Nov. 18 - QUEST General Body Meeting
Posted by Kelsey Hall on Tuesday, December 16, 2008
QUEST General Body meeting – November 18, 2008
8:00 pm at Penn LGBT Center lounge
- QUEST history/background:
o Founded last May by Matt Feczko
o Queer Undergraduates in Engineering Science and Technology- name courtesy of Brian Wright
o Constitution developed by Matt and Alec Webley
o Website developed by Kelsey Hall
o Logo developed by Tamara Levy
o Corporate, professional, and external contacts – Vivian Huang and Frank Chinga
o NAGALSTP and OSTEM contacts
o Held first general body meeting September 23, 2008
o Advisors- Professors Mitch Marcus and Rob Carpick
o Corporate events, social event with other minority groups (extremely successful!)
o 2nd GBM is right now Yay
o 46 people on listserv!
- What do you want to see from QUEST? Comments from general body members
o More visibility within university
o Collaboration with different types of groups to get exposure from different angles
o Send out email to general engineering/science student population with information about QUEST (engineering departments): request to Joe Sun (cc with Prof. Marcus and Carpick)
o LGBT panel discussion for people in medicine (doctors, professionals, grad students, nurses, etc)
o Professional-oriented events- biotech, pharmaceuticals; less of typical types of events
o Interested in connecting with people like grad students, etc to find out about their experiences; social events
o PhD panel for Out in Grad School
- OSTEM: started in 2004 at Penn State, focused on corporate sponsorship Raytheon, Microsoft, Lockheed-Martin.
o Trying to create a national organization- QUEST will work with OSTEM to create network
- Planning: Diversity career fair event
- NSA, Barclays Capital coming next semester to do a diversity recruiting event!
- Prioritize goals: Awareness, through diversity recruiting (greater community) and social outreach (within the Penn community), professional outreach (connecting the two)
- Idea: game event with sports and nerd contests to promote awareness
- LGBTPM+ professionals in medicine; LGBTVMA vet association – contacts and events, both with students and doctors/vets etc. in the works
- Matt showed banner (HUGE/sweet)
- Number of out faculty in the engineering school: 2
- Rob Carpick: member of LGBT Center’s faculty affiliates (listed on CV)
o What does it mean to be “Professionally out”?
o Mitch: surprised that Penn faculty seems to be less liberal than he thought, extremely surprised by the lack of willingness (by professors) to be openly supportive of gay community.
o Not overwhelmingly heterosexual or homophobic, but seems as though you don’t discuss personal issues… formality in discussion among faculty within engineering and sciences. Engineers- removing personality from work relationships
o Should there be more LGBT professors in engineering? How important is having a “gay-friendly” sticker/button/etc?
• Access to faculty who you can talk to about LGBT concerns
• List of gay-friendly advisors, etc
• Let faculty know why it matters if you’re accepting to students
• Could be more difficult for faculty if they’re not tenured- after about 6 years in university your accomplishments are evaluated and possibly let go- if you get tenure you can never be fired- feel vulnerable as an assistant professor
• Wisconsin LGBT group gave out stickers for friendly professors
• Many faculty don’t know about opportunities to let people know
• Mitch: we should let faculty know that this would be useful to students
• Question to students: why would it make a difference to you to see stickers?
• Advisory support, deciding your future, someone who may know more about applicable issues for LGBT students
o Experience with coming out as a professor- no negative reactions particularly, but at Univ. Wisconsin there are no domestic partner benefits- University created a position to give partner a job to get health insurance: one of the reasons why he moved to Penn; many people in support of getting these benefits
o Overall experience is that if you’re a good professor with good research, etc, people will accept you and value you for your contributions as a colleague.
o Do you feel the need to “come out” to colleagues?
• Asked if he was married during the interview process
• Hated the idea of hiding or lying so answered honestly when asked
• Big challenge in coming out to grad students and mentees
• Never had major problem with it
- Never voted on constitution so we don’t actually need to vote on amendments
- Amendment 5: ESAC generally requires 4 main board positions to be in engineering school- we need to have a strong engineering focus so we decided to require the Chair and Social chair to be in engineering (easier to do social events with NSBE, SWE, SHPE since those groups don’t have equivalents in college sciences)
- Possibilities of committees instead of Professional, Social, Diversity outreach
- Co-chairs for exec chair, one of which should be required to be from engineering
- Important to have someone to put a face to the organization
- Need to change membership to include allies: interest in queer identity, science and/or technology
- Voted: unanimous to change constitution to include two co-chairs
- Elections: Monday December 8, 7:00 pm for board positions
- If you’re interested in running for a position, send email to questatpennexec@googlegroups.com
8:00 pm at Penn LGBT Center lounge
- QUEST history/background:
o Founded last May by Matt Feczko
o Queer Undergraduates in Engineering Science and Technology- name courtesy of Brian Wright
o Constitution developed by Matt and Alec Webley
o Website developed by Kelsey Hall
o Logo developed by Tamara Levy
o Corporate, professional, and external contacts – Vivian Huang and Frank Chinga
o NAGALSTP and OSTEM contacts
o Held first general body meeting September 23, 2008
o Advisors- Professors Mitch Marcus and Rob Carpick
o Corporate events, social event with other minority groups (extremely successful!)
o 2nd GBM is right now Yay
o 46 people on listserv!
- What do you want to see from QUEST? Comments from general body members
o More visibility within university
o Collaboration with different types of groups to get exposure from different angles
o Send out email to general engineering/science student population with information about QUEST (engineering departments): request to Joe Sun (cc with Prof. Marcus and Carpick)
o LGBT panel discussion for people in medicine (doctors, professionals, grad students, nurses, etc)
o Professional-oriented events- biotech, pharmaceuticals; less of typical types of events
o Interested in connecting with people like grad students, etc to find out about their experiences; social events
o PhD panel for Out in Grad School
- OSTEM: started in 2004 at Penn State, focused on corporate sponsorship Raytheon, Microsoft, Lockheed-Martin.
o Trying to create a national organization- QUEST will work with OSTEM to create network
- Planning: Diversity career fair event
- NSA, Barclays Capital coming next semester to do a diversity recruiting event!
- Prioritize goals: Awareness, through diversity recruiting (greater community) and social outreach (within the Penn community), professional outreach (connecting the two)
- Idea: game event with sports and nerd contests to promote awareness
- LGBTPM+ professionals in medicine; LGBTVMA vet association – contacts and events, both with students and doctors/vets etc. in the works
- Matt showed banner (HUGE/sweet)
- Number of out faculty in the engineering school: 2
- Rob Carpick: member of LGBT Center’s faculty affiliates (listed on CV)
o What does it mean to be “Professionally out”?
o Mitch: surprised that Penn faculty seems to be less liberal than he thought, extremely surprised by the lack of willingness (by professors) to be openly supportive of gay community.
o Not overwhelmingly heterosexual or homophobic, but seems as though you don’t discuss personal issues… formality in discussion among faculty within engineering and sciences. Engineers- removing personality from work relationships
o Should there be more LGBT professors in engineering? How important is having a “gay-friendly” sticker/button/etc?
• Access to faculty who you can talk to about LGBT concerns
• List of gay-friendly advisors, etc
• Let faculty know why it matters if you’re accepting to students
• Could be more difficult for faculty if they’re not tenured- after about 6 years in university your accomplishments are evaluated and possibly let go- if you get tenure you can never be fired- feel vulnerable as an assistant professor
• Wisconsin LGBT group gave out stickers for friendly professors
• Many faculty don’t know about opportunities to let people know
• Mitch: we should let faculty know that this would be useful to students
• Question to students: why would it make a difference to you to see stickers?
• Advisory support, deciding your future, someone who may know more about applicable issues for LGBT students
o Experience with coming out as a professor- no negative reactions particularly, but at Univ. Wisconsin there are no domestic partner benefits- University created a position to give partner a job to get health insurance: one of the reasons why he moved to Penn; many people in support of getting these benefits
o Overall experience is that if you’re a good professor with good research, etc, people will accept you and value you for your contributions as a colleague.
o Do you feel the need to “come out” to colleagues?
• Asked if he was married during the interview process
• Hated the idea of hiding or lying so answered honestly when asked
• Big challenge in coming out to grad students and mentees
• Never had major problem with it
- Never voted on constitution so we don’t actually need to vote on amendments
- Amendment 5: ESAC generally requires 4 main board positions to be in engineering school- we need to have a strong engineering focus so we decided to require the Chair and Social chair to be in engineering (easier to do social events with NSBE, SWE, SHPE since those groups don’t have equivalents in college sciences)
- Possibilities of committees instead of Professional, Social, Diversity outreach
- Co-chairs for exec chair, one of which should be required to be from engineering
- Important to have someone to put a face to the organization
- Need to change membership to include allies: interest in queer identity, science and/or technology
- Voted: unanimous to change constitution to include two co-chairs
- Elections: Monday December 8, 7:00 pm for board positions
- If you’re interested in running for a position, send email to questatpennexec@googlegroups.com
