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Committee Policies

Introduction

In order to increase transparency of Committee meetings and accomplishments, these policies are written out to minimize confusion about requirements about minute taking, requests for the website and my expectations for attendance, etc. I hope you find them useful.

Committee Guides

You can find condensed instructions for committee meetings and regulations (from the By-Laws and Robert's Rules of Order) by clicking here.   

Committee Chair's Guide

You can download the Committee Chair's Guide here.

Attendance

Students on Committees should make every effort to show up to monthly meetings. With up to seven graduate student members on any given committee, it is possible that some Committees will not find a time that is suitable for everyone. If you are unable to meet at regularly scheduled committee times, please let the VP Committee Affairs know. The VPCA will periodically check meeting minutes to see if members are not attending meetings. An explanation will be required for missing more than two meetings. If no valid explanation is available, a student will be taken off the committee in question. 

Minutes

While minute taking clearly varies between individuals and committees, there should be some common thread of outline and style in order to maximize readability, access, and information transfer. Remember that minutes are records not only for the graduate student community but also official records of Graduate Student Government business. As such, they should be somewhat formal.

To submit minutes for inclusion in the website, please go to the student login page, log in using the instructions there and submit your minutes using the link provided. Only Chairs and Secretaries can enter minutes. If you are not listed on the committee webpage as such, you will not be able to enter your minutes. 

Website Requests

Website page, form, event, and news requests will be happily taken. However, to help with the formatting and creating the right items, a bit of preparation on the part of the requesters is needed. First, browse through the site to make sure you know how Events and News items are shown. This will allow you to make the best presentation upon request. The following sections list the required items in any request.

Note: basic formatting, such as bold or italics is allowed. You can even write up your event in Word, using the standard template styles "Heading 2" and "Heading 3" to section your page ("Heading 1" is reserved). 

Events

  • Short Description (required) of 2-3 sentences to go on the front page or on a tooltip in the calendar
  • Long Description (not required) to go on its own page. This can in itself be a full fledged page
  • Starting date and time
  • Ending date and time
  • Location

News Items

  • Short Description (required) of 2-3 sentences to go on the front page
  • Long Description (not required) to go on its own page. This can in itself be a full fledged page
  • Date to publish
  • Date to stop publishing

Webpage

Please be aware that we are very reluctant to add anything to the main bar at the top (About Us, Events, Advocacy, etc.) as it would break the layout of the page, so please find a logical place to put it under one of those categories. Final consideration of where to put your requested page lies with the Webmaster.

  • Short Description (required) of 2-3 sentences that might be displayed in a parent folder
  • Where to put the page on the website, listing from the top menu down like a computer folder (e.g. Committees / Elections Committee / Mid-Semester Elections
  • The page itself. Again, this can be written in Word!
    • If there are any internal links to be added, you can add them through Word or just by typing out the address and having Word automatically change it to a link
    • Any files that should be placed on the webpage should be forwarded as well.

Forms

If you would like to gather information for a survey, a registration form, or something similar, you may request a form to be placed. Please note that the "Human Input Test" or more formally, the CAPTCHA test, will always be included to filter bot input. 

  • Email to which each form submission is to be emailed, and a summary excel file to be emailed at the end of the survey/registration period.
  • Fields to be included in the form, and whether they are required or not. For example, list "University ID, required" or, if not required, simply "Last Name" or "Email". For required items, best judgement will be used to determine what kind of validation to use. 
  • Location to place the form.
 

Media Attachments

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