Minutes for October 9, 2006:
Attendence: 10

5:00pm: Meeting convened. Pizza and breadsticks arrived (thanks Corey, Ashton!), and was enjoyed by all.

5:30pm: Elections were held. All current officers chose to run for re-election, and no other students had interest in running, so the races were uncontested. The SLC voted to re-elect the current officers to another term by a vote of 10-0.

Your 2006-2007 OU SLC officers are:
   President: Elaine Godfrey
   Treasurer: Corey Potvin
   Secretary/Webmaster: Nate Snook
   Outreach Coordinator: Ashton Robinson

5:35pm: Discussion of outreach activities. A science night is coming up on Nov. 3, targeted at children age 4-12, hosted at the university's natural history museum. We discussed the feasibility of constructing the tornado machine before that time, and determined that it would depend on the availability of tools and building space (i.e. Kenny's garage).

In the event that we couldn't get the tornado machine built by Nov. 3rd, Laura suggested a smaller, simpler design using a cardboard box that children and their parents could bulid at home. Also, the idea of a simple soda-bottle tornado (using two 2-liter bottles taped together with a washer or similar thing in the center to limit the size of the hole) was discussed as a more hands-on alternative.

The SLC expressed interest in possibly bringing kids in for a tour of particular areas of the NWC building, as well as giving weather and/or CASA-related presentations of some sort. This tour could also include the robots in the EE department.

We discussed the posibility that high school students might be interested in CASA and/or the NWC, and the possibility of outreach to them, as well as possible outreach to industry partners (such as Channel 9). E-mails discussing these possibilities in greater detail will be / are being circulated through the SLC mailing list.

5:55pm: Discussion of Social Activities. Ideas for social activities included a movie night and/or game night, possibly to be held at the NWC to take advantage of the large flat-screen monitors available. There will be an opportunity to nominate movies as this event approaches. Currently, we are planning for mid-November.

6:05pm: Corey reported on the CASA Student Journal. Brian Donovan (from UMass) does not have enough time to spearhead this project, so Corey will be helping to organize it. He is looking for work that can be included, particularly student work that is interdisciplinary or involves participants from multiple CASA universities. One challenge will be to make sure that schools other than the core group (OU, CSU, UMass, and Mayaguez) are sufficiently represented.

6:15pm: Elaine reported on the upcoming ethics training session. Ethics training is becoming more and more widely accepted and required among scientific fields--CASA will be participating in an ethics training session, likely to be held Jan. 11th and 12th (the week before the AMS Annual Meeting, and the week before classes begin), and CASA students are strongly encouraged to attend.

6:20pm: Meeting adjourned.