These position descriptions were last updated for the 2017 GASA Elections, and are not ordered in any particular order of importance.
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Whenever someone passes their thesis qual or thesis defense, buy their favorite drink or treat (enough to share, within the given budget), and help them celebrate in the lounge along with everyone else. Time commitment isn’t too bad.
Create a regular-meeting group to discuss recent research and progress and give practice talks.
The AstroTours directors are primarily responsible for managing the other executive members to pull off each month’s tour. The main non-management responsibilities are to identify the speaker, help them identify a topic and practice their talk, advertise the upcoming event through relevant channels, book the room for the event, and MC the talk at the tour, including moderating the question period. Directors liase with the planetarium director, volunteer coordinator, telescope operator, refreshments coordinator and demo director to ensure all parts of the event will run smoothly. In addition, directors may be partially or wholly responsible for additional special events throughout the year like Earth Hour or the Keynote Lecture, though these often mimic the responsibilities of a regular tour on a larger scale. FInally, directors serve as the first point of contact for anyone interested in coordinating with AstroTours in some way.
This job involves collecting and organizing volunteers for the monthly AstroTours, as well as the two annual large events. Specifically, the volunteer manager sends out emails to call for volunteers before each Tour, instructs the volunteers as to their duties, arranges training for the volunteers where necessary, arrange volunteer lunches and provides support to the AstroTour Directors. The time commitment is a couple hours per tour, time spent attending the tours themselves, and a few extra hours per annual event.
Description for GRAND MASTER OF TELESCOPES AND ALL THINGS TELESCOPE RELATED (GMOTATER):
General description: organize the telescope observing portion of the AstroTours
Each month:
Choose targets for AstroTour night sky observations, add these to the AstroTour volunteer sheet
Make sure volunteers are trained for their telescopes, know their target, and know when / where to show up
Help set up / take down telescopes during the tour, and debug any telescope problems. Make sure portable telescopes have working batteries. Set up signs with the targets, stepping stools, flags / pylons for safety hazards on the balcony.
Have backup plans for cloudy / rainy observing nights - usually some combination of stellarium, showing off SkySafari plus, looking at CN tower (please please please don’t look at people changing in the lakeshore condos)
Shake fist angrily at clouds, lament loudly that you are cursed to anyone who will listen
One offs:
Help plan and organize the telescope portions for the Earth Hour and Keynote tours
Attend AstroTour exec meetings
It probably works out to ~5-6 hours per month, 3-4 on the tour and ~2 to train people and choose targets.
The AstroTours Planetarium Director is responsible for ensuring the smooth operation of the planetarium during an AstroTour. Specific duties are to 1) train the planetarium show presenter, 2) organize and attend the practice show, 3) create the Eventbrite page for ticket reservations, and 4) print and hand out tickets to the non-reserved shows. The planetarium director is not expected to present the show, but may be required to do so if no volunteer is found. To avoid this, the planetarium director should work with the personnel director to find a volunteer presenter at least two weeks in advance.
In regular circumstances, this position should require no more than 4 hours per month, mostly in the week leading up to an AstroTour.
This position may potentially be expanded into becoming a GASA Planetarium Rep for the department, which would probably involve helping the department make decisions about the planetarium.
Pre-requisites: none, but familiarity with the planetarium software (Uniview 2.0) is an asset
It involves making sure the interactive demos are functional, there is somebody in charge of them for each astro tour and that they know how to use it. If we can’t find a volunteer, they should be able to (in general) fill in for one of the demo volunteers. The interactive demos are the WorldWide Telescope, software using the Xbox Kinect to “swim” across the universe with your arms’ motion. The other one is the Oculus Rift’s “game” Titans of Space where you go around the solar system, as an astronaut inside the virtual reality.
Manage the AstroTours email account (daily), the AstroTours webpage (monthly), and the AstroTours Facebook page (monthly). Includes adding pages for new tours, updating the past tours section, and updating the exec roster once a year. The backend might be wordpress.
The filmographer gathers the filming equipment a day or two before the AstroTour, shows up ~ 15-30 minutes prior to the talk to set up and find a good seat, uses a simple video program to stitch the film files together, and posts to YouTube. I think the hours are comparable to the average AstroTour job.
Buy refreshments for AstroTours and set them up on the 15th floor of MP near the stairs to the telescopes for after the talk.
Time commitment: One day per month, on the first Thursday of the month. There are a couple of special events on Saturday, which replace the AstroTours talk for the month they are in.
Skills involved: Carrying groceries, setting up tables, talking to people.
Keynote Lecture is a special annual AstroTour event, where we invite a speaker from outside of our own department sometime over the summer. It’s quite similar to Earth Hour event but topic varies every year. The two Keynote Directors are responsible for organizing the event. The job requires the director to find the a speaker, make the budget, get it approved, advertise, and make sure that the event runs smoothly.
As AstroTours photographer, your job is to take photos of everything interesting during our monthly events. This includes the public talk, telescopes, planetarium, etc. After the event, you’ll need to upload a few of the photos to our social media pages (Instagram and Flickr) as well as the AstroTours Google Drive. The position is not very demanding; you’ll need to attend each event and spend about an hour or so afterwards editing and uploading the photos.
Following the 2017 GASA Elections and subsequent Fall Meeting, this person is also the GASA Photographer and can provide head-shots for GASA, using the photography backdrop downstairs.
Graduate students are scheduled to have a dinner with invited colloquium speakers, usually every week. Your task is to find a host, who will then find a venue and handle the actual logistics of the dinner. Your job is to make sure it runs smoothly and be the backup host (as you will end up being many times) in case no one else is willing to take up the job. You should also make sure the hosts are aware of their budget and scheduling constraints. While the host coordinates with the invited guest and the students joining for dinner, you will coordinate with the administrative staff and the host in dealing with the scheduling and budget constraints and any other relevant information as it comes.
Needs revamping; faculty counterpart no longer exists/has been subsumed into Chris Matzner’s job as Grad Chair
Job duties: This person sends Lillian orders for colloqium coffee and cookies when supplies are low in stock. Before colloqium, this person makes two carafes of coffee and one of hot water for tea, as well as grabbing some cookies from the lounge shelves.
Time commitment: minimal, but should be someone regularly in AB to check the inventory.
Skills required: sending emails to Lillian for purchasing cookies, pressing a button and waiting five minutes for a coffee cycle, checking the coffee and cookie supply.
The GASA Tea-Masters are tasked with hosting GASA Tea every Tuesday at 4:10 pm in the AB Lounge. They also select a poem each week to include in the tea announcement email. The job requires roughly 2 hours per week; 1 hour to pick a poem and send the email, and 1 hour for tea itself. Tea-Masters also select and purchase teas on their own. Expenses are recouped over the year via donations, and GASA will step in if there’s a shortfall. Skills required: appreciating tea and being able to pick something yummy, sitting around and chatting, and being able to pick a workplace-appropriate poem each week, often relevant to the weather, current events, space, etc.
The CUPE Representative’s primary responsibility is to serve as the liaison between GASA members and CUPE Local 3902 (the Union Local representing TAs and CIs at UofT). Typical duties of the CUPE Rep. involves engaging members in Union activities, communicating important Union information, handling grievances if/when they arise, and assisting members in understanding their rights and responsibilities as CUPE members. The CUPE Rep. acts as the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics Steward, and must attend monthly Stewards’ Council meetings which are 3 hours in duration. The CUPE Rep. should have good communication skills, and ideally be a person who people can feel comfortable raising personal/confidential Union matters with.
As GSU rep your main duty is to attend monthly GSU meetings and vote on various proposals/initiatives affecting the Graduate Student Union as a whole and your department in particular. Time commitment of this job is dependent on the level of involvement you wish to have. A minimum of 3/4 hours a month is required to attend the monthly meetings but there are plenty of opportunities to sit on peripheral committees set up to address a wide range of issues affecting the grad student body.
Since having the position there hasn’t been a single building committee meeting, nor have I been contacted in relation to the position. We will still need to put a name forward, but because this is a University committee, not a department committee, there is no guarantee it will meet.
The CASCA representative’s main duty is to represent the views and concerns of graduate astronomy students in the department. As a member of CASCA’s Graduate Student Committee the representative should strive to collaborate with representative’s of other departments on ways to improve the graduate student experience. This will include participation in organizing the graduate student workshop at the annual CASCA meeting and possibly conducting polls within their department.
Important: Prospective reps should be willing to travel to the annual CASCA meeting
The GASA Webmaster is responsible for maintaining the operation of the GASA website. Specific duties are to update the site with new information, such as names and photos, as needed. This job is not particularly time-consuming, as it isn’t time-sensitive.
Pre-requisites: Knowledge of modern web standards (HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript) and libraries (JQuery, Bootstrap); familiarity with PHP/SQL is an asset
Compile material and drum up contributions for comedic newsletter, due out in early December of the year. (though you should start trying to get people to submit things ASAP because it is kind of like pulling teeth.) Work with the GASA President to select an Editor who will also do a lot of the work. Significant time commitment in the fall; need to be good at breaking knees, working with software for laying out newsletter-type things (Photoshop has been used in the past I think), being able to strike the balance between funny and professional, etc.
The Social Committee’s primary recurring responsibility is organizing the annual department Christmas party, but members also help coordinate other social events like pizza dinners and board game nights. The main time commitments are a few hours of planning for each event, plus being on hand for the duration of the event itself. Some skills required for the position can be acquired after taking it, like learning to fill out reimbursement claims or finding the main administrative points of contact for each branch of the department. While not explicitly a skill, members should enjoy socializing with their peers and be able to effectively delegate tasks so no one member of the committee is overwhelmed with planning. Members should also have a variety of social preferences (e.g. daytime vs evening events, alcoholic vs non-alcoholic events), so that events aren’t too narrowly focussed on a particular demographic of students.
The Social Committee should also curate a social calendar, so while the committee itself will organize some events, they can also coordinate with other graduate student events (like paint night, intramural team games or pub nights) to give students an easy place to find the particular events which might interest them. This would also help the committee plan events well in advance.
The Health and Safety Committee rep serves as a point of first contact for graduate student safety concerns related to the department. The rep also attends the regular meetings of the Health and Safety Committee (2-3 times a year), to bring forward graduate student concerns. Finally, the rep is charged with ensuring that graduate students who work as TAs complete the mandatory online health and safety training required of all university employees
This committee works figures out what GASA needs to be employable graduates and works with Suresh to put on professional development workshops (academic and non academic). 3-4 people.
The Qual Committee is made to be a voice for the students with regards to how the Qual is being changed. It involves meeting with the profs working on qual changes (Chris, Renee and Ray so far), and try to make the case of what the qual should be, what is currently working and what isn’t.
This job will be fairly important this upcoming year, as the Profs want to push some major structural changes, which I’m not sure all of the students agree with. We haven’t put that much time into it so far this year (it was hard getting the profs to meet during the summer) - there was time sending emails, making a poll about Qual preferences, talking to students, and one meeting with the Profs so far.
I think the current setup works well - having one upper year, and one lower year who hasn’t taken the qual yet to get opinions on both sides.
The Course Committee is tasked with monitoring how graduate students as an ensemble are progressing with their courses, how well the course offerings are meeting student needs, and general levels of satisfaction with course offerings, and then using that information to connect with the department in the spring to help inform course planning for future years. Time commitment is fairly minimal, requiring a few hours in Fall/Spring to put together a survey, analyze the data, and write a brief report to send to the Department Chair. Skills involved: some understanding of writing unbiased surveys, making plots, and report-writing.
Survey GASA on our mental health needs and to determine what workshops would be useful. Try to organize a workshop every semester or so based on that information. Ideally should have close contact with the Dunlap Diversity Committee, which runs DiversiTea events and also puts on workshops, which often overlap with the MHC’s goals. Time commitment is fairly minimal. Topics often covered: imposter syndrome, work life balance, stress management, etc.
The Mediation Committee (or Justice League) is a reactionary mechanism intended to step in when something goes wrong. This can be a dispute between students and faculty, dissatisfaction among students with something the department is doing (or not doing), etc. Sometimes a Justice League intervention results in the creation of a new committee to deal with the issue proactively (such as the Course Committee and the Qual Committee). The Justice League also surveys students on their financial situation each December, compares to previous years and other institutions, and makes a recommendation to the department as to whether or not the stipend should be increased and by how much. The time commitment varies widely: often no time at all, several hours a week or more when the stipend report is being researched and prepared, and sometimes a few hours a week when an active situation requiring intervention comes up. Skills used in this job: diplomacy, conflict de-escalation/resolution (rarely), research skills, making plots, and report writing.
The Secretary attends all GASA meetings and faculty meetings, takes notes, and distributes them to GASA (via email and posting on the GASA wiki). The Secretary is also responsible for all of the President’s duties in his/her absence.
As treasurer, you will be responsible for GASA’s finances, including writing reimbursement checks, submitting head grant forms (to get financing from the GSU), and in general keeping records (including monthly expense reports) of financial transactions and budgets that will help GASA in making money-related decisions. In recent years the job has gotten a fair bit easier, since with the move away from grad student-purchased refreshments, the volume of checks you have to write has dropped significantly. Realistically, you’re looking at a couple of hours work per month.
The job of the President (or Co-President) is to sit in at faculty meetings, represent graduate student interests to the faculty, handle political issues involving the faculty and grad student needs, help the Treasurer draft the budget, organize the New Student and Prospective Student Pub Nights along with parts of the prospective student visit, chair meetings, ultimately make sure people are doing their jobs, handle and delegate disputes that come up, and generally run the organization and serve as the outward face of the graduate astronomy students. The President (or Co-President) also chairs and leads GASA interviews with faculty candidates during a faculty search, and then writes a report summarizing GASA’s preferences at the end of the interviews. The time commitment varies, but can range from several hours a week to just a few hours a month. Skills required: should be personable, professional, reasonably organized, possess some diplomatic skills, and be excellent at delegating the hard work to everyone else.
GASA Paint Master is responsible for organizing the GASA paint night every so often. This projected started over the summer with 7-9 attendees per session. So far it’s have happen every 5 weeks or so. The Paint Master’s job is to provided all the supplies that is required for the event (they will be reimbursed by GASA). We have only used watercolours because they are easy to clean up. They need to organize the event and make sure it runs smoothly and there are no accidents. It doesn’t require lot of time commitment.
The GASA ambassador to the undergraduate astronomy union (AU) exists as a liaison between GASA and the AU. They will attend AU meetings when permitted, act as intermediaries, and represent AU interests to GASA and GASA interests to the AU. Skills involved: diplomacy, some familiarity with undergrads and their needs. This job may involve close collaboration with the GASA Presidents, who are ultimately responsible for all GASA diplomacy within the department.