PACT meeting – 2022-02-11

Old Business

• Town Hall – Mental Health (Sharon & Liam)

• • Next steps: add Liam to monthly meeting
  • Ask Jackie around going through Cornell health to get a referral → MANTRA
  • Expectation for services → referral process vs. on-demand help 
• Furniture? (Sharon & Natalie)
  • Need to request furniture spending with professor (?) – Michael Weissman
  • Next steps: reach out to Natalie, figuring out how much to purchase furniture/how much of our budget do we want to use, Anne & Sharon to get onboarded onto financial dashboard
    • Fridge?
• PhD involvement in hiring update (Emily/Dan)
  • Mor & Nicki figuring out PhD role in Tech hiring
  • Tech has diff hiring process per department but 1 tech committee 
  • Trying to get students involved in: 
    • PhD hosts (make sure faculty hosts select PhD hosts in-advanced) 
    • Rn Katherine sends feedback posts post talk – additional feedback collected by PhD students that is separate from the overall feedback form
    • Docs to help Phd host/liaison and those who are interested in interacting with faculty
  • Providing food for talks to encourage more PhD students to go
  • Dialogue around faculty hiring process, diversity, and what department are looking for (perhaps something that happens in town hall)
  • Pushing reporting on the pipeline 

New Business

• Social Agenda for the Semester (Marianne)
  • Social hour update – to start next week (17th) – outdoor pending on weather
  • Ideas for other events
    • Pottery/Wheel Throwing
      • “This is why we would recommend booking a private class for your group. It would just be for the 10 of you and it would also allow you to choose the day and time (as long as we can accomodate:) you would like to run your event.

The cost for 10 people is $900. It includes 1 instructor, unlimited amount of clay and the firing and glazing of one piece per person. Additional work can be fired and glazed by us for a $10 fee/extra piece. We will email you 3-4 weeks after your workshop when the box with all your guests’ creations is ready to be picked up. Everything will be food, microwave and dishwasher safe.”

• Candle-making
  • “Thanks for reaching out! Private event pricing starts at $700 which includes up to custom candles for 12 people, 2 hours exclusive use of our space, and ability to bring drinks/food for your guests. Additional participants can be added for $60 per person. We can accommodate up to 22 people.

Alternatively, if you wanted to just privatize the session but will not be bringing food/decor, you can just book the amount of seats in your party at our regular rate of $45/person + tax. There is a minimum of 12 people to do this and you can BYOB.”

• Movie?
• Other?
• Chocolate making! (https://www.nymetroparents.com/article/chocolate-making-classes-nyc)
• Cocktail/mocktail class
• Cooking class
• Group dance classes! / for exercises?
• PhTea lounge – stocking it up 
• Next steps: survey, brainstorm ideas, send out interests

• • PhD-only listserv (town hall agenda item) (Sharon)
  • Surveys/Pulse (Marianne) – getting input from whole PhD Tech community 
    • Physical survey/box
    • Incentivize prizes/food – gift cards
  • Increased Gym access (Liam)
    • Looking to see if possible to get fitness affiliate at other universities in the city

• Emailing Daniel for thoughts/help

• • Monthly wellness reimbursement program (stipend)
  • Faculty money?