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Meeting Minutes

2009

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November 12, 2009, 6:30pm

Members present: Ashley DePottey, Reid Sawtell, Justin Slepak, Tyler Schwartz, Colin Dalstra, Kekoa Kaaukala, Alex Van't Hof, Bryan Franklin, Ryan Gilles, Dustin Larson, Ryan Schneider

Excused members: Ken Vella

Membership committee:
- list of potential members was reviewed by general membership. All potential members were approved.
- tentative date for induction: December 3

Server committee:
- 3 people are currently listed as active members without belonging on a committee. Alex will contact them, ask them if they're still active members, and ask which committee they'd like to join.
- wiki has been created with the intent of having the officers record how the perform duties for future reference
- wiki can be found at http://www.csl.mtu.edu/www/upe/wiki/

Officer election for next semester:
- Tyler Schwartz nominated himself as secretary for next semester to replace Ashley DePottey. He was unanimously voted into office.

Presentation committee:
- Study session for C++, CS1131, and Data Structures have gone well.
- Monday, November 30, at 7:00pm another C++ study session will be held.

October 8, 2009, 6:30pm

Attendance: Hui Meen Nyew, Ken Vella, Dustin Larson, Nilufer Onder, Ryan Gilles, Justin Slepak, Tyler Schwartz, Ryan Schneider, Colin Dalstra, Kekoa Kaaikala, Bryan Franklin, Jun Ma, Reid Sawtell, Alex Van't Hof

ACM chapter:
--needs member count
--Tyler Schwartz and Ryan Gilles agreed to be back up officers
--Justin will get officers figured out before Tuesday and continue to stay in contact with Dr. Poplawski

Server committee:
--Active members list updated and posted

Presentation committee:
--will be putting on study sessions for C++, CS1121, CS1131, Data Structures
--upcoming Monday, Oct. 12 study session for C++ at 7pm Fisher 125
--upcoming Monday, Oct. 19 study session for CS1131
--general membership asked to come and help out
--Colin Dalstra joined committee

Speakers committee:
--Have list of potential speakers, looking for any suggestions from general membership
--Kanwal Rekhi is tentatively scheduled to speak to the CS dept at large on Monday, Oct. 26 at 5 pm
--Justin Slepak will take care of communicating with Dr. Ott for Rekhi's visit

Membership committee:
--Cathy is working on the list of potential members

Other New Business:
--tutoring has been requested in algorithms(?) and operating systems. No one volunteered.
--Any members who are currently not in a committee must join one.

Next meeting: Thursday, November 5, 6:30 pm

Minutes respectfully submitted by Ashley DePottey, UPE secretary

September 10, 2009, 6:30pm

Attendance: Alex Van't Hof, Dustin Larson, Nilufer Onder, Ken Vella, Justin Slepak, Ryan Schneider, Tyler Schwartz, Bryan Franklin, Jun Ma, Ryan Gilles, Kekoa Kaaikala, Ashley DePottey

Old Business

Officers:
-President: Justin Slepak
-Vice: Dustin Larson
-Treasurer: Ryan Schneider
-Secretary: Ashley DePottey
-Historian: Alex Van't Hof

New Business

Active Members
-have no list of current members
-will reconstruct list of active members using email list and CS dept info

Volunteer Officers for ACM
-following volunteered to act as officers for ACM group, pending info about membership dues
-President: Justin Slepak
-Vice: Alex Van't Hof
-Treasurer: Ryan Schneider

New Inductees:
-HR/Membership committee will get list from Cathy, start process of finding new members

Committees:
-all active members must belong to a committee
-all committees will have a meeting before next large-group meeting

-Presentation
--Chair: Dustin Larson
--Members: Ashley DePottey, Tyler Schwartz, Kekoa Kaaikala

-HR/Membership
--Chair: Ashley DePottey
--Members: officers, Dr. Onder, 2 outside faculty (per bylaws)

-Speakers
--Chair: Justin Slepak
--Members: Ryan Gilles, Jun Ma

-Server
--Chair: Alex Van't Hof
--Members: Bryan Franklin, Ken Vella

Next Meeting: Thursday, October 8, 6:30pm

April 4, 2009, 6:00pm

Members Present: Ashley DePottey, Ken Vella, Dr. Nilufer Onder, John Earnest, Bryan Franklin, Colin Dalstra, Alex Van't Hof, Jun Ma, Kekoa Kaaikala, Ryan Schneider, Bret Self, Nick Roth, Alex Nelson, Ryan Gilles, Justin Slepack, David Christensen, Dustin Larson

UPE Graduation Apparel: Nick Roth will be ordering 10 sets shortly. It should be here for graduation. They will be kept here for future years.

1121 Review Session: This will be the Sunday before Finals. Nick Roth will send out more detailed information.

Officer Elections: Alex Van't Hof nominated himself for Historian. Ryan Schneider nominated himself for Treasurer. Ashley DePottey nominated herself for Secretary. Dustin Larson nominated himself for Vice President. Justin Slepack nominated himself for President.

David Christensen made a motion, Nick Roth seconded the motion. 16 members present voted Yay. 0 members present voted Nay.

March 24, 2009, 6:00pm

People In Attendance: Nilufer Onder, Steven Vormwald, Justin Slepack, Robert Pastel, David Christensen, Ashley DePottey, Nick Roth, Kekoa Kaaikala, Pat Ranspach, Alex Van't Hof, Ryan Gilles, Colin Dalstra, Dustin Larson

Old Business:

Registration Session -The session did not get around to being planned. -David Christensen will put together a few notes in anticipation for doing this next Fall.

1121 Review Session -It will probably be the Sunday Night before Finals week -Email Nick Roth for details or to volunteer

New Business

Bonzai Brawl -Testers are needed -You can test the code if and only if you do not participate in the actual competition -Free food and t-shirt if you help out with testing AND help out on the day of the Brawl -Testing is March 31st. Email Nick Roth for details

Graduation -Cords and Stoles may be ordered from the UPE web site -Nick Roth is going to look at prices -If you are graduating, email Nick Roth so he knows how many to order

Dr. Onder made an announcement about the hiring that is going on for positions in the department.

Patrick Ranspach gave a presentation about short term memory and scrolling speed.

Meeting returned with exit code 0.

February 19, 2009, 6:00pm

Members in Attendance: Nick Roth, David Christensen, Reid Sawtell, Ryan Gilles, Colin Dalstra, John Earnest, Justin Slepak, Bryan Franklin, Scott Carrol, Alex Welson, Kekoa Kaaikala, Oystein Thorsen

Ice Breaker: The Castle

Fall Registration -Planning on having an info session for underclassmen -People involved: David Christensen, Alex Nelson, Nick Roth, Dustin Larson

Newsletter -Idea is to send to UPE, CS Dept People, CS Major People, etc. -Contain things like CS News, Tips & Tricks, ... -If you would like to head this up, speak up.

Bonzaii Brawl -Scott Carrol volunteered to help out

NMU Programming Competition -March 28th - If you want to participate, let Dr. Pops know yesterday?

1121 Review Session Feedback -Nick Roth will get feedback form Dr. Pops

Review Sessions for CS Classes -Possibly do a session for Discrete Structures || Data Structures. -David Christensen will look into this

Enterprise Credit -Oystein Thorsen was contacted by the Aerospace Enterprise's Glider Team. -They have trouble finding CS students. -There was a discussion about how to encourage CS students to join enterprises.

Segmentation Fault

December 2, 2008, 6:00pm

In attendance: David Christensen, Nick Roth, Colin Dalstra, John Earnest, Ken Vella, Bryan Franklin, Kekoa Kaaikala, Tyler Schwartz, Alex Vanthof, Alex Nelson, Ryan Schneider, Reid Sawtell, Dustin Larson

Meeting called around 6:05ish PM

Newsletter - David Christensen will talk to Bob Rollenhagen to see what's happening with this

1121 Review Session - Will be the Sunday before Finals week most likely. Nick Roth, David Christensen, and Dustin Larson volunteered to help out. Any more volunteers that would like to help would be appreciated.

The idea of holding a programming contest here at Michigan Tech was discussed.

John Earnest is looking into packaging up little tidbits of information that would help out CS students. For example, we learn to code in Java, but never actually learn how to package up and deploy our projects. This could be something useful that could be taught. Everyone should think about this a little and bring back ideas.

Helping out in Learning Centers - Normal hours are 7-10PM Sunday through Thursday. Ken Vella, Alex Vanthof, and John Earnest said they were interested in helping out.

The idea was re-brought up about having some session where people talk about what CS classes are cool to take and what classes are about. This could be held around scheduling time to help people decide what classes to take.

A short-meeting exception was thrown at 6:19PM, but it was caught and the meeting terminated normally.

November 4, 2008, 6:00pm

In attendance: Bob Rollenhagen, Nick Roth, Dr. Onder, Tyler Schwartz, Hui Meen, Justin Slepak, Ryan Schneider, David Christensen, Alicia Thorsen, Oystein Thorsen, Dustin Larson

Cords and stolls for graduating seniors were discussed. Cords = $15 each, Stolls = $28 each. It was suggested that they are handed out with a deposit equal to the total price. If you want to keep the cords and stoll, then you can, but you don't get your money back. Nick Roth will talk to Cathy and see how many people in UPE are graduating and send an email to check for interest.

Changes in the constitution were discussed, but not voted upon.

The process for selection of new members was discussed. There is concern about privacy issues. It was suggested that the department sends a letter that requests a resume, then the prospective members voluntarily give their information.

ACM is being revived.

Oystein Thorsen is going to set up a "Top Coders" competition for UPE so we can have some fun.

October 9, 2008, 6:30pm

In attendance: Steven Vormwald, Scott Carroll, Roland Scott, Ryan Schneider, Nick Roth, Josh Keeler, Justin Slepak, Bob Rollenhagen, Nilufer Onder, David Christensen, Alex Nelson, Dustin Larson

Absence Excused For: Hui Meen Myew, Alicia Thorsen, Oystein Thorsen, Ashley DePottey

Old Business:
Bob Rollenhagen looked into the newsletter idea. He came up with different "columns" that could be included in such a thing...

Since this is something that will be ongoing, a committee was formed to handle it. Members on the committee are: Bob Rollenhagen (chairperson), Dustin Larson, Justin Slepak If anyone else would like to participate in this committee, please let them know!

David Christensen got information about a seminar for freshman to schedule out their 3-4 year schedules. Dr. Ott gave some good ideas and good pointers. The ideal date is Tuesday, October 21st. Possible things for the seminar would be a demonstration of the web site, where to find technical electives, the flow chart, showing how to pick classes to fit into the overall plan. Ideally, first years would have some sort of plan coming in so they're not starting completely from scratch. To get the word out, the idea of putting up flyers in the CS halls was discussed. Also, it was mentioned that the workshop could be mentioned in CS1000, CS1121, and CS1131 classes. This scheduling "workshop" has been delegated to a subcommittee of the presentations committee. Members of this subcommittee are: David Christensen (chairperson), Steven Vormwald, Justin Slepak, Alex Nelson. If anyone else would like to participate in this subcommittee, please let them know!

Roland Scott came up with a list of things for the Freshman Survival Kit. This included things like Putty, Eclipse, other software, a sheet of paper with common Unix commands. There's a possibility of putting JLS or the Animator on it. These CD's could be burned and given to first years during Orientation. The cost of this could be covered by department funding or becomming an official student org. If anyone else would like to help out with this, let Roland know!

Nick Roth reported that Alicia Thorsen compiled a list of different ideas that UPE members responded with. This list included possible seminar topics. This will be emailed out.

Nick Roth talked to Dr. Poplawski about having a CS1121 review session. Additionally, it was determined that it would be a good idea to have UPE members around to help out in the labs and the CS Learning Center toward the end of the semester.

New Business:
Nick Roth reported that there were some UPE letters sent out to students, but no one at the meeting reported to know anything about them...

The SOCS alternate is David Christensen.

The Executive Committee needs to meet for the election of new members. Nick Roth will organize this.

A student in the CS Learning Center requested a mentor, and Scott Carroll volunteered.

The suggestion was made that meetings become bi-weekly instead of monthly.

Active/Inactive members are to be determined.

Dr. Carr then gave a presentation about Graduate School.

Meeting() returned 42 at 7:51 PM.

September 25, 2008, 6:00pm

In attendance: Scott Carroll, Justin Slepak, Bob Rollenhagen, Josh Keeler, Steven Vormwald, Nick Roth, Roland Scott, Oystein Thorsen, Alicia Thorsen, Dustin Larson, Ryan Schneider, David Christensen, Hui Meen Nyew, Alex Nelson, Tyler Schwartz

This meeting was called to determine the direction of UPE.

What are goals to set for ourselves?

How can we achieve these goals?

Meeting() returned true at approximately 6:39PM

September 8, 2008, 5:00pm

In attendance: Scott Carroll, David Christensen, Dustin Larson, Hui Meen Nyen, Dr. Nilufer Onder, Bob Rollenhagen, Nick Roth, Ryan Schneider, Roland Scott, Justin Slepak, Alicia Thorsen, Steve Vormwald

Old Stuff:
There was discussion about becoming an official student organization. We could use the funding for things like bringing in speakers or funding for supplies for special events put on by UPE.

What events do we want to hold? The Weekly Tips and Tricks by LUG was mentioned, and suggested that UPE have Tutorials once a month at the CS Seminars. There was then a discussion about different topics

The idea of making a "CS Necessities" CD for freshman was brought up. The CD would have things like Eclipse on it. Discussion for this idea is postponed until the next meeting, at which time a committee will be formed to discuss it.

New Stuff:
There was disappointment at the attendance for this meeting. There was a discussion on how to get people to come to meetings. Things like the following were discussed:

Possible New Activity:
It was suggested that UPE get involved and try to set up a networking event between CS students and potential intern/co-op employers.

Committee Signups:
The members on each committee are on the web site. Unfortunately, the web site is down. Roland is going to look into it and find the committee members.

Member dues were discussed.

There was talk of holding another meeting within a couple weeks. This would be a special meeting to put together committees, come up with and discuss ideas for activities, and discuss a better time to meet, if necessary.

Meeting ended at 5:43 PM.

December 10, 2007

In attendance: Alicia Thorsen, Andy Schrage, Ashley DePottey, Chris Swisher, Craig Koenigs, David Carroll, David Christensen, David Stanich, Dustin Larson, Hui Meen Nyew, Jacob Pearse, Janae Foss, John Tempey, Jon Klimowicz, Joshua Keeler, Justin Kussow, Justin Slepak, Micah Kaiser, Oystein Thorsen, Paul Himes, Peter Kolbus, Roland Scott, Ryan Schneider, Steve Vormwald, Tyler Schwartz

Committee structure was briefly introduced and members in attendance joined the committee of their choice.

Nominations were taken for executive board membership; there were no nominees, and no member of the executive board is stepping down or graduating. The existing executive board was voted in by affirmation.

Bonzai seems like it will not be taking place this year. Reasons are not just a lack of interest, but nobody is willing to set it up.

All UPE members are required to be part of at least one standing committee. Those present were asked to select their committee membership for Spring 2008. The committees are:

Those absent from the meeting are asked to let Andy Schrage know which committee they prefer to be on.

November 12, 2007

In attendance: Alexander Nelson, Andy Schrage, Ashley DePottey, Chris Swisher, Christopher Riggs, Craig Koenigs, David Carroll, David Christensen, David Stanich, Dustin Larson, Hui Meen Nyew, Jacob Pearse, Janae Foss, John Tempey, Jon Klimowicz, Joshua Keeler, Justin Kussow, Justin Slepak, Micah Kaiser, Oystein Thorsen, Peter Kolbus, Robert Rollenhagen, Roland Scott, Steve Vormwald, David Poplawski, Jason Mack (guest)

Brief introductions of current and new members were given.

The chairs of each active committee introduced their committee's purpose. Members of UPE are reminded that the bylaws require participation in at least one committee to maintain active membership. The committees introduced were the Speakers committee, the Presentation committee, and the Technology committee. If you are a new member, please review the bylaws for details, and send an email to Andy Schrage (ajschrag).

The ACM restart committee has completed its purpose, and has been terminated.

The mentoring program has met with limited success. Half of the students who responded are interested in one-on-one tutoring. Jacob will be working to set up a tutoring program.

Jason Mack from GE Aviation gave a talk on the Hancock UDC and the work they do there.

UPE dues are $10 and are due to Roland Scott NOW! All have paid except: Andy Schrage, Jon Klimowicz

Next UPE meeting is currently slated for December 10th.

October 8, 2007

In attendance: Peter Kolbus, Justin Slepak, Justin Kussow, David Stanich, Andy Schrage, Craig Koenigs, Chris Swisher, Paul Himes, Steven Vormwald, Roland Scott, Jacob Pearse, Jon Klimowicz, Micah Kaiser, David Poplawski

A brief summary of committee status kicked off the meeting. The speaker committee is currently establishing a list of potential speakers to go ahead and send the formal letter to. Inside sources from UPE have ties to potential speakers from GE Aviation.

Steve, from the presentations committee, recently gave a brief presentation to the CS1000 students about UPE. Mentoring was also discussed and an email with the specifics will be sent out by Jacob Pearse.

The website is up and running with the UPE constitution recently added. The server issue has been discussed and all SOCS needs to do is to talk to Linda and order it. The connection for the server will be funded by SOCS.

ACM meeting next Monday October 15th.

UPE dues are $10 and are due to Roland Scott on or before the next meeting. These people have already paid: Justin Slepak, Justin Kussow, David Stanich, Steven Vormwald, Jacob Pearse

Next UPE meeting is currently slated for November 12th.

September 10, 2007

In attendance: Justin Slepak, Steven Vormwald, Jon Klimowicz, David Stanich, Craig Koenigs, Justin Kussow, Chris Swisher, Paul Himes, Dave Poplawski, Roland Scott, Andy Schrage, Peter Kolbus, Janae Foss, Micah Kaiser, Jacob Pearse.

Committees were further established and members in attendance chose which committee to be a member of. The following listing is a summary:

Presentations Committee: Justin Slepak, Steven Vormwald, Jacob Pearse, Alicia Thorsen (absent)

Server/Website Committee: Jon Klimowicz, Roland Scott, Peter Kolbus

Speakers Committee: Chris Swisher, Paul Himes, Andy Schrage, Janae Foss, Micah Kaiser

HR (Membership) Committee: Executive Board, Dave Poplawski, and two additional (undecided) faculty members

The HR committee originally consisted of David Stanich, Craig Koenigs and Justin Kussow but was later discovered must consist of the executive board, advisor and two faculty members.

Emphasis on getting industry to come to Tech to give presentations to members of UPE. A potential draft of a letter to send to industry members was passed around. Dr. Poplawski mentioned taking road trips to more "populous" areas to take tours of industry.

Interest was shown by various members to begin tutoring and mentoring for those Computer Science majors who seek it.

ACM Restart Committee Report: Currently the ACM student group is back as an official student organization at Tech and consists of current UPE members. Meetings will be held on the third Monday of each month.

Server/Website Committee Report: This committee is charged with supporting the technology needs of the organization; Peter put out a call for suggestions. The following responses were received in the meeting: Detailed information about mentoring, Subversion/MySQL/Postgresql servers, a location to archive presentations, and a location for the constitution/bylaws. If any UPE member has a request for software or services to be provided, or information to post to the UPE website, please let Peter Kolbus know.

The next UPE meeting is currently scheduled for October 8th.

April 16, 2007

In attendance: (TBA)

Dr. Seidel gave a very interesting talk on UPC (Unified Parallel C) and the benefits of parallel computing. If anyone is interested in his research, he was very open to help from undergrads from the group.

The ByLaws/Amendments regarding the forming of committees passed its vote and the following people volunteered for groups these committees:

Jonah Guettler: Any
Jon Klimowitcz: Server
David Stanich: Anything Not Server
Justin Kussow: HR or Server
Chris Swisher: Speakers
Craig Koenigs: HR
Michael Matuszak: Presentation
Peter Kolbus: Server
Janae Foss: Speakers
Roland Scott: Server
Alicia Thorsen: HR
Micah Kaiser: ??? (Need this still)
Steve Vormwald: Presentation
Jake Pearse: ???

Anybody that is going to be here next year that is not on this list should reply to Andy Schrage regarding what committee you would like to participate in for next year. If you would like to change what committee you would like to be on, let him know as well. These won't be set into stone til the Fall so you have plenty of time to decide.

Officer Elections
We are currently taking nominations for Executive Board officers for next school year. You can nominate yourself through the end of this week (Friday) and elections will be held over email as it was last year. Currently we have the following nominations for e-board:

President: Andy Schrage
VP: Jacob Pearse
Sec: [NONE??? Or does Steve really want to be nominated?]
Historian: Peter Kolbus
Treasurer: Roland Scott

Bonzai Party

Janae announced that the Bonzai party this semester will be the Saturday before finals and she is interested in getting as much help for the event as she can. Also it would be a nice way to "give back" to the dept.

March 19, 2007

In attendance:
Bryan Bonvallet, Janae Foss, Paul Hines, Micah Kaiser, Jon Klimowicz, Craig Koenigs, Peter Kolbus, Michael Matuszak, Nathan Paul, Jacob Pearse, Andy Schrage, Roland Scott, Chris Swisher, David Stanich, John Thomas, Steven Vormwald, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor)

  1. Discussion about proposed four standing committees to be added to the constitution. Every UPE member would be required to participate in at least one committee. The proposd constitutional amendment would not restrict membership to any minimum or maximum; common sense will be used. All in attendance were in favor [our framing vote] of this amendment pending final wording, and a survey of interest was taken, Bob Stark will write the amendment text and submit it to a vote by email. The four committees are:
    • Server Systems Committee, chaired by the Historian, to be responsible for maintaining the UPE web site and server. Three expressed interest.
    • Human Resources Committee, chaired by the Secretary or Treasurer, to be responsible for nominating new members and maintaining membership and alumni rosters. Three expressed interest.
    • Presentation Committee, chaired by the Vice President, to be responsible for creating, delivering, and archiving presentations. Part of archiving is recording and editing video footage, so this may be a good committee if you have an interest in that sort of thing. Seven expressed interest.
    • Speakers Committee, chaired by the President, to be responsible for securing outside speakers from industry and academia to present to UPE on various topics. Three expressed interest.
    Three temporary committees are currently formed; an ACM restart committee, a Banzai [End of semester party] planning committee, and an AI Contest committee.
  2. (Janae Foss) The AI programming contest is planned for this fall, and the committee will be working on the game engine, storyline, etc. through the summer. The programming team needs people to help develop the 3D graphics and storyline, among other things. If you're interested, please contact Janae Foss (jnfoss@gmail.com) ASAP.
  3. (Roland Scott) The NMU Invitational Programming contest is March 31. All UPE members are encouraged to participate; it's a lot of fun. If you are interested, contact Dr. Poplawski this week.
  4. Server: UPE thanks Michael Novak for obtaining free web hosting for the SOCS organizations. The server is currently set up with Apache, Subversion, MySQL, and an older version of PostgreSQL. Installation of a Wiki and bulletin board are planned. Each organization (SOCS, UPE, LUG, WiCS, ACM) will have a user name that will allow for updating the organization's pages. Bryan Bonvallet reports that Jon Welters is working with Telcom to obtain an MTU host name for the server.
  5. Next meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 16, at 5 pm.
  6. (Nilufer Onder) The organization has received several mailings of interest to the membership; a newsletter, and a letter dated January 30 proposing a change to the UPE's constitution. Unfortunately, the deadline for voting has passed. The materials can be viewed at .
  7. (Nilufer Onder) Dr. Seidel would like to present his research in parallel computation to the UPE membership at the next meeting. A vote was taken; all were in favor.
  8. (Janae Foss) For those not going to the programming contest, the Michigan Celebration of Women in Computation (MicWic) is the same weekend. Janae has 5 seats left on the bus, so if you're interested (regardless of your gender), please register for the conference on the MicWic web site , and contact Janae by email (jnfoss@gmail.com).

Meeting adjourned: 5:47 pm

February 12, 2007

In attendance:
Bryan Bonvallet, Janae Foss, Jonah Guettler, Paul Himes, Micah Kaiser, Jon Klimowicz, Craig Koenigs, Peter Kolbus, Michael Matuszak, Nathan Paul, Jacob Pearse, Andy Schrage, Roland Scott, David Stanich, Bob Stark, Chris Swisher, Alicia Thorsen, Steven Vormwald, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor)

There was little reaction to the idea of more speakers, but it was decided if the president had free time he should simply schedule some and people will show up.

An Eclipse debugging demonstration will be held by Peter Kolbus and Bob Stark in room 117 on Thursday the 15th 3-4pm and Friday the 16th 7-8pm.

Anyone who has not paid their dues, please do so.

The topic of the CS department student organization (SOCS) shared server came up and various options were explored, including getting a shared account on a company's server or hooking up our own to telecom directly for supposedly $14/year or something. We decided that if the server was to be shared and if we wanted freedom to do with it what we wanted, we should do the latter.

We discussed helping the Linux User Group with its "install-a-thon", which perhaps should be renamed to something else, with a side presentation on how to use Linux.

More people were interested in presenting how to program without Eclipse, though, using the command-line, print statements, and so on. We formed a committee to look in to such an idea, including:

with Andy, UPE vice president, leading the committee and responsible for its operation. Roland mentioned that students would probably not go if it were offered some arbitrary time during the day unless either it was during class or extra credit was offered for attendance. Our choice was to ask professors to offer extra credit for their students to attend.

Janae discussed previous AI programming competitions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and suggested that we should hold our own as kind of a complement to NMU's programming competition that we go to. We discussed the possibility of contributing to an inter-organization committee but there were no definite people chosen. Contact Janae (jnfoss@mtu.edu) if you are interested in volunteering time to program a game API in Java or organize the event in general.

The question whether or not we should become a student organization came up, but we cannot because we have selective membership. Perhaps if the ACM chapter was recreated, it could share its resources (e.g., USG money) with us, as we are technically ACM-affiliated. An ACM startup committee was formed with Peter Kolbus at the head, who is charged with the job of contacting Dr. Poplawski, the presumed to-be adviser, and getting people together. The complete committee is composed of:

We asked all presiding members if they (i.e., all UPE members) would accept being the initial membership of the new ACM chapter and no one declined, so it was decided it would be so.

The next meeting, to avoid forcing UPE members to attend during spring break, will be Monday March 19th, the 3rd (not 2nd) Monday of the month.

December 11, 2006

Student Organizations in CS (SOCS):
The first SOCS meeting was held November 30th with representatives from the Linux User Group (LUG), Women in Computer Science (WiCS), us (UPE), and the CS Graduate Student Organization. In addition to planning events together, we plan to setup a SOCS server for use by the member organizations, so they can have databases and dynamic web pages.

Bonzai:
CS department party is scheduled for this Saturday, December 16th. There will be board games, console games (hopefully), LAN party games, movies and free food. Bring your friends, because everyone is invited.

Dues:
New members were reminded that they owe the treasurer, Ray, $10. Please do this as soon as possible.

Learning Center:
Dr. Poplawski needs some CS learning center coaches for next semester and everyone in this group most likely meets the requirements for the job (at least a B in 1121, 1122, 1721, 2321 and 2141 or equivalent).

Presentations:
The first presentation was Dr. Ebnenasir, who talked about his research in software robustness. He gave the Byzantine Generals problem as an example of faults that can happen to a system that are unexpected, but that sometimes happen. He described the concept of contract programming, which is defining the required inputs and outputs of each method to aid software development with a team. He talked about the Java Modeling Language (JML) that is used to do this very thing in Java. Finally, he described to us his goals of automatically editing programs to become more robust, with and without contract programming assertions.

He has research assistant openings for students to implement a code changing program to make applications fault-tolerant, and to possibly work on the theoretical issues of doing so. More information can be found on his website, http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~aebnenas/Research.html.

The second presentation was by CS graduate student Matt Watkins, who talked about the D programming language as a replacement for C++. Interestingly enough, D, we found out, comes with contract programming built-in. It also has other useful features that make D more like Java, including native exception handling, a garbage collector, interfaces and the removal of multiple inheritance, it removes the need for a preprocessor (including #include statements, since the modular structure of D classes are like Java). Other features of D can be found at D's web site: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/overview.html.

November 13, 2006

In attendance:
Tom Blamer, Bryan Bonvallet, Jason Cope, Janae Foss, Andreas Lundberg, Marcus Lundberg, Micah Kaiser, Craig Koenigs, Peter Kolbus, Justin Moss, Anthony Nielsen, Michael Novak, Nathan Paul, Jacob Pearse, Andy Schrage, Roland Scott, Justin Slepak, Bob Stark, Chris Swisher, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor)

Welcome to our new members!

Speakers:
We want interesting speakers to come talk to us or to the department (on our behalf). Tom Blamer spoke with IBM people that showed some interest in coming to speak with us. Andreas' old boss Steve Fitzgerald is a great candidate: he loves talking and he was first student to graduate with a Computer Science degree from MTU. Ray Kurzweil was brought up by multiple memebers. Anyone interested in seeing what needs to happen for him to come? Bryan Bonvallet said Google would be good if we could get someone from there. Microsoft, Epic Systems: Andy Schrage says they're rearing to go but need a form letter of some sort so the company would pay for them to come (cheap for us!). Danielle van Dyke and Jason Mitchell, UPE alumni, are contacts that may help bring speakers in (or act as speakers themselves). Interest in having speakers is pretty good among the group.

Matt Watkins did a good job talking about the programming language D as compared to C++. We should ask if he's interested in presenting to UPE.

CS industry-specific resume talk:
The Career Center probably knows people that could come talk about resumes for people who desire to enter the computer science industry. This activity would be for the entire department, preferably before the Spring Career Fair.

Possible UPE seminars:
There is discussion about having UPE put on regular seminars. Topics might include "How to debug" (with Eclipse and/or gdb). Peter and Bob will spearhead this with help from WiCS and perhaps LUG. The best time to schedule this is before it's too late for the students to use it on assignments, but after they realize the usefulness of being able to debug. Another good seminar idea is "Intro to CS Labs" during freshman orientation.

Faculty presentations:
Faculty presentations during the UPE meetings were popular last semester. We should contact faculty now so we're sure to get a good number next semester.

UPE Web:
The plan is to have UPE member pages that contains CV/resume stuff and persists over time so important people have access to our collective awesomeness. The template for these will be sent out again.

Web Server Consortium:
In a related note, we can't do CGI on our website. This problem has been noted by other students orgs like LUG and the Grad Student group. We could go in together on a server of our own. The Parents' Fund might contribute if we put together a proposal. Roland has a mac that is receiving no use. We would need to have this hosted in a special place. The CEC is currently overloaded for power. We could possibly use the space the CS department has reserved, should they ever put it to use for the departmental machines.

Council of Elrond:
There are two projects that are cross-group: the server and the debugging seminar. Perhaps we should form a "CS Council for Excellence in Computing." We would like to combine representatives from UPE, WiCS, the CS Graduate Group, and possibly the Linux Users Group into an over encompassing Council. The purpose would be to coordinate intergroup collaboration and possibly manage the sharing of resources.

CS Departmental Seminars:
There are CS Department Seminars Fridays at 3:00 in Fisher 130. Abstracts are sent to upe-l, so go check it out if you like the sound of the abstract!

Next Meeting:
Monday, Dec 11 at 5:00pm in 101 Rehki Hall. Any who dislike this time, email the list (upe-l) about it sooner rather than later so we can change it.

October 9, 2006

In attendance:
Tom Blamer, Marcus Lundberg, Nathan Paul, Andy Schrage, Bob Stark, Raymond Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor)

New membership:
Membership Committee is made up of the executive council, the advisor, and two other faculty, in this case Dr Poplawski and Dr Soner Onder. The lists of new members were discussed, the results will be sent to the two faculty members, and hopefully things will be ready so we can mail out invitations by Thursday, Oct 12. Objections to potential members should be emailed to Nilufer or Bob by Wednesday at 5:00. Bob will contact MUB about the ballroom. The tentative date of 10/26 depends largely on its availability. The induction will start at 7:00.

Speakers:
Andy's project manager at Microsoft was asked to come visit and speak to us and he is interested. He's apparently had an interesting career and might have useful advice for us. He does need a formal letter of request from UPE, which he will receive soon after Andy sends Marcus his contact information and stuff.

The next meeting is on Monday, November 13, 2006 at 5:00pm in Rehki 101.

September 11, 2006

In attendance:
Tom Blamer, Bryan Bonvallet, Marcus Lundberg, Nathan Paul, Andy Schrage, Bob Stark, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor).

Induction Ceremony:
Tentative internal working date and time is 7:00pm in early October. We have the "permanent" paraphenalia already, so all we need is enough pins for the inductees. Since Rekhi 101 is very small and we have $100 + this year's dues, we should have the induction in a MUB Ballroom and have it catered.

Dues:
Your annual due of $10 must be paid by September 30. Give cash or check written to UPE Zeta Chapter to our treasurer Ray Wrobleski.

UPE Meetings:
Meetings will be held on the second Monday at 5:00pm of every month, unless more meetings are needed. Extra meetings will be schedules through email. Have problems with Mondays at 5:00? Tell an officer so we can think about another day or time.

Grad Students:
To invite or not invite? It'd be beneficial to have some grad students in UPE as a resource for the undergrads. The idea right now is to set a max ratio of grad to undergrad so the group maintains its focus and purpose. How to select the grad students is a problem left unsolved.

Faculty Research Briefs:
After much discussion, the consensus was to keep the format we had last year. We should be asking faculty whether they'd be interested in presenting their research to us. Members are asked to be on the lookout for professors to speak with us. Keep in mind professors outside of the Computer Science department may be doing interesting research, too.

The Website:
To promote undergrad research, some new webpages were discussed. One lists UPE members interested in research and a few details about them to help professors find a good student. One lists our faculty and what they're researching, so students can see what our school has to offer.

The current state of the website is very restrictive. Only straight HTML, no CGI or other fun stuff. The historian (Brian Bonvallet) wonders if it's a good idea to get our own server computer in the CEC for CGI, CVS, SVN, forums, and possibly other services. Anyone interested in seeing this happen should let him know.

Faculty Seminars:
There are faculty seminars from 3:00 to 4:00 on Friday once a month. Dr. Choi is in charge of them. Perhaps he can be persuaded to add upe-l to his contact list? The content of these seminars would make good subject matter for discussion during our meetings.

Presentations from Industry:
It'd be interesting to bring local industry members or local alumni in the workforce in to talk about their experiences. Recruiters at the job fairs could be asked as well. The content could range from a discussion of the industry, their company, or their personal experiences getting a job. It sounds like personal experiences is what most of us wanted to hear about.

Non-local speakers tend to be expensive, but are very rewarding. If we find an interesting speaker, the Computer Science department or the University may contribute funds to fly them in. Members are asked to be on the lookout for an amazing speaker to bring in.

The next meeting will be on Monday October 9 @ 5:00.

Meeting adjourned at 6:00pm.

May 5, 2006

Dr. Nilufer Onder has received enough votes via email to officially declare the new executive officers:

Congratulations to our new executive board:
President: Bob Stark
Vice President: Andy Schrage
Secretary: Marcus Lundberg
Treasurer: Ray Wrobleski
Historian: Bryan Bonvallet

Thanks to our past year's executive board:
President: Paul Himes
Vice President: Andy Schrage
Secretary: Marcus Lundberg
Treasurer: Ray Wrobleski
Historian: Jonah Guettler

April 17, 2006

In attendance:
Bryan Bonvallet, Paul Himes, Jon Klimowicz, Marcus Lundberg, Jason Mitchell, Nathan Paul, Andy Schrage, Danielle VanDyke, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor).
Dr. Soner Onder (speaker).

We didn't have quorum for new officer elections. They'll be organized by email with Nilufer's help. Please give some thought to nominating someone (or yourself) for a position.

This Saturday there'll be a "geeky party" in Rekhi, starting circa 4:00. We've been asked to help. Come with friends.

Dr. Soner Onder explained his research interests to us. He works in architecture. In architecture, there are 2 main lines of research. The first is pure architecture, like microarchitecture. The second straddles the line between compilers and architecture. Architecture research basically boils down to algorithmics. Much of the speedup in modern processors is due to increased parallelization, but that leads to very complex processors. Processor development is done by simulating the operation of a design, but the data is often difficult to interpret.

He has received NSF funding for two REU type positions for students interested in trying to use AI algorithms to sift through the data for information. Anyone with enthusiasm would have something to offer, so contact Dr. Onder if you're interested.

March 20, 2006

In attendance:
Tom Blamer, Bryan Bonvallet, Jonah Guettler, Paul Himes, Jon Klimowitz, Marcus Lundberg, Nathan Mittlestat, Nathan Paul, Andy Shrage, Danielle VanDyke, Steven Vormwald, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor).
Dr. Robert Pastel (speaker).

New member inductions have been postponed due to lack of interest. The members who would've been inducted will be taken care of with the new batch of students in the Fall.

The ACM books in the Student Org Room are in an undefined state. In other words, since the defunct ACM chapter can't own them, we don't know what's going on. WiCS expressed interest in selling them (perhaps at Spring Fling).

Dr. Pastel spoke about his research in Human-Computer Interaction. It involves topics from psychology and computer science with interface design in the middle. The field itself is a balance of all three topics. Some projects Dr. Pastel is working on or plans to work on:

Anyone interested in Dr. Pastel's research should contact him. However he expects to be very busy until the beginning of the upcoming Fall semester, so he may not have time to talk about potential undergrad help until that time.

February 20, 2006

Meeting started at 5:03pm.
In attendance:
Tom Blamer, Bryan Bonvallet, Jeremy Brown, Paul Himes, Marcus Lundberg, Jason Mitchell, Nathan Mittlestat, Justin Moss, Nathan Paul, Andy Schrage, Danielle Van Dyke, Steven Vormwald, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor, speaker).
Dr. Charles Wallace (speaker).

The web site: the new look is nice and professional. Templates will be done next.

The initiation ceremony is postponed until next month as paperwork is being done.

There is apparently no demand for tutoring.

Dr. Onder spoke about her research in AI. Anyone interested in AI or the issues surrounding women and minorities in CS should contact her.

Dr. Wallace talked about his research in Software Engineering. Money is available for web designers to display the results of case studies, as well as for "embedded reporters" studying groups doing projects. Also, anyone interested in how humans communicate about software in mathematics and english should contact Dr. Wallace.

January 23, 2006

In attendance:
Tom Blamer, Bryan Bonvallet, Jeremy Brown, Jonah Guettler, Paul Himes, Jon Klimowicz, Marcus Lundberg, Jason Mitchell, Nathan Paul, Andy Schrage, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. Nilufer Onder (advisor).

Web site:

Undergrad research:
Faculty replied enthusiastically about undergrad research. They will come and talk to us about their interests. We should consider inviting the general student populace if the speakers let us.

Spring Initiation:
To catch people we missed the first time, we will have a small initiation this semester. An email will be sent to schedule a time to do that around (not during) our next meeting.

Tutoring:
Our VP volunteered to contact faculty about tutoring. The idea is that troubled students can be sent to us for the additional help that instructors and learning center can't provide. Because of the stringent anti-cheating rules, we should inquire about what we're allowed to help with exactly.

What more can we do as a group?
Bake sale? Informational sessions? Email the list if you have an epiphany.

December 5, 2005

Meeting started at 5:09pm.
In attendance:
Bryan Bonvallet, Mustafa Guclu, Jonah Guettler, Paul Himes, Jon Klimowicz, Jason Mitchell, Justin Moss, Kim Hoong Neo, Andy Schrage, Bob Stark, Ray Wrobleski.
Dr. David Poplawski (advisor).

Constitution was reviewed.

The selection of new members needs to be considered. We need to schedule an initiation for new members. Cathy Forsman should know how to get a list of potential candidates and how to get the necessary items for the ceremony.

A website is needed. Bryan Bonvallet volunteered to be webmaster. Jon Klimowicz and Mustafa Guclu offered to help.

The dues ($10 per member) are needed and should be given to Ray Wrobleski when appropriated. "Annual" in "annual dues" refers to the academic school year. Ray needs to talk to Cathy about having a bank account for UPE.

Possible activities we could pursue: tutoring and undergraduate research. Undergraduate research helps get students into grad school. We should remind Dr. Poplawski to ask CS faculty about undergraduate research opportunities.

Dr. Poplawski will be on sabbatical for Spring Semester. We need to find an interim Advisor. Perhaps Linda will step in?

Meeting adjourned at 5:36pm.