Alumni Advisory Board Meeting Nov 19 2010

November 19, 2010
6:30-900 PM
UCLA Faculty Center

Agenda & Meeting Minutes

Invitees / Attendees:     Alfonso Cardenas, Cristina Cano, Justin Collins, Eytan Elbaz, Milos Ercegovac, Mike Erlinger, Bill Goodin, Nader Karimi, Jacquelyn Leong, Andrew Louie, Rajiv Makhijani, Carey Nachenberg, Sze Ke Pat, Frank Pearce, John Rosati, David Smallberg

Agenda

  • Welcome New Members / Introductions
  • Eytan Elbaz
  • Sze Ke Pat
  • Laurie Leyden
  • GSA President – Justin Collins
  • UPE Co-presidents – Cristina Cano / Wade Norris
  • ACM President – Rajiv Makhijani
  • UCLA Update
  • Department Update / New Chair – Milos Ercegovac & Alfonso Cardenas
    • Milos discussed the appointment of Jens Palsberg as the new chair of the Computer Science Department.  The department is also looking forward to recruiting 3 new faculty members for positions vacated through faculty retirement.  The timing on this is fortuitous, as not a lot of Universities are hiring at this point.
    • Looking in to re-energizing our cooperation with the Industry by:
      • Setup technical talks with our affiliates (ex. Upcoming Northrop Grumman tech event).
      • Release of a new job posting / resume database to industrial affiliates.
      • Internship day (companies to setup tables to talk to students about internships and full-time jobs).
  • Student Group Roundtable – Presidents of Groups
    • Christina – Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE)
      • Provided overview of what UPE is doing now and in upcoming quarters
      • Reviewed past events since last meeting
      • Discussed upcoming fall events (ex. Info sessions, career panels, CS department picnic, etc.)
      • Discussed challenge with fundraising for UPE due to nature of honor societies.  Team discussed possible fundraising ideas for them, including:
        • Asking for donations
        • Programming competitions
        • Possibly talking to Andrew’s spouse and learn from her experience with the Chinese Cultural Dance Club
        • Update their web site
        • Selling their resume book
        • Discussed fact that the real problem is only 10% of eligible students actually enroll into honor society and pay fees.  This is the main problem that the students need to address.
    • Rajiv – ACM
      • Reviewed fall 2010 activities (ex. Info sessions, game programming project, Microsoft college puzzle challenge, etc.)
      • Fall 2010 goals: Build industry relations, new CS resume database, recruit new officers, etc.
      • 2010 – 2011 goals: increase inter-club collaboration, CS undergraduate networking event, strenghten programmin competition team, etc.
      • Milos discussed the possibility of merging the resume Database ACM is planning to build with the one the CS department is working on.
      • Milos suggested for ACM to collect and present (on web site) results of their prior competition and projects.
      • Carey made the offer for ACM to work with him on putting together a competition for which Symantec can provide the funding .
      • Identified need for ACM to reconnect with National organization.
  • Event Update
  • So you think you can Present? – Justin Collins
    • Milos asked if department should have a better web site to capture all the nice contests and work being done by the various student groups (one example was what University of Illinois has done).
    • Freshmen Open House – Nader Karimi
      • Event was successful and we had goot participation from the Alumni.  Having the CS deparment hats for the volunteers really helped.
      • For next year, David suggested to have an Alumni volunteer to also attend the meet & greet sessions.
  • 2010/2011 AAB Event Planning
    • Career Panel – TBD
      • Last year’s event was not very successful and attendance was way down.  May be it was due to the economy or the event not being advertised enough  nor to the undergraduates.
      • Team discussed if the focus of the Career Panel should still be entrupenurial? The general feel was yes.
      • Decision was made to open up the panel to entreprenuers that are not CS alumni (e.g. EE Alumni), as long as they are in a software company or company relevant to CS majors.
      • John Rosati and Eytan Elbaz will coordinate the next Career Panel.
      • The team decided to change the name from the “career panel” to “Small company & entrepreneurial panel”.
    • Freshmen Open House – TBD
      • Sze Ke Pat will coordinate next year’s Freshman Openhouse.
    • Potential New Activities
      • Corporate Site Visits – Maria Penedo
        On hold, but leave on the list for now.
      • Invited Affiliate Speaker Series – Carey Nachenberg
        Already underway within the department.
      • Undergrad / Grad Survey – Carey Nachenberg
        This is already gathered as part of the ABET accreditation survey.
      • Employer Survey – Carey Nachenberg
        This is already gathered as part of the ABET accreditation survey.
      • Honors-Affiliate Mixer – Carey Nachenberg
        Agreed to take on this activity.  Bill Goodin, along with assistance from Carey Nachenberg, will discuss setting this up in the Jan / Feb time frame of next year.
      • How to prepare yourself for industry – Carey Nachenberg
      • Freshmen Open House (Post-acceptance) – Jens Palsberg / Andrew Louie
        Challenge identified was that the students don’t respond to the Faculty reaching out to them to provide mentorship and guidance and attend the events.  Suggested that ACM or UPE become more involved in this.  No need for alumni participation at this time.
      • Young Alumni Town Hall / Reception – Bill Goodin
        Agreed to move forward with this activity.  Jacquelyn Leong will take on the responsibility of work on this.
      • UPE Fundraising Assistance – Bill GoodinGroup discussed various options for them to generate operating capital.
  • Board Matters – Nominations for new Board Members

Please send nominations for new board members to the voting members of the board.  Our target is to add 2 new board members this year.  Please note the process is for: a) someone to nominate a new board member, b) someone else to second the nomination, c) recommend person to attend at least 1 event or board meeting (so others can assess the new member), and d) final vote.

Proposed new AAB Activities:

From Carey:

  1. Invited affiliate speaker series: Invite a technical rep from our industry affiliates to present a technical topic of their choice to a UCLA audience.  I’d be happy to host one of these (or give a talk on behalf of Symantec)
  2. Undergrad/grad survey: The AAB could conduct an unbiased survey of our UCLA CS majors about the program (e.g., class offerings, class sizes, research opportunities, what classes do they feel should be offered, etc), review the results, and then present findings and suggestions to the department on how to improve
  3. Employer survey: The AAB could conduct an unbiased survey of our affiliate members (e.g., what are the strengths and weaknesses of UCLA undergrad/grad interns/new-hires), and then present findings and suggestions to the department on how to improve the curriculum.
  4. Honors-Affiliate mixer: AAB could invite all honors CS students and top representatives to a mixer; perhaps have one of the affiliates give a short talk about some of their work.
  5. We could hold a “How to best prepare yourself for industry” talk, inviting several of the affiliates to spend 10 minutes talking about how to best prepare for an industry internship or job.

From Bill:

Arrange a Young Alumni Town Hall/Reception to bring young alumni back to campus.  The department chair and vice chairs would also attend and seek feedback from the alumni on curriculum, job experiences, their overall experience in CS at UCLA, etc.  Aim for alumni who have graduated during the past five years or so.  This would helped connect young alumni to the CS Department, and provide some feedback.

Help Upsilon Pi Epsilon with fundraising.  This is the CS honor society, but they have virtually no money to operate, go on a retreat, go to a conference, etc.  Perhaps we might solicit donations to fund a couple of small scholarships to their members, or support some of their activities.  Since these are the top students in the Department, I feel like we need to help them.

 

Action Items from 4/6/10 Meeting:
Action Item: Everyone to provide feedback to Milos on new affiliates benefits
Action Item:  Bill to give list of senior alumni at Qualcomm to Anil
Action Item: Anil to recommend AAB member from Qualcomm
Action Item: Milos to talk to dept about how to relieve freshman class size
Action Item: Alex to poll grad students about career panel
Action Item:  Advertise career panel to undergrad students through student groups/create posters to hang in ESUC lounge
Action Item: Anil wants to support career panel because he’s on an Entrepreneurial Board
Action Item: Andrew to send vote out on candidates after Open House – Complete
Action Item: Nader to forward the documentation for the Freshman Openhouse to Sze Ke Pat