Georgios Laskaris, current president of the Duke Physics Graduate Student Organization (GSO), submitted an update on the activities of the graduate students during the 2010-2011 school year. His update includes notes about: * The Graduate Student seminar, a weekly gathering of students in the department * GSO activities in Duke University's Graduate and Professional Student Council * Information about GSO Ombuspersons * GSO Weekly Tea Times * Prospective Students and Open House Week * Department T-Shirt Info * The GSO Mentoring Program * The 2010 - 2011 Graduate Student Survey * The GSO Executive Committee
Graduate Student Seminar The Graduate Student Seminar is a weekly lunch event where graduate students present research talks to an audience of their peers. This seminar is a good venue to give practice talks before prelim exams and an excellent way to keepabreast of research performed in the department. There is an informal atmosphere where questions and discussions are encouraged. To meet the interest of most of the graduate student body, students working on a variety of fields were invited. These fields include high energy, nonlinear dynamics, neutrino physics, atomic physics, medium energy physics, condensed matter and optics. Half of the speakers were working on experimental projects and half on theoretical calculations. Special talks this year included Dr. Dan Pirjol, a particle physicist who now works at J.P. Morgam Chase Bank, discussing interest rate modeling for physicists. The ultimate goal of GSS is to provide a platform for students to practice their oral skills, inspire new ideas and prepare them for the challenges after graduate school. Huaixiu Zheng was the seminar Chair during the Fall semester and Sean Finch during the Spring semester. GSO in GPSC GSO representatives in Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) bring the voice of physics graduate students to the council and keep physics students informed about the important decisions that are taken. GPS council has General Assembly (GA) meetings every other weektodetermine and solvevarious issues pertaining to graduate student life. These activities include basketball “campout”, parking, student insurance, computer training from OIT and budget approval for various graduate student activities and communities on campus. GSO representatives have the right to vote for the executive board members and chairs of different programs of GPSC. GSO representatives and physics students played an important in GSPC during this academic year. Wangzhi Zheng and Qiujian Ye are the GSO representatives in GPSC. Helping out the department! GSO has numerous students who try to help the department in various aspects. Abe Clark who was the newsletter Chair acted as the intermediary between the department newsletter staff and the graduate students. He tried to get people to submit stories or information for publication as well as to promote the Facebook and Flickr pages for Duke Physics. Who is an ombudsperson? GSO decided to enforce the ombudsperson institution within the physics department. Three students were appointed at this position representing both genders and different cultures. An ombudsperson is someone to whom you can talk confidentially should you want advice on how to resolve a conflict within the Physics Department. He or she can help you consider what options you may have and help you evaluate those options. Although these volunteer ombudspeople have no formal training, they treat any conversations confidentially and do their best to assist students with resolving issues. The GSO hopes to continue to find volunteers to fill this important role in future years. The ombudspersons for this academic year were: Kristine Callan, Yingyi Zhang and Sukrit Sucharitakul. It's time to socialize! New institutions in departmental life During this academic year GSO introduced new institutions in departmental life. One of them is the departmental tea (usually Thursday afternoons at 3:30pm), which aims at bringing faculty, postdocs, graduate students and undergrads together for a relaxing time to socialize and talk to people in different groups while sharing good food, coffee and tea. This event has been well attended by graduate students and faculty. Open House Week Physics department and GSO organized the Open House Week. Many graduate students participated in the activities. A reception hosted by Prof. Chris Walter and Prof. Kate Scholberg and a house party hosted by Hannah Guilbert took place among numerous other social events. The recruitment rate was impressively high and the open house week turned out to be a huge success for physics department as well as for Duke University. GSO worked closely with the Associate Chair for Teaching (Prof. S. Teitsworth) , the DGS (Prof. R. Palmer) and the DGS assistant (Mrs. Donna Ruger) in this effort. Hannah Guilbert is the Social Activities Chair. New Department T-shirt! The GSO and the undergraduate Society of Physics Students held a departmental wide competition for a new design of the Physics Department T-shirt. Five designs were submitted and after an impressive participation the physics department members chose the T-shirt which brought the department to the world beyond the Physics Building. Ben Ceriowas the winner of the competition. This design has travelled over the oceans to Asia, Europe, and beyond with a number of alumni requesting for their t-shirts!
Mentoring Program
Each incoming graduate student was paired up with two upper class students. Before the new students arrived on campus, they were given the opportunity to communicate with their mentors and ask questions about Durham and Duke. Mentor-Mentee dinners were conducted twice per semester, with a group Thanksgiving dinner in the Fall. Yang Yang was the coordinator for the mentoring program this year. Sports A soccer team was recently formed in Physics Department in which faculty members, graduate students and REU-TUNL summer students participate. Although the soccer team is new, they managed to clinch third place in IMF summer league playing against other teams on campus. For those of you who are not big fans of soccer, numerous physics students officially participated in the "campout" last year, winning them season tickets for the Duke men's basketball games. Graduate Student Survey The annual Duke Physics Graduate Student Organization (GSO) survey was conducted from 5 Jun 2011 to 19 Jun 2011. In tandem with Duke University’s transition to an improved, user-friendly interface, the GSO has adopted Qualtrix as its survey tool. As compared to the previous survey, this survey has witnessed increased participation. While the number of survey questions has been streamlined to avoid repetition, an open-ended option for comments at the end of every section has been provided to allow for additional student feedback. Student sentiment on recent changes such as the removal of qualifiers and the new academic curriculum has been solicited. The survey results were reported to the chair and will be presented in a faculty meeting. Willie Ong is the election commissioner and the organizer of the Graduate Student Survey. The GSO Executive committee The GSO executive committee was elected from the graduate student body. The Executive committee of the academic year of 2010-2011 includes Georgios Laskaris (President), Christopher Coleman-Smith (Vice-President), Taritree Wongjirad (Treasurer) and Class representatives, Joel Greenberg, Abhijit Mehta, Seth Cohen, Ben Cerio, Kevin Claytor and Yang Zhang. Board Executive committee meetings involving the appointed chairs of GSO were held monthly and records are kept during all meetings according to the laws described in the GSO constitution. The records are published by the technical Chair Junyao Tang on the Web page of the organization.
Department of Physics
