SLUO Executive Committee Meeting

Minutes of Tuesday, 13 January 2004

Present from SLUO: Ray Cowan, Eduardo do Coute e Silva, Gregory Dubois-Felsmann (phone), Berrie Giebels (phone), Yury Kolomensky (phone), Eli Rosenberg (phone), Bruce Schumm (phone), Gabriella Sciolla, Eric Torrence (phone), Amanda Weinstein. Apologies: Gautier Hamel de Monchenault, Krishna Kumar.

Visitors: None.

1. Joint SLUO/UEC Meeting
   It was decided that the most efficient format was to have both the SLUO specific and joint SLUO/UEC meeting on Saturday, January 31. Following is a rough and tentative agenda for the day:
   

     8:30 - 10:00 SLUO Meeting
   10:00 - 12:00 SLUO/UEC Joint Meeting (1st session)
   12:00 -   1:30 SLUO/UEC lunch with SLAC Directorate
     1:30 -   3:30 SLUO/UEC Joint Meeting (2nd session)
     3:30 -   4:00 Break
     4:00 -   6:00 Tours of BaBar, GLAST, LC
     6:30 -   9:00 Dinner (Hunan Garden?)

   Following are the responsibilities for setting up 30 minute tours:

   BaBar: Gregory
   GLAST: Eduardo
   LC: Bruce

   In addition, Gregory has reserved 12 rooms in the SLAC guest house. Dinner for UEC members arriving Friday night (no host) will be arranged in an ad-hoc manner as the time draws near.
   
   
2. Washington Trip
   The UEC delegation to Washington is being identified. Brian Meadows has told us that he will go. The executive committee has compiled a list of other SLUO members to contact to see if they would be interested in joining the Washington trip; they will be contacted over the course of the next few days. All who take part in the Washington Trip delegation should make every effort to attend the Jan 31 joint SLUO/UEC meeting.
   
   The Washington Trip task force will meet weekly at 2:30 on Friday up to the joint SLUO/UEC meeting. A major focus will be to establish a coherent position and set of talking points to bring for discussion to the joint meeting. Bruce will look over the previous `elevator argument' whitepaper to see if a similar document can be drafted before the joint meeting.
   
   
3. Public Lectures and Outreach
   Ray reported on much progress. The speakers and dates have been confirmed for most of the planned first six public lectures. Neil Calder is working on advertisement and publicity for the series. He will deliver the first such lecture himself, on Feb 24.
   
   Progress had also been made on setting up the on-campus public speaker training with the SLAC Communications Department. However, no firm date has been set. There is some discussion about whether the format should be one long or two half days. This event will be geared towards the Washington delegation, people presenting in the SLUO lecture series, and then, space permitting, any other interested SLUO member.
   
   
4. Health and Welfare
   After presenting her invited talk to the SPC, Gabriella was approached by a member of the committee who expressed strong interest in looking into the health insurance issue. This member in turn interested the Stanford Provost in looking into providing Stanford health benefits for graduate students and possibly also post-docs that are resident at SLAC, regardless of their sponsoring institution. This notion has also received support from the SLAC directorate. Apparently, Cornell University provides a similar plan (CornellVisitingFellows.doc) for CLEO collaborators, which can be used as a model as the terms of this potential new benefit package are worked out; the gist of the Cornell plan is given in CornellVisitingFellows.doc.
   
   Eduardo will see that the analysis of the survey data is completed by the joint SLUO/UEC meeting.
   
   
5. Marguerite / Guest House Shuttle
   It was decided that Eduardo should see to the activation of the proposal discussed in the December 5 meeting sometime in February. The program will be assessed thereafter.
   
   
6. Adjournment
   The meeting adjourned at 2:45 pm.

So Attests,
   Bruce Schumm
   Secretary and Treasurer, SLUO Executive Committee