ISSA Board Meeting

This afternoon the ISSA had its third board meeting with the new board, and I'm all the more optimistic about this board as ever. The goals for today's meeting were to reflect on the events we've done so far as a new board and brainstorm what we'd like to see happen next year. Going in, I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to communicate my vision for the organization, but thankfully, both the board and I are very passionate about what we see in the future for Information Science and the ISSA.

I didn't expect the meeting to go more than an hour, but after two hours, we still hadn't gotten through everything. I was extremely gratified to see that my board had put so much thought into it beforehand, and that we could really work as a team to come up with ideas together. I'm really excited for what next year holds for us.

So as far as my part goes, the next step will be to appropriately delegate tasks to people, and keep up with them to make sure that everything goes well. A lot of the things that I'll personally be working on are more qualitative and long-term, like collaborating for IS programs at other schools and with the ACSU, so I'll have to continue working with that. One of the greatest parts of being the leader of an organization is that I can take the long-term projects that I love, and still have the day-to-day stuff get done through delegation and management.

Another little thing I discovered today was how far a little demonstration of appreciation can go. Since we had a general meeting yesterday, an event the week before, etc, I felt like I might be fatiguing my officers with the constant work. So I decided that I would do a little something special, and pick up some cookies and candy for the meeting. I was pretty surprised by the reaction I got. People were really thankful and, I think, realized that I do in fact appreciate all the work that they do. So that'll probably become a fixture in my board meetings. I'll just have to work on coming up with some new dessert ideas to keep it from getting old.

Meeting with Jen Wofford, Assistant Dean for Educational Programs, CIS

It's funny how things work out here; the more time I spend, and the more people I work with, the more I see how everything is connected. When I met with VP Susan Murphya couple of weeks ago, she suggested that I also meet with Jason Locke, the Director of Undergrad Admissions, and when I met with him, he suggested that I meet with Jen Wofford, the Assistant Dean for Educational Programs in CIS. Little did I know that she was in the same office as Christine Stenglein, who I work with on a very regular basis. So today, I met with both Jen and Christine (who's the undergrad coordinator for IS), to discuss the marketing of the major and corporate relations.

We all agreed that as IS students we, the ISSA and I, have a unique perspective to help market the program. Since IS is so interdisciplinary, the faculty generally only see their own field within the major. As student, however, we see the major in its entirety, taking classes in all of the sub-disciplines. Also, as Jen pointed out, we're much closer in age and mindset to the target audience, so our view could be really valuable in helping to craft the message that we send to prospective students.

As far as corporate relations go, Christine and I explained to her that we have been having some trouble informing companies about the major and convincing them that it actually is useful. She suggested that we collaborate with the ACSU (Association of Computer Science Undergraduates) to use some of their clout within companies. Their elections were just last night, so hopefully the new president will be as collaboratively-minded as I am. Also, she suggested that we collaborate with IS programs at other schools to sort of pool our alumni and contact bases.

It was great to find out that we were both on the same page with where we'd like the major to go in these respects. Besides the collaboration, one of my major goals as the President of the ISSA is to get more involved with what the school is doing for the IS program. So it'll be great to have her as a resource and colleague with this effort.

Promoting Cornell's Interdisciplinary Programs & Corporate Relations Wisdom

In my meeting with Susan Murphy a few weeks ago, one of the issues that I brought up on the periphery was that it seemed like Cornell wasn't doing much to promote its interdisciplinary programs (e.g. Information Science) in its promotional materials (e.g. view books, pamphlets, etc). She recommended that I contact Jason Locke, the Director of Undergraduate Admissions to discuss the point further, since it wasn't really under her purview.

So I met with him this afternoon to discuss my concerns, and he was very receptive. I learned a lot about the research and initiatives that they do to attract students, and I gave him my perspective as someone who had just gone through the process. He said that prospective students looking at Cornell often had two complaints with our materials: one, that it seemed like students here are locked into one particular college, and two, that the materials didn't focus enough on what makes Cornell unique. We agreed that both points could be ameliorated by promoting Cornell's interdisciplinary initiatives, like the Life Sciences, Computing & Information Science, and Environmental Science.

So as the next step, I plan to talk to my ISSA board about how we can craft the message toward prospective students, and possibly meet with him as a group to chat about it. I'll also probably be playing an active part in helping to redesign the Cornell view book for its next iteration, which is due in a couple of years.

After that, I had another meeting with some people from Career Services and Corporate Relations here at Cornell. I learned some really valuable information about dealing with companies and setting up information sessions when they visit the school. Thankfully, my Corporate Relations Chair, Nick, was there too, so he'll be the one to really run with this stuff under my supervision. I really have a lot of hope for the organization in the coming year.

CEAA Globalization Conference & the Engineering Student Leaders' Conference

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the Cornell Engineering Alumni Association's conference on the Influence of Globalization on Business and Technology. Although I only got to stay for a few hours, it was really cool to hear from some really accomplished alumni from the real world. Probably the most interesting speaker was the Chief Technology Officer of Xerox and President of Xerox Research (one person). She spoke about the challenges of globalization in the commercial research world, and overcoming one's perspective to see things from a more worldly and global view.

Then today, I woke up at 8:15 to head over to the Engineering Student Leaders' Conference with my ISSA VP and Treasurer. I think it went really well. There were some really interesting and informative speakers from whom I definitely learned something new. The first speaker was from the Engineering Alumni Affairs & Development office, and so I found out that they would be more than willing to help us when we need alumni for events, activities, etc. Another highlight was the outdoors activities, which are always pretty fun. The two activities were both focused on communicating and group work to accomplish a goal, something I think will be extremely valuable for my team in the upcoming year.

MFCNS Presentation & ISSA Movie Night

One of the things I absolutely love about Cornell is the countless opportunities that it offers, the innumerable ways to get involved. One of the (few) things I can't stand is the fact that I, as a human, can't possibly do all of them. I do my best though. Tonight for instance, I had about four different things to do roughly at the same time: the IS Colloquium, a talk on social networking websites, the MFCNS presentation on the causes of stress at Cornell, and the ISSA movie night. Thankfully, I was able to make it to two (and a half).

I got to hear about 15 minutes of the social networking talk, which seemed reasonably interesting, before I had to jet to the MFCNS presentation. For some clarification, MFCNS stands for the Meinig Family Cornell National Scholars. The program seeks to recognize potential campus leaders even before they get to Cornell. (Students are nominated during the admissions process.) The reason I went to the presentation was because of my work with Vice President Susan Murphy on addressing the causes of stress at Cornell. Who would have known that there was a research effort devoted to finding out just that? So they had some really good ideas and some potentially very useful suggestions. Hopefully I'll get to meet again with Susan soon to discuss the next step.

After that, which ended at 7:05, five minutes after the movie night started, I sprinted to Olin for the ISSA event. I think it went pretty well. There were definitely some things that we can learn from for the future, but I can't expect things to be perfect on the first try. The entire board is new, and we're all learning together. At our next board meeting, I'll make a point to reflect upon this event, and the lessons we can take away from it. One thing that I've learned rather quickly is that my relatively hands-off style of management doesn't work so well when the whole group is new and still needs to structure to function. It's definitely an opportunity for learning, and that makes me satisfied.

Google Adds Presentations to Its Apps Suite

Today, at the Web 2.0 Conference, Eric Schmidt announced that Google will be integrating a Presentation (read: PowePoint-esque) feature to its apps suite. I normally wouldn't make a big deal about this, but I was told that I'm going to be working on the apps suite this summer, so I may end up doing UER for Google Presentations. How cool would that be? I might a get a sneak preview of a never-before-seen Google product. Yes, I know I'm a nerd. I can't help it; these types of things excite me. Haha.

Stress @ Cornell

A couple of weeks ago, I attended President Skorton's Open Forum, and brought up the point that, from his column in the Daily Sun, it seemed that Cornell was concentrating more on addressing the symptoms of stress rather than the causes. I made the case that if the school made more of an effort to identify and avoid the root causes of student stress, addressing the symptoms (e.g. suicidal thoughts) wouldn't be as necessary. He agreed with me on the point, but didn't say much about moving further with it.

However, after the forum ended, Vice President Susan Murphy approached me, agreed with my point, and said that we should meet to discuss it further. So a few days ago, I met with her, and had a very productive and enlightening discussion on what Cornell is doing to address the issue. As it turns out, there's a group on campus that has been doing a study on the very same topic, so she invited me to attend their presentation tomorrow night. Hopefully they'll have found some good ideas, and then we can all move forward together to improve the school.