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We are currently in the planning stages of the 6th annual Front Range Student Ecology Symposium. We can always use more volunteers to help with this effort, so please contact Kevin Gurney or Nicole DeCrappeo if you are interested. You can e-mail the entire volunteer group by sending to: To get a sense of what the Symposium is all about, take a peek at the Symposium homepage for this year. Last year's homepage is also available. Currently, the major tasks are:
3 organizational meetings have occurred (meeting #1, meeting #2, meeting #3). Notes from these meetings are as follows: 1) Tom Hobbs has volunteered to act as faculty advisor. Thank you Tom. 2) Who is doing what? Here is a potential list of activities with people attached (last year's volunteer and this year's volunteer):
The key is to contact last year's volunteer and find out what exactly needs to be done……..or contact Nicole or Kevin G. about it. Right now, a few key things need doing: budget formation (Nicole, Erin with advice from Todd W.), fundraising (Gericke is off to a great start), school contacts (Dan B. can help on contacts in addition to Lindsey C.). There also appears to be a need to get the advertising campaign started and this would benefit from a new logo design. 3) Date and room situation: The date is Wednesday, april 12th. We have a block of rooms in the north end of LSC, 2nd floor (230,222,224,227). One of these is large and will be where the keynote occurs (the morning of) and the others will be for the concurrent sessions, posters, and slide preparation. 4) Work on the keynote speaker should begin. A person has been designated to this task. A thought was to have a keynote and wrap-up speaker. Please propose speakers!! 5) Special sessions/workshops. This was well-attended last year and seems like a good idea to do again. This has been assigned as a separate task above. In addition to, "how to give a good talk" and a "jobs workshop" ideas were "Policy and Management" (panel or similar), "communicating Science to the Public", "How to write a good publication," and perhaps some sort of successful interdisciplinary research session. Ideas are welcome.6) Instead of a spearate session for undergrads one thought was to have a separate prize category for them. Instead of cash, perhaps a physical prize like a gift certificate (which could be donated by local business) or similar. 7) Web site update. Website is up and running though needs additional info. Minutes for the Dec. 9, 1999 FRSES meeting (sorry this is late...) Present: Kevin Gurney, Stewart Breck, Gericke Somerville, Brenda Moraska, Nicole DeCrappeo, Leigh Siderhurst, Tom Hobbs, Geneva Chong, Lindsey Christensen, Dave Gammon, Gillian Hadley, Carol Jacobs-Carre, Tamara HochstrasserReports: 1. General--the Symposium is scheduled for Wednesday, April 12, 2000. We have reserved 4 rooms on the 2nd floor of Lory Student Center. We will have 2 oral presentation sessions running concurrently (we have space and time for at least 48 talks), and posters will be displayed throughout the day. The event does not conflict with any Distinguished Ecologists visits or spring break for any of the participating universities. 2. Budget (Nicole)--Nicole DeCrappeo and Erin Lehmer will be putting the budget together so we can go before the ASCSU funding board in January (high priority!). In years past we have received about $1800 from ASCSU; this year we may request more.3. Fundraising (Gericke and Stewart)--we have received money or verbal commitments from NREL, GDPE (will match last year's contribution), Fish & Wildlife, and Civil Engineering (a new department!). The Rocky Mountain Chapter of ESA will contribute $300. Stewart is going to work on getting donations from private businesses. If anyone has a contact at an ecologically/environmentally-oriented business, please forward the business name, phone number, and contact name to him (swbreck@cnr.colostate.edu). We discussed how we could make donating money more advantageous to the sponsors. One idea was to stress that FRSES presenters are potential employees; another was to display posters with all the business logos.4. Most people in attendance thought we should not offer "Job Opportunities in Ecology" this year. However, Erin Lehmer, who could not make the meeting, later told me that she might be interested in organizing this. One of the problems last year (according to Todd Wellnitz) was that the event wasn't heavily advertised and consequently not well-attended. If we had a committed person, lots of advertising, and ran it concurrently with the Symposium, the event might be more successful. Comments are welcome (send to nicole@nrel.colostate.edu or emlehmer@lamar.colostate.edu).5. Sessions--Dan Binkley has suggested that we have a session for undergrads from a Conservation Biology class (5-10 undergraduates). The topic of undergraduate participation has come up several times, and the consensus seems to be that having a separate undergrad session might encourage more of them to give oral presentations. It was also suggested that we have an environmental ethics session to go along with the potential keynote speaker from the Philosophy department (see below).6. Advertising (Dave)--we will start advertising soon after the break, probably around the beginning of February (high priority!). People generally agreed that we should advertise more heavily in undergrad classes, and Dave is going to attend department meetings and talk to professors who teach fish & wildlife and biology/ecology courses. It was also suggested that we advertise at businesses outside of the university. Tamara reported that the LSC info desk has supreme power over the glass cases in the student center, and that we should reserve our week(s) soon in order to get our posters displayed in them. Dave also told me later that we can pay the poster people a small fee and they will blanket the campus with our posters.We will put up posters for the call for abstracts about 2 months before the Symposium. Abstracts will be due 1 month to 15 days before the event. 7. Logo--there was some discussion about changing the FRSES logo, but it seems a bit late to do it this year. However, the idea of running a logo contest was briefly discussed. We could have people contribute logos and then announce the winner during the Symposium. We could also run a contest for the best GDPE logo. Comments? Send to keving@atmos.colostate.edu or nicole@nrel.colostate.edu.8. Keynote Speaker (Tamara)--Tamara suggested Don Crosby from CSU's Philosophy department (http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Philosophy/phil3.htm#Crosby) as the keynote speaker, whose talk might be something along the lines of "What is Nature?" This drew a very positive response from most people at the meeting; many thought it would be a fresh change from keynote speeches that turn into just another ecology talk, as opposed to a summation of the event. Tom Hobbs also suggested NREL's Dave Swift (http://www.cnr.colostate.edu/RES/faculty.d/dms.html) and William Reibsame from CU's Geography department (http://www.Colorado.EDU/geography/people/faculty.html). We are still looking into having both an opening speaker and a closing speaker--Nicole is working on getting someone from outside the FRSES schools.9. School Contacts (Leigh)--Leigh has identified and contacted people from most of the participating schools.10. Workshops--Gillian and Carol will be working on workshops, which may be "How to give a good talk," and "How to make a good poster." The workshops will probably happen 1 month to 2 weeks before the Symposium.11. Reception--we need to reserve a time and place for the reception/party at the end of the event (Kristy--is this something you can look into?).12. In addition to fundraising to pay for the Symposium, we need to think about prizes for the contests (photo and talk winners). Stewart, would you be willing to take this on, as you are dealing with businesses, or should we put another person on this?Minutes for the Feb. 15, 2000 FRSES meeting at Avo's Advertising: The green flyers calling for abstracts have gone out. They have been posted mostly in departments and have been sent to the participating institutions. A poster run will be occurring next week (Dave G.: can you send Kevin G. an electronic version, please?). The poster service will be placing 40 posters. This will run for one week. A final poster run will begin on March 27th and run for three weeks which goes up to (and slightly past) the Symposium itself. This final run is primarily an announcement for the event while the previous two emphasize the call for abstracts. Kevin G. can make color versions given a publisher file. Nicole D. will be broadcasting an e-mail message to faculty and grad student lists. This will call for abstracts and mention that a request for judges will be coming (which Brenda M. will send later). It will be a simple bulleted e-mail referring people to the webpage for more details. It was agreed that we should do some announcing in departmental meetings as an effective way to spread the word. Some delegating needs to be done in the various deparments!! This is important for getting some classes moved over to the Symposium.Doug G. will take the responsibility for placing ads at KCSU (multiple announcements) and will connect with Leigh S. on getting the same done at participating institutions with radio stations. All of this correspondence should be cc'd to Dave G. If possible it would be great to have the contact people at other institutions do an e-mail similar to what Nicole D. is going to do here. Could Leigh S. get this going (perhaps send a copy of Nicole D.'s e-mail to the other institutions)? Ads should also be placed in the Collegian – Lara P. (not present) has volunteered to handle print ads and also suggested trying to get the Collegian to do an article on the symposium (late March?). We know that the ASCSU will cover the cost of two 4x4 ads in the Collegian. Lara P. should check with Nicole D. and Kevin G. about this. It may be good to run one soon with a call for abstracts then one right before the Symposium advertising the event. Workshops: It appears that we have two workshop topics available (One on powerpoint presentations by Laurie Ray in Business and one on giving a good talk by John Wiens). These will be on April 3rd in the rooms that we have saved in LSC. Gillian H. should continue to get the details hammered out for this as we would like to get it included in the advertising as soon as possible. It appears that it is too late for the poster run next week. This leaves very little time for advertising the workshops prior to their occurrence. We should try to get it into the e-mail broadcast that Nicole D. will be putting out. Gillian H. should send Kevin G., the times, titles, etc. ASAP to get this information up on the FRSES 2000 website. Fundraising: Stewart B. has had to do some revising of the sponsor letter in order to comply with CSU rules. There was general agreement on asking for sponsorship from the businesses that we have targeted. It was suggested that we try to hand deliver the letters for those we have contacts for to maximize response. Stewart B. will redraft the letter and get copies to those with contacts ASAP. We also need to harass the departments to get their $$ in. We have unnofficial news that Biology has chipped in money. Still waiting on Atmos, but considered likely. Reception: There seemed to be agreement on trying to start the reception in the U-club at 4:30. This would allow for food and drink until approximately 6:15 pm. At this time, we will move the reception across the hall into room 230. There is some work on having live music and perhaps alcohol at this stage of the reception. This requires signing a waiver and charging for alcohol. We could do this at cost or at a slight profit to cover other expenses. Kristy N. will be checking into the details of taking responsibility for the alcohol. We should be able to fit in all the talks before the wrap-up talk at 3:45, then the reception at 4:30 pm. Kevin G. should update the webpage to reflect these early decisions. Photo contest: Ronnie E. agreed to handle the photo contest. Kevin G. will make a note on the FRSES 2000 website about sending photos to her campus address by the Symposium deadline. (Ronnie, check out the website for details: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~ecosym/)Keynote and wrap-up speaker: Tamara H. has done a great job at getting two individuals to do these. We have Don Crosby as the keynote and Dan Binkley at the wrap-up speaker. Kevin G. will update the web page to reflect these and include the talk title etc. Abstract collation: Michelle L. will be handling this task. The abstracts go to an e-mail box on lamar. Kevin G. will make sure these get forwarded to Michelle L. Right now, the categories are those used last year plus a couple new ones. We can leave them as is or change them. Budget: The budget continues to be worked by Nicolel D., Erin L. and Kevin G. This needs to get in presentable form and brought before ASCSU as soon as possible.
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