from companies has been good. Complaints about the event being disorganized, there were too many people in the room, need more tables for their material, do a better job of introducing company reps, use name tags, make sure to invite the technical reps (not HR people).
– Discussed if we want to invite companies that are not affiliates as well (although we want the affiliates to feel special).
– Discussed if we should open this up to all students, instead to just honors. General feedback was to keep it the way it is (honors only).
– May want to have TV/screens setup for the mixer.
– It might be better to hold the mixer earlier in the year.
Affiliate Targeting – Nader / Anil / Milos
Nader to work with Milos and Karissa to develop letter to C-level executives about the affiliate program. Need to get Karissa to generate the list. Milos has the brochures on the program. May want to explain in the letter about the various clubs and types of projects being done.
UCLA / MIT Startup Weekend – Andrew
Weekend of April 13th. Team consists of ½ CS and ½ business students. There are judges that will evaluate and give awards. They are looking for sponsorship. They need help with creating professional looking web pages. Also looking for mentors. Eytan is interested to participate and help out.
• 2010/2011 AAB Event Planning
Freshmen Open House – Jim
Jim in charge of alumni support, has been trading emails with Dick Muntz.
Entrepreneur Panel (Spring) – Eytan
Eytan should work with Alfonso. Focus will be on accelerators. The panel should be first few weeks of the quarter (possibly Tue / Thur in April).
Affiliate Targeting – Nader / Anil / Milos
• UCLA CSD AAB Google Group – Andrew
• Action Item Review – Ben
• Board Matters – Nominations for new Board Members
Open Board Positions
Review of Charter
• We need a mix of more experienced and younger members
• We have 5 open board positions
Review of Candidates
Mel Takata – Milos Ercegovac
– Milos reviewed the candidate’s background. He has over 25 years of technical leadership at Hughes, Citigroup, and other companies. Broad experience. Good communicator.
– Mel was approved by the board.
Rajiv Bagrodia – Milos Ercegovac
Josh Roth – Ben / Eytan
– He is a good manager, diplomatic, loves UCLA. He is doing a new startup and is very entrepreneurial. Go getter with energy.
– Eytan will get him to attend the Entrepreneur panel so the board members can meet him.
– Ben to send Josh’s resume to the board.
Upcoming Chair / Vice-Chair Elections
Andrew / Ben elected to 2-3 year term beginning in 2009
Andrew is not planning to run again. Ben has not decided yet.
Farewell to Carey Nachenberg – All
After 5 years on the CS AAB board, we say farewell to Carey. We are sad to see him go. The board thanked him for his contributions.
Other topics discussed:
• Carey: We need an undergraduate course in design patterns for programming. The board agreed that this needs to be raised up to Dick Muntz.
• Bill distributed a copy of the HSSEAS Events, Winter/Spring 2012.
Prior Action Items:
1) Finalize the scholarship Criteria for CS AAB scholarship program and figure out who to give the money to
(Carey Nachenberger) — Complete
2) Establish pre Mixer training sessions for students and Industrial Affiliates to discuss what to expect and
how to interact. (Bill)
3) Ask board members and candidates to volunteer for ACM Lecturers (All)
4) Identify potential candidates for board membership (All Board Members)
5) Provide feedback to department about need for better value for the Affiliate Program — David Smalberg
6) Provide feedback to department discussion about having departmental representation in the AAB Meeting — David Smallberg
7) Consider providing corporate representatives to volunteer to conduct ACM lecture (All Board Members)
8) Identify potential candidates for board membership (All Board Members)
9) Invite two identified candidates to participate in Honor-Affiliate Mixer (Carey Nachenberg / Frank Pearce)
10) Send message to Alex at UCLA about potential AAB assistance with Startup Weekend (Justin Collins) – Complete
11) Have followup discussion with Alex to discuss Startup Weekend and AAB (Andrew Louie) – Complete