Officer position descriptions
We elect officers in the first part of Fall term, to better enable freshmen and transfer students to get involved early and to encourage returning students to get involved at the fresh start of a new year. All positions will be open for re-election. Information on elections will be given at the week 2 meet’n’greet and elections will be held at the week 4 meeting.
Below, please find position descriptions.
Co-presidents
SPS at UO operates with two co-presidents in order to share the workload of club direction and allow more students to be involved in leadership positions. The co-presidents work together closely to direct all affairs of the club and should also have the ability to be on the look out for opportunities and connections for the club and students. Co-presidents are also strongly encouraged to attend the annual zone meeting to network and collect ideas from other chapters, but other officers are obviously also welcome to do so.
The duties of the co-presidents include:
- Forecasting and planning club direction for the year
- Creating a general plan for the year
- Generating ideas and possibilities for meetings
- Running meetings
- Creating agendas for planing meetings (held on odd-numbered weeks)
- Welcoming students to general meetings (held on even-numbered weeks)
- Directing planning meetings and following the agendas
- Soliciting requests for things to include on the agenda
- Crafting inviting and informative emails to send to the student body before all general meetings
- Delegating tasks as necessary to the other officers
- Working and meeting with physics office staff, faculty ambassadors and other student group leads
- Communicating with SPS presidents and members at other universities for multi-university collaboration and events, such as the Zone Meeting and certain field trips
- Keeping abreast of opportunities at the SPS national level/in other professional physics areas and disseminating the information to SPS members and the Physics student body
- Creating and sharing Google drive folders for sharing SPS materials per academic year
- Monitoring and responding to requests via the SPS email account
Vice-President
The vice president assists the co-presidents in any and all leadership tasks, and is also able to fill in for other duties (such as taking photographs or obtaining purchase orders for food). The vice president position is an excellent option for a student who wants to gain leadership experience but has less time available than the co-president position demands, or as a stepping stone to seeking co-president position. Duties include:
- Assisting in planning club direction for the year
- (Assist in) running meetings in the absence of one or both of the co-presidents
- Crafting physical posters for meetings and posting around the building and in visible locations (in conjunction with co-presidents’ emails)
- Keeping abreast of opportunities at the SPS national level/in other professional physics areas and disseminating the information to SPS members and the Physics student body
- Monitoring and responding to requests via the SPS email account
Treasurer
The treasurer’s task is to act as the club budgeter and purchaser, which is fortunately not too complicated as our primary expense is meeting refreshments! Any duties involving money that may arise from future event plans may also be delegated to the treasurer. Duties include:
- Researching and ordering meeting refreshments within the amounts allowed by the Physics office
- Working with the Physics office to obtain purchase orders (a written request, directed at a business, to sell food to a university group)
- Picking up and/or arranging for delivery of food and refreshments
- Maintaining a spreadsheet of club expenditures
- Planning fundraisers or donation drives as needed
Secretary
The secretary’s primary job is to record meeting minutes and manage documentation for the club. Duties may be expanded in the future as club activities expand.
Duties include:
- Recording planning meeting minutes in Google docs
- Sending emails to fellow officers to summarize task assignments after planning meetings
- Managing the Google drive folders
- Sharing with new officers or collaborators as needed
- Creating minute templates
- Assisting web/social media manager with photo storage
- Managing general meeting sign-in sheets
- Printing sign-in sheets or creating by hand
- Scanning and storing in Google drive
- Emailing a copy to Jani Scallion, Physics accounting technician, for records purposes
Webmaster/Social Media Manager
The webmaster/social media manager position is a good fit for a student either with experience maintaining websites and Facebook pages or for a student who wants to gain experience doing so. SPS maintains a website (this one) as well as a Facebook page and Google calendar.
Photography duties have historically been covered by anyone available and able to take photos. For the upcoming year, we are including the duties along with this position.
Duties include:
- Work with co-presidents and vice president to disseminate meeting information on the website and Facebook:
- Post bi-weekly announcements (posts) on the website for general meetings
- Re-post website meeting announcements to the Facebook page
- Post additional announcements (posts) on the website about bonus meetings or extra opportunities
- Manage the SPS website (that’s this one!)
- Maintain permanent pages of the website (contact info, officers, etc)
- Work with the co-presidents and vice president to post on the website any relevant, regularly reoccurring opportunities for physics students, such as scholarships, regular UO volunteer opportunities, paid research award applications and so on
- Monitor Facebook page for incoming messages and inquiries
- Take photographs of meetings, field trips and events and post them
Outreach Coordinator(s)
The outreach coordinator(s) is the perfect position for a student or two students keen on organizing small teams, connecting with the larger UO/Eugene community or working with children and community members. This is a new position for 2016-2017, and has been added in an effort to instill SPS with a greater ability to anticipate, prepare for and organize for the many outreach events and opportunities throughout the year.
Duties include:
- Keeping abreast of upcoming outreach opportunities in the community
- Generating ideas for SPS-driven outreach events
- Organizing teams for outreach–demo preparation, transportation if needed
- Creating new demos as desired/as needed
Student advisors
Student advisors are past SPS officers who are seniors/in their final year. They are welcome and encouraged to continue attending SPS meetings in an advisory position. This allows SPS to continue to benefit from their experience as officers, but to still include new students at all official officer positions.
Duties are light and informal. Advisors facilitate discussion as necessary in planning meetings, and are welcome to comment and make suggestions on plans created by the officers. Advisors are not there to serve as stand-in presidents, but rather to serve as a resource given their past experiences.