Roles in the PGSC

Spokespeople

PGSC spokespeople work to facilitate PGSC operations, field general questions and concerns from the grad student body, and communicate with the department chair about the work of the PGSC. Some key roles of the spokespeople involve facilitating PGSC elections, organizing and running PGSC meetings, and compiling and sending newsletters.

Faculty Meeting Rep

My main responsibility is to attend Faculty Meetings and determine which news is relevant for the PGSC and the graduate student body overall.  I then write up a report for the newsletters. 

GPSS Senators

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) is a representative body for graduate students at UW and serves many purposes, including the organization of graduate student events, placing graduate student representatives on campus-wide committees, and advocating for policies that affect graduate students at the state and federal level. The GPSS website can be found at http://depts.washington.edu/gpss/about-gpss/. 

Climate and Diversity Committee Reps

"As members of the Department of Physics, the University of Washington and the global scientific enterprise, we share a responsibility to act ethically and professionally.  We strive to conduct ourselves in a professional manner that is welcoming to all and free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.  Our department values and welcomes individuals of diverse identities and characteristics." https://phys.washington.edu/code-conduct-uw-department-physics
The Climate and Diversity committee seeks to help our department community uphold the values stated in our code of conduct. The committee has faculty, graduate student, and undergraduate student representatives, and we welcome constructive input from anyone in the department. Any graduate students are welcome to reach out to us.

Colloquium Organizing Committee Rep

The colloquium organizing committee is tasked with finding speakers for weekly department-wide colloquia (as on the website here). The graduate student colloquium rep uses feedback from the graduate student body to identify and invite speakers to give colloquium, before faculty members on the committee exhaust all available colloquium slots. Up to three speakers per academic year - including one Jacobsohn lecturer - may be graduate-student invited. Then the rep will organize each speaker's visit/e-visit, and organize visit day events, such as paid dinners for participants, Q&A sessions, etc. 

Graduate Admissions Committee Rep

The Graduate Admissions Committee primary purpose is evident: its members review the graduate school applications the department receives each year. The applications are independently reviewed by multiple committee members,  with each member making a recommendation: from reject to strong admit with brief discussion of what parts of the application lead them to their conclusions. The chair then compiles these recommendations. 

In addition to participating in the review process, the PGSC Graduate Admissions Committee Representative is the point of contact for graduate students who have questions about any aspect of the admissions process. 

Social Chair

The social chair organizes social events for the physics graduate student body. The scale and character of these events is up to the person in the role!

1xx Coordinating Committee Rep

We develop curriculum for 1XX, as well as provide support and organization for the course instructors. Basically "all things 1XX." (Notably this includes topics related to 1XX TAs.) The head of the committee is Kazumi Tolich. 

Current projects include revamping the 12X lab curriculum to have explicit and clear learning outcomes, and be more closely connected with other aspects of the course. We are also working on a long-term project to improve exam preparation resources for students and instructors alike.

Graduate Program Committee Reps

We work on all things related to the physics PhD program. The most consistent responsibility involved in this role is soliciting ideas from our peers for special topics courses to be offered each year, and talking about the existing slate of upper level graduate electives. 

Other responsibilities depend on specific charges from the department chair, which varies year to year. In the past the graduate program committee has been charged with redesigning the first year MRE system, reformatting qualifying exams, and discussing topics covered in first year classes.