CSI Student Member Handbook

= Introduction =

What This Is
This is the UNOFFICIAL repository of the most important knowledge about how to be an effective CSI student member, with a lot of helpful information for coordinators as well. At the moment, it is also a lot of hopes and dreams, like:


 * This should get updated fairly often by members and coordinators who find that stuff is missing.
 * Something like this should be available for the student members of other schools, and maybe school committees.
 * This should make becoming a school member/coordinator seem less intimidating.
 * &lt;soapbox&gt; This should contribute to a sense of institutional memory. &lt;/soapbox&gt;

We'll see how this goes.

Contributors
If you contribute something, put your name and any other important information here. Earn 100 EXP.


 * Ellen Green (page creator). CSI student member from S09-present, coordinator from F10-S11.

= The Very Basics =

School Office
FPH 218 (up the stairs to the balcony above the lobby, through the double doors, on the right)

CSI Homepage

Contact Info
Dean of CSI: Annie Rogers (x5548, arogers-at-hampshire.edu)

CSI Administrative Assistants:


 * Emily Gallivan (x5409, egallivan-at-hampshire.edu, FPH 218)
 * Chyrell George (x5719, cgeorge-at-hampshire.edu, FPH 218)

CSI Student Member Coordinator: Sola Stamm (sots10-at-hampshire.edu)

CSI Helpful Person and Poster Maker Extraordinaire: Ellen Green (egg09-at-hampshire.edu, also some hours in FPH 218)

Other Useful Pages

 * CSI Homepage
 * CSI Student Member Meeting Notes
 * CSI Student Member Guidelines
 * CSI Lightning Talks
 * Really Outdated Faculty List
 * |CSI Student Member Listserve Page

School Meetings
School meetings are OPEN to students, except for reappointment/promotion and hiring meetings, which are only open to current members. (If we're having one of these and turn you away, please be understanding, and come back another time.) Meetings also have free food.

When: Thursdays from 3:30 to 5:00.

Where: FPH Faculty Lounge (upstairs in FPH).

= Becoming a Member =

What do I do?
You represent the student body in CSI school meetings.

You must attend and participate in school meetings. Your voting privileges depend on your attendance, though you can choose to be a non-voting school member if, for example, you have a Mt. Holyoke class on Thursday afternoons. See the CSI Student Member Guidelines, or Voting Rights below, for more information on this.

You must attend student school meetings, scheduled by the coordinator on an as-needed basis. These are usually fairly short and laid-back, and usually occur after school meetings. See the CSI Student Member Meeting Notes to get a better idea of what these entail.

Depending on your attendance and some other things (see Voting Rights), you may be eligible to vote in school meetings.

You are required to provide comments (which can be as simple as "I don't know this person well enough to comment") for faculty files during the reappointment/promotion process.

You are eligible (ahem, implored) to serve on academic committees, including:


 * CSI Search Committees. (ad hoc)
 * CSI Reappointment/Promotion Committees. (ad hoc)
 * CSI Policy Committee: the coordinator is automatically a member, but other students can also be members. Sola Stamm is the current member.
 * EPC: you can be a student school representative rather than an at-large member. Ellen Green is the current rep.
 * CCFRAPP: Two reps are elected from eligible student school members from all 5 schools--Ellen Green and Sammy Ruigu from NS are this year's reps.

For more information on these committees, look at the Committees section. This list IS meant to be exhaustive, so please add any I forgot.

Selection processes for these positions are, in theory, democratic, but since the voting pool is so small selection is often either voluntary (only one person is interested and so they get the job) or by consensus (a couple people are nominated, discussion happens, and a consensus including all nominees is reached).

You are expected to help with the following functions of the CSI student membership:


 * Organizing the CSI Lightning Talks, ideally once a semester.
 * Recruiting new student members.

You are eligible to be the Coordinator.

You are expected to maintain the confidentiality of the proceedings of confidential processes (like hiring and reappointment). This is important.

Why should I do it?
Some perks of the job include:


 * Power.
 * Bragging rights.
 * Hanging out with faculty outside the classroom.
 * Free food on Thursday afternoons (and usually some leftovers), and more often if you're on a committee.

But seriously, people. The student school members play an important role in working with the faculty, staff, and dean to make sure that the School of CSI is well-run. It is of utmost importance that students get involved in these processes so that student interests aren't ignored just because nobody can advocate them in first person.

How do I do it?
An easy step-by-step guide:


 * 1) Get in touch at any point during the semester with the student coordinator and Chyrell George (see above) to let us know that you're interested. Or just come to a School Meeting and talk to someone there.
 * 2) Add yourself to the student member listserve |here. If you're having trouble, Ellen and Sola are list admins and can help you.
 * 3) Get the paperwork from Chyrell to fill out a statement of intent (not actually a big deal--just a sentence or two). Congrats! You're a school member.
 * 4) Attend 3 school meetings in a row. Congrats! You're a voting member. (See Voting Rights below for the complicated stuff.)
 * 5) Get in touch with the dean ASAP about eventually writing an evaluation for your CEL-1 or CEL-2. Also get in touch with your committee and put it on your div II contract for CEL-2.
 * 6) Vote on policy.
 * 7) Get on a committee.
 * 8) Be an awesome person.

= The CSI Student Member Coordinator =

Who is the Coordinator?
Our Beloved Leaderboard:


 * Sola Stamm: F11-present.
 * Nelson Hernandez: F11.
 * Amy Katuska: F11.
 * Ellen Green: F10-S11.
 * Ananda Valenzuela: F08?-F10, graduated S11.

What is the Coordinator?
The official definition of the coordinator's role is here. While this is officially adequate, it's not particularly helpful for anyone interested in becoming coordinator--this is, more or less, how this handbook arose.

The coordinator, per student member guidelines, is elected every year. Ideally, an alternate is elected simultaneously (in the event that an actual election occurs this might be the person with the second most votes, or they might be selected separately) who is responsible for taking on the coordinator's responsibilities if something happens to the coordinator. In practice, there isn't always an alternate, and a new election has to happen if the coordinator leaves unexpectedly.

The coordinator's responsibilities include:


 * 1) Making sure that all the student members are on the same page with school happenings.
 * 2) Maintaining their voting rights while they are coordinator.
 * 3) Taking attendance at school and student member meetings.
 * 4) Keeping track of student voting rights and informing students of their voting rights.
 * 5) Serving on the CSI Policy Committee.
 * 6) Making sure that all committees needing student representatives from CSI have them.*
 * 7) Maintaining and using the CSI student member listserve.*
 * 8) Scheduling student member meetings when necessary. (Once a week is a nice idea, but unrealistic.)
 * 9) Updating the CSI Student Member Meeting Notes and the CSI Student Lightning Talks Hampedia pages.*
 * 10) Taking a leadership role in organizing the CSI Student Lightning Talks.*
 * 11) Identifying times when membership is dwindling and advertising for members. (Or just make a couple stock posters and put them up around FPH every few weeks.)*
 * 12) Organizing elections for committee representatives and the next coordinator.
 * 13) You are in a position to write community service evaluations for other student members--there are other people (the dean, faculty members) who can do it, though.

Most of these responsibilities can be delegated to or shared with other members, and at least a couple should be. I marked those ones with a *.

The coordinator is NOT a signer. The CSI student members have been a Student group in the past, but aren't at the moment. This can change if we want it to, with some planning.

This is a decent amount of responsibility. It can, however, be done reasonably well when taking 4 classes, TA-ing one, signing for a student group, doing circus, and working 8 hours a week, as Ellen demonstrated at some risk to her sanity. The workload is not huge--beyond meetings, it shouldn't take more than an hour or so a week, especially if you share the responsibilities with the other student members. This is even easier if you work in the CSI office (Ellen and Sola do). There is usually enough time while you're at the office to work on coordinator stuff while you're getting paid and are within shouting distance of Chyrell and the dean, who can answer most questions you might have.

How do I become the coordinator?

 * 1) Become a student member.
 * 2) Recommended: stay a student member for a semester or two so you can get to know what's going on.
 * 3) Wait until the coordinator starts making "get me out of here!" noises.
 * 4) Nominate yourself for election.
 * 5) Get elected.
 * 6) Talk to the dean about getting an eval for CEL, and put it on your div II contract.
 * 7) Write it on your resume.

ANY voting student member can be the coordinator.

= Voting Rights =

The letter of the law is here. Need-to-know information follows.


 * There can be one student vote for every three faculty votes. Usually this means about 8 votes--if membership is approaching this number, it's a good idea to check in with in Chyrell or the dean to see what the official number is. Often this isn't a big problem--a couple members with voting rights are likely to abstain in any given election.
 * It's up to the student members which of them gets to vote. The current rule of thumb is attendance at three consecutive school meetings. Exceptions can be made on an as needed basis.
 * Voting rights are lost if a voting member misses 3 meetings in a semester, according to attendance kept by the coordinator.
 * A student member can give up their voting rights at any time.
 * Voting rights at student member meetings don't have to correspond to voting rights in school meetings.

= A Field Guide to Committees =

All of these committees require that student members be voting members of the school of CSI, though this requirement can be flexible.

Policy Committee
This is a standing committee of the school of CSI chaired by the dean and including the student coordinator and several other faculty members, and sometimes additional student members. All members of the committee have one vote on issues that come before the committee. The policy committee meets on an as-needed basis, rarely more than once per semester.

Curriculum Committee
The standing committee that sets the curriculum for CSI--what courses should be taught in a given year, what themes should be highlighted in courses, etc. To my knowledge there is no student involvement in this committee.

Search Committees
Search committees are ad hoc, convened for specific searches (for an example, we might have an anthropology search committee that meets for the semester during which we run the search). One student member and about three faculty members will be on each search committee. The search committee is responsible for the following:


 * crafting a job description for the position.
 * advertising for applicants.
 * reading applicants' files. (This can be a LOT of reading.)
 * selecting the top 4 candidates.
 * arranging for the top 4 to visit campus for interviews.
 * making a statement and recommendation to the school meeting for a vote. (The dean's recommendation, based on this vote, is sent to the president for approval.)

Reappointment/Promotion Committee
The Reap/Promo committee is responsible for reviewing the files of candidates for reappointment and promotion within the school of CSI and reporting their findings to the school for discussion and vote, which then informs the dean's recommendation to. I am not sure if this is a standing committee or not, but it requires one student member every year for which candidates are being reviewed.

Educational Policy Committee (EPC)
The EPC is responsible for dealing with campus-wide issues concerning curriculum, divisional requirements, certificate programs, etc. The big thing they're working on right now is the new div I/div II programs. Their meetings are Tuesdays from 3:30 to 5:00 in Cole 121, and they are open. CSI student members can be either CSI student representative or at-large student member. Currently Ellen Green is the CSI representative and Matthew Meneghini (a CSI student member) is the at-large student member. Students have an equal vote on this committee. Proceedings can require a lot of reading.

College Committee for Faculty Reappointments and Promotions (CCFRAPP)
This is the most intense committee on the list. As mentioned above, the dean, based on the school's discussion and vote, recommends candidates to CCFRAPP to be reappointed and promoted (or not). CCFRAPP receives this recommendation along with the candidate's file (for all candidates for reappointment that year), reviews them, and votes on whether or not they agree with the dean's recommendation. Their report goes to the president for approval. As should be obvious, this is a lot of responsibility, and is rather time-consuming. CCFRAPP meets full-time during Jan-term. The first week has a fairly flexible schedule during which members read the files on their own time--this year there are 7 files. The second week is dominated by day-long meetings, which, it is hoped, don't drag into the third week. The committee members are the dean of faculty (ex officio non-voting), one faculty member from each school (elected by their schools to serve a 2-year term, one of whom is elected by CCFRAPP to be the chair), and two student members (with one alternate). The student members are nominated to the dean of faculty and are voted on by the student members of all the schools at the end of the fall, and must be members of different schools. This year's student members are Ellen Green and Sammy Ruigu.

= CSI Lightning Talks =

= Getting Funding =

= Using the Listserve =

The listserve homepage for non-administrators is here. If you're an administrator, go here instead. As an admin, you can add people to the listserve or take them off. This is a MODERATED list, so someone, usually the admin, needs to be a moderator (they clear anything being sent through the listserve before it goes to the members). Anyone may email the listserve, as long as the moderator lets them through. There can be multiple admins or moderators. The current list admins/moderators are Ellen and Sola.

The coordinator should send email updates to the listserve periodically, probably about once a week, including information about any committees that need members, any events of interest to members, and any changes in voting status. It should also include a reminder to go to the school meetings and, if available, a sneak peek of what's on the table this week. Other members should share information about committee meetings with the other members, and can use the listserve for relevant event advertising. DON'T spam the list, or there will be no more list.