Computer Science Students Association unc chapel hill Presidential Duties home  about us  students  guides

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):
 

• Represent the students in faculy meetings.
• Act as a liason between students and faculty/staff.
• Organize students to sit on department committees.
• Assist in student recruitment (Candidates' Day).
• Serve as an outlet for students to voice complaints, with those complaints remaining anonymous.
• Organize (or appoint someone else to organize) social events (annual spring picnic, UNC basketball parties, etc.).
• Keep CSSA web pages up-to-date.

The job also comes with certain benefits:

• Large private office in a choice location (near mailboxes, copy machine, printers, TSC, front door)
• Digital phone (with caller ID within the department)
• Fast PC
• Honor and respect from your peers =)
• A chance to get a window office in the next year

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

Past CSSA Presidents and Officers:

• Jacob Bartel
• Chad Spensky
• Catie Welsh
• Stephen J. Guy
• Rick Skarbez
• Jeff Terrell
• Russell Gayle

 
 

Here is a breakdown of duties:

• Calendar of Activities
• Faculty Lunch
• Possible Projects
• Elections
• Technical details
• Spring Picnic
• treasurer duties
• Other things
• Graduation

 

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]
• The CSSA president is a voting member at all open faculty meetings. (They'll let you know when the meetings are closed.)
• You should abstain from issues that don't affect students.
• You'll get an agenda via email on the faculty list before each week's meeting. If not, there will be an agenda on the board.

Possible Projects [duties]
• a roommate-finder service for new students
• Words of wisdom: start EARLY (it's hard to talk to undergrads, especially after they've left for vacations...), and expect to put some time into it (about 20-40 hours). I've got a database of T-shirt makers, if you think it might help I'll send it off to you.
• during the summer, a letter is sent out to all of the new students, welcoming them to our humble department. this is the same letter that's been sent out for years (needn't remain so, however)- this may be in /usr/csa- if not, it should be put there.

it's typically sent out in august sometime by the president or the veep, just make sure that somebody does it.
• When a student in the department loses a family member, it seems to work best if CSSA helps organize the sending of cards and a flower, but shouldn't pay for it- rather, the money should come from friends, etc.

It would also make sense for someone who knows the person to organize and handle the sending, etc, rather than someone doing it as a CSSA duty.

Other Things [duties]
• I (Michele) put templates for dot files in ~/public_html/info/ These should be checked for correctness and linked into the info page (index.html)
• Using Netscape for editing html is BAD! It tries to copy all of your images to the local directory. I've (Michele) been deleting some of them, so some of the images are probably broken right now...

Look into making the xf/xfinger scripts more usable. Maybe pointing them to www.cs.unc.edu/people/Images/ Talk to Claire Stone about where the pictures are...

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:

• Open /~cssa/cssa_teaching_award_template.jpg file using an image editor such as Photoshop.
• Using the font "Bookman Old Style" (or something similar to the font on the certificate, fill in the name of the recipient using size 22, all capital letters.
• Fill in the date using size 16 letters.
• Print out on "nice" paper on a color printer. The paper previously used can be found in the storage room in the aisle on the left, on the shelves in the middle of the room. The paper is located on the shelves closest to the far wall on a shelf about waist-high.
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 :

 

++	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 Last modified: .