Open House on Sunday 10/26

UML's Fall Open House is the main fall recruiting event at 9am - 12noon; http://www.uml.edu/Admissions/openhouse/default.html. Things kick off at the Tsongas arena at 9am. Department tours start at 10:30am.

Betty has arranged for WiCS to have a table at Tsongas! This will give us great visibility. But, Betty need helpers! If you can't be there the whole time, come for part of it. Please email Betty (byang1 at
cs.uml.edu) directly with the times you can work the booth.

Thanks!
Kate

Next Meeting: Monday, October 20 @ 11:30am

Bring your own lunch and come hear doctoral student Kate Tsui talk
about her experiences from the Grace Hopper 2008 Celebration. We'll
also talk more about joint topics from the Student Advisory Board (3rd
floor remodel, parking in Oslen lot during events, CS community
calendar, etc.).

Time and place as usual (11:30am-12:20pm, and OS 219 aka CS library).
See you there!

Call for Help of the Open House Day on Oct. 26, 2008

Hey all,

Our WiCS will have a stand on the Undergraduate and Graduate
Admissions Open House Day on Sunday, October 26, 2008. I'm looking for
some helpers to staff the exhibition. The exhibition information is
attached. We also need some materials and hands-on demonstration on
that day. I'm thinking to set up a poster of the introduction of our
department with different programs(labs) available. I can bring some
Lego pieces to attract more students. Any more idea is welcomed. My
email: byang1 at cs.uml.edu.

Thanks!

Betty
WiCS Vice President

Impromptu Meeting!

Reminder! Meeting today at 11:30am in OS 219a. A little impromptu, but we have some issues that we need to talk about before the next scheduled meeting.

1.) SAB and WiCS joint meeting about department items.
2.) ACM-W chapter.
3.) New fund raising alternatives.
4.) October Wii tournament event?

Sorry for the very short notice!

"Welcome!" ice cream social with Kristen Stubbs

WiCS's first meeting (TODAY 9/22 @ 3:30 p.m.) will be a "Welcome!" ice
cream social. Come find out more about WiCS!

We'll also feature a guest speaker, Kristen Stubbs. Kristen is a
human-robot interaction researcher who recently completed her PhD in
Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. Kristen will discuss her work
on two projects involving robotic exploration: the Life in the Atacama
project, in which a team of scientists explored the Atacama Desert of
Chile with a semi-autonomous rover; and the Personal Exploration Rover
exhibit, in which museum visitors and employees controlled a miniature
Mars rover to learn about robotic autonomy and exploration. Kristen's
thesis work focused on how to build common ground between people and
robots collaborating on remote exploration tasks. Two cool events in
one!

See you in the CS library (OS 219a) today at 3:30pm.

Thanks!
Kate
WiCS President
http://www.cs.uml.edu/wics

Resuming WiCS Lunch Meetings

Welcome back to term everyone!

I'd like to schedule our lunch meetings for the term. After talking to
a few people, it seems that Monday works best. Please let me know if
Monday at 11:30am-12:30pm doesn't work for your schedules.

Like last spring, the meetings will take place once every few weeks.
The proposed schedule is:

September 22
October 20
November 17
December 8

I hope you will be able to join us this term!

Thanks!
Kate

Last WiCS Meeting of Our First Year

Agenda:
* Next meeting 5/14
* Formalizing as a graduate student group
* Affiliation with ACM-W
* Frequency of Fall semester's meeting and potential guest speakers
* Coupling guests with Colloquium
* Mentoring incoming CS students
* Workshop series
* WiCS Facebook group

Hi All!

Next Wednesday (5/14) will be our last meeting of our first year.
We'll resume again in September.

I'd like to take care of some admin stuff at our next meeting. We'll
be formalizing as a graduate group. This will allow us to have a
university club account, which we'll see with our profits from the
Botball'08 snack stand profits.

To formalize as a group, we'll need a constitution (statement of
purpose) and a board (president, vice president, secretary, treasurer,
senator, and alternative senator). Grad WiCS, please volunteer
yourselves for these positions; email directly to wics at cs.uml.edu. If
there are multiple nominations for a position, I'll make ballots for
5/14's meeting. I will continue as coordinator next year while we
settle into an officially formed group. Also, I believe we need at
least 10 graduate student members. Lastly, we need a faculty advisor.
Faculty WiCS, please volunteer yourselves to keep up going!

After we've become official, we'll become an ACM-W affiliated group.

For next September, I'd like to get some ideas as to how frequently we
should meet. I've created an anonymous survey at Survey Monkey. Based
on your responses, I'll be able to determine how frequently we should
meet and who to invite as guest speakers.

Fred Martin will be the new colloquium chair. I will be working with
him to invite guest speakers. I'd like to keep the WiCS meetings on
Wednesdays 1:30-2:20pm. This will allow us to first speak informally
with colloquium guests interested in speaking with us, and also allow
WiCS guests to give a technical presentation following our meetings.

Jesse and I will also be launching a mentoring program of upperclass
students to new students. The relationships will be largely informal.
For example, having lunch with a mentee to answer any questions he/she
may have. We'd like to have this effort be WiCS powered.

Also, I'd like to create workshop sessions throughout the year next
year. At the beginning of September, I'll be hosting a "TA Bootcamp."
We'd briefly talked about hosting "How to Network" and "Confidence
Crisis" workshops as well.

Lastly, Betty has created a Facebook group for us, in addition to our
webpage. See below.

Please come to 5/14's meeting to help us set the pace for next fall.
We have A LOT to talk about. RSVP directly with wics at cs.uml.edu and a
bagel lunch will be provided.

Thanks,
Kate


Beibei invited you to join the Facebook group "UML WiCS (Women In
Computer Science)".

Beibei says, "Hello girls, I've created a facebook group for our WiCS.
Please feel free to invite other people to join us. :)".

To see more details and confirm this group invitation, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?group.php&gid=26462948960

Lunch with Sowmini Varadhan, Sun Microsystems

WiCS is hosting Sowmini Varadhan of Sun Microsystems this Wednesday (4/30). Sowmini requested to meet with faculty to discuss collaborations in the networking field. WiCS will be hosting lunch at 12noon and dessert at our usual 1:30pm slot.

If you would like to attend lunch and/or dessert, please RSVP with wics at cs.uml.edu stating "lunch only," "lunch and dessert," or "dessert only." Please do not reply directly to this post.

Thanks,
Kate

REMINDER: Upcoming Women in Computer Science Guest Speakers: Sukyoung Ryu and Sowmini Varadhan

Sukyoung Ryu of Sun Microsystems will be visiting the Women in
Computer Science this Wednesday at 1:30pm. All are welcome. To attend,
please RSVP with wics at cs.uml.edu

------

The Women in Computer Science group is very proud to host two members
of Sun Microsystems this month, Sukyoung Ryu and Sowmini Varadhan.
Sukyoung will visit us at our next meeting on Wednesday, April 16th at
1:30pm. Sowminin will visit us at our following meeting on Wednesday,
April 30th at 1:30pm. Please assume the location to be Olsen Hall
Computer Science Library (219A) -- unless we have a lot of people show
interest and I will select another venue in Olsen Hall.

Sukyoung is a member of the Programming Language Research Group at Sun
Labs. She received her Ph.D. in CS from KAIST, Korea and is the proud
mom of two daughters. She attended the Grace Hopper conference last
year and was deeply impressed by all the efforts for encouraging women
in computing. Sukyoung will share her experience with the Grace
Hopper conference with us.

Sowmini is a Staff Engineer at Sun, worked in (Sun and elswhere)
Kernel/Networking for the last 10 years. She received her Phd in CS
from the University of Tennessee in 1995.

Please RSVP with wics at cs.uml.edu for lunch.

Thanks,
Kate Tsui
WiCS Coordinator
http://www.cs.uml.edu/wics

Guest Speaker: Betty Yang

Our very own Betty Yang will be sharing the details of her recent CRA-W workshop trip with us on March 26.

WiCS Spring Semester Meetings: Wednesday 1:30-2:20pm

Hi All,

It looks like Wednesday 1:30-2:20pm seems good for most people. The first and third Wednesday idea seemed like it was going to work, but in practice not so much. Let's meet this semester on the following Wednesdays:

February 20
March 5
March 26
April 16
April 30
May 14

Location will be CS Library unless otherwise noted.

I've created a public calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=0vfoqk068ttqookbamg6v0nako%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York) and will embed it in our website.

I am lining up some guest speakers for us this spring. I will let you know once I have details.

See you 2/20.
Kate

Ashely Gross, iRobot, Postponed

Due to inclement weather, UMass Lowell closed to Monday, December 3rd. Thus we will reschedule with Ashley for Spring 2008. Join us then!

Guest Speaker: Ashley Gross, iRobot

Join Ashley Gross for a casual conversation over a light dinner on Monday, December 3rd at 4pm. Location to be announced. RSVP with wics @ cs dot uml dot edu.

Bio: Ashley Gross
Past and Present Projects:

* Aware2.0 software architecture (at iRobot)
* Robot autonomous exploration and mapping (at Carnegie Mellon University)
* Surgical robotics (at Carnegie Mellon University)

Areas of Interest:

* Elder care robots
* Combat casualty care robots
* Disaster response robots

Bagel Lunch

Let's have a bagel lunch on TODAY (Monday, November 19th), 12 noon to 1pm (overlapping times so that more people can hopefully attend!). Location: CS Library.

All parties interested in topics relating to women in computer science are invited to attend.

To be discussed: Formation of WiCS as a university group.

"Inside Scoop on Spring Classes" Brown Bag Lunch

Brown Bag Lunch with WiCS

Choosing spring semester classes already? Yup! Advising begins on Monday, October 29th. WiCS is hosting an "Inside Scoop" brown bag lunch where we'll talk about the spring semester CS classes. Discussion questions include (but not limited to): "What type of workload should I expect from 91.XXX?" "What type of projects do you do in project sequence FOO BAR?" Bring your own questions!

What: Brown Bag Lunch hosted by WiCS
When: October 22, 2007
Where: CS Library (OS 219A)
Time: 12:30pm - 1:15pm
Other: Bring your lunch. Drinks and desserts will be provided. All are welcomed. RSVP with wics at cs.uml.edu.

Brown Bag Lunch

The survey results of what you want WiCS to be are in! Join us Monday, September 24, 2007 in the CS Library (2nd floor, straight off the elevators), 12:30 - 1:30 PM. Bring your own lunch.

WiCS Introductory Lunch

Would you like the opportunity to meet with other women who share your interest in computer science? Would you like to be part of a supportive group that recognizes the problems and issues unique to women in the field of computer science and encourages one another through the research and thesis process?

Join us for a light lunch between 12 noon and 1 pm today (Wednesday 9/12) on the 3rd floor lobby of Olsen Hall. Fill in a quick survey, share your opinion what you want WiCS to be, and discuss the needs of fellow women computer scientists.