Computer Science Students Association
unc chapel hill

Presidential Duties
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President

 
Who is the president?
Bryan Ward

What does the president do?
The CSSA president is responsible for making sure that the CSSA serves a purpose to the students of the department. Some of the president's duties follow (in case you want to nominate yourself for next year):
 

The job also comes with certain benefits:


Michele Clark (president 1998-1999) has compiled a detailed page of presidential duties.

Past CSSA Presidents and Officers:

 
 

Presidential Duties [top]

 
Here is a breakdown of duties:

 
First Rule
All former CSSA presidents are excused from doing anything. If you absolutely must ask them to do something, they can say "No" with no questions asked or guilty looks given.   =)   But, they are always available for advice.

 


Calendar of Activities [duties]

Note: Much of this has been taken from /~cssa/tasks/

Month Duty
August Garden Party (this hasn't been done in a while...) 
Elect/appoint officers 
list of previous officers (Update This!)
treasurer's duties
Sign up folks to serve on committees
September
October 
November
December
January
February
March Candidates' Day 
Faculty Recruiting
Help Faculty Search committee member organize student meetings with faculty candidates. Make sure you get feedback from students present at these meetings -- you will get asked about student opinion at the faculty meetings. It's very useful to attend them yourself, even if the candidate is not in your research area. Steer the discussion away from research topics to areas like teaching philosophy, advising philosophy, general areas to find out what kind of person this is and if students would be willing to work with them. 
April Hold Elections
Spring Picnic
Make sure the CSSA course review pages are open for comment, and send email to the faculty email list to remind them to announce it to their students. 
May Graduation
June
July Clean out fridges. (0 floor, 3rd floor in student lounge)   =)

    Faculty Lunch [duties]
    Possible Projects [duties]
    Other Things [duties]
    Graduation

    Diplomas were given out at department ceremony for the first time in May 1987. The ceremony (held in SN 014) is for undergrad, Masters', and Ph.D. graduates.

    The main duty of the CSSA President at graduation is to give out the CSSA Teaching Award. It's nice to get a statement from the student nominators to read during the ceremony. (See nomination link under 1998-99 award.)

    Here's how to make (edit) the teaching award certificates:

    In 1999, we started a new tradition. Two (or three) of the next year's graduates (probably first-years) volunteer to help Janet Jones clean and re-organize the lobby during the ceremony. So, it's the president's job to make sure appropriate folks volunteer for clean-up duty.

    Faculty Recruiting
     

  1. Make sure that at least one CSSA officer is present at every meeting.
  2. Chmn's secretary will probably mail you asking you for a good time to meet.
  3. Best way to delegate and insure nominal attendance is to go round-robin among the officers- each officer attends a faccand meeting and (preferably) brings someone with them. This way no one person gets stuck with talking to all of the (often boring) people that troop through the department.
  4. Meetings typically 1/2 hour.
  5. Try to get a copy of the candidate's agenda so that you'll know where to take them next (they may not know or know how to get there).
  6. The officer at the meeting should talk to students that show up and get their opinions and summarize and send to CSSA president so he can vote appropriately at faclunch. From the agenda, see what students have already given demos (MSL, PxPl, MDL, etc) and talk to people who went to the colloquium to get their opinions.
  7. Fac lunch vote will be on the following scale :
  8.  
    ++ Yes, sign him up, give him an office.
    + Yes, good candidate.
    0 or neutral No strong feeling either way.
    - Would prefer this person not come here.
    -- would consider resigning if this person were to come here.
    Normally, most votes in ++ to 0 range. Someone who gets an offer typically has mostly ++'s and some +'s. on faccands, mail jay with student comments and he'll respond with CONFIDENTIAL mail from faculty with their comments. this mail should be destroyed after voting.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Computer Science, Sitterson Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 USA
Server Manager: webmaster@cs.unc.edu
Content Manager: cssa@cs.unc.edu
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