Launch Day 2008

Planning information for the 2008 Launch Day.

In 2008, the students are arriving very gradually, so trying to do all the forms at once doesn't seem like the best idea. But there are things that are best gone over as a big group, and we want to have an official “You are now a BADGrad” day.

• 10:30 - 11:00: Talk about residency, health insurance, mentoring and advising system, etc. Need gurus. Also have bagels to munch on. Postmortem: was a bit slow, not many questions. Had some brochures which next time should be in the welcome packet. Should have started with an icebreaker.
• 11:00 - 12:00: Q&A about classes with students and faculty. Postmortem: discussion covered topics a bit more broadly but that's ok. Should have invited faculty sooner. Distinction between this and the previous section seemed a bit artificial in retrospect. Could probably have done this and previous in one chunk in an hour.
• 12:00 - ~1:00: Lunch at Faculty Club. Postmortem: seemed to go well, probably helpful to have a big group. Didn't make a formal reservation, but let them know we'd be coming and got everything charged directly to a dept. account.
• ~1:15 - 2:00: Talk about fun stuff to do in Berkeley. Postmortem: also invited the postdocs to drop by, and several of them did. Postdocs always like to give advice about what to do in grad school so that's good. “Fun stuff” talk didn't happen too extensively; things were kind of rambling and fun, which was good for after lunch. Also asked Bill to come up and take pictures for board. Union guy came at the end; jobs meeting meant he had to leave quickly.
• 2:00 - ~4:00: Jobs meeting (fixed in time!). Meet rest of grad students in course of this. New students can likely leave early if desired since their jobs are easy to work out. Postmortem: having this as part of the new-student orientation seems like a good idea – able to introduce the new students to everyone else. And the jobs meeting does useful stuff but is generally fairly low-key.
• 5:00: Swing by Jupiter for pizza and beer. Postmortem: jobs meeting got out around 3:20, which gave people a good chunk of time to go do their thing. Wasn't quite clear that this was optional. Seemed like a good way to end the day.

• Scheduling lunch at the Faculty Club wasn't bad. You can get away without a formal reservation; if you have an account number, you can just show up and talk to the person at the register and set up a tab with the account number at the bottom. It doesn't hurt to contact the Catering Manager and let them know your plans, but it probably wouldn't be necessary. Reserving a room costs $100 (as of 2008) and will probably get you better service. There are pretty big tables so you probably don't need to worry about that.
• Plan an icebreaker for the new students.
• This year the new students ended up introducing themselves like 7 times as various new people came in the room. Would be kind of nice (but not huge) to avoid that.

• The first-years (duh)
• A few faculty and grads for the classes Q&A
• A few grads more to talk about fun stuff.
• Someone to volunteer to talk about residency, SHIP, etc.
• Someone (Bill) to take pictures for the board.
• Mentors for the lunch.
• ~All grads for the jobs meeting.

• Bagel breakfast with coffee.
• Get students together to talk over Stuff To Do In The Bay Area.
• Could have a Department Intro, but the Chair will be away.
• A bit on the course offerings and choosing classes to take
  • Have faculty and students present
  • The mechanics of signing up for classes
  • What's offered in F08
  • What to expect from grad classes, how to allocate time more generally
  • Planning the first two years
• Lunch
  • Faculty club?
  • But probably should be faculty-free so we can tell them all the ways in which the profs lied.
• A session or sessions on residency, health insurance, all that fun stuff.
• We'll also hold the jobs meeting on the orientation day, which will have the byproduct of introducing the new class to most of the rest of the grads.
• Someone from the Grad Assembly wanted to come by the 2007 orientation to blab about the GA. He apparently came and handed out some info but it wasn't anything too interesting.
• Take pictures for the 6th floor board? Might be kind of fun.
• A low-key social event at the end of the day.
• Perhaps two get-out-and-about events in the afternoon? (Two since we have a largeish class.)
• Physics orientation stuff: see the schedule.
• (ex post facto:) Invite postdocs to introduce themselves and meet the newbies
• (ex post facto:) Keep on telling them their various obligations in near future: GSI orientation, 300, payroll and computer forms.

People should go to the SWPS BBQ between Birge and LeConte, which is on the 25th from 6 to 8 PM.

If things finish by the early afternoon, we could plan, say, two little outings that the students could optionally go on. Such as

• That cupcake place on Cedar
• Indian Rock
• Gelato
• Fire Trail walk. Might be a bit long.

Postmortem: didn't do these. The day was full as it was so no regrets there.