Postdoc Meeting 28th April 2014: Minutes

• New PD reps
  • Sarah Kendrew and Sam Doolin (thanks!)
  • To take over full time in the new academic year, but may attend Trinity 14 Staff meeting with present reps.
• Staff development discussions
  • only 1/4 of those present have attended a SDD between April 2013 and April 2014
  • only 1/2 know what they were about
  • potential conflict of interest with supervisor taking SDD; you can choose someone else
  • Aprajita to follow this up at the next departmental post-doc liaison committee meeting; AV & RH raise this with Roger.
    • [POST-MEETING UPDATE by AV: Passed on comments to Yvonne Cavanagh (John Wheater's EA) who will raise the communication issue at the next administrators review of the SDD before the start of TT14. Also Leanne & Roger prompted supervisors to conduct the meetings this month. If anyone still hasn't had theirs or has a comment about the SDD process with me, please let me know]
• Mentors
  • general agreement that would be good and useful system to have in place
  • Possible link to Athena Swan mentoring scheme (currently being discussed at the Equality & Diversity Committee)?
  • AV & RH meet with Roger in future to discuss?
    • [POST-MEETING UPDATE by AV: AV will meet with RLD to discuss some options, also mentoring is being discussed by the Equality & Diversity Committee, and the Oxford Women in Physics Society]
  • Mentors might be the first port of call for harassment issues, with the expectation that they would refer harassment issues to the harassment officers in the Physics Dept.
  • Would mentors need training?
• New PDs to the dept
  • is the current intro sufficient?
  • Newcomers pack should include a summary sheet that gives more post-doc related info (e.g. social list, seminars/astro-ph, SDD, reps, PD tea ... etc)
  • Suggestion that new people send an email to the dept introducing themselves and their research (RH & AV to ask Roger if he's happy with this)
    • [POST MEETING UPDATE by AV: RLD happy with this]
  • New reps might look at putting more info on the wiki (e.g. resource on who does what), see below
  • NEW PD TEA TIMES: tues and thurs at 11am (note not different to astro coffee, just post-docs make more effort on these days)
    • [POST MEETING UPDATE by AV: Staff meeting revised time to 10:30 - shall post-docs make another effort to do this?]
• Talks
  • Brown bag seems to be less frequent/stopped. various discussions on if it can be used for internal talks of al types of just theory (tessa to follow up)
• PD pack and general info
  • missing social experience in the dept (see above new tea times)
  • there is a wiki (here!!)
  • there are email lists. See the wiki.
    • social
    • official postdocs@astro.ox.ac.uk
• PDs and fellows
  • why treated differently (email lists, website etc.)
  • discussion that some long-term fellows/visitors are listed as "visitors"
    • [POST MEETING UPDATE by AV: JW took this up and will fix the entries in the staff database, he noted that they have a separate category for long term visitors and fellows in THeoretical Physics so this isn't an issue there. This will be fixed soon]
  • zooniverse developers: are they listed as PDs? Some have no PhD. Would be good to have them at the PD events and their views be represented (Brooke to find out if they get PD emails). do they and other project PDs fall between the cracks of the dept policy and emails?
• Trip funding
  • discussion regarding fact that only one travel advance allowed at a time; AV to raise this at postdoc liaison committee
  • generally agreed it's crazy and must be changed (and can already be waived if you bug finance enough)
  • discussion on delays in payment, even if submit before pre-arranged easter deadlines
  • discussion on claims + receipts + exchange rates for claiming. Use of credit card for all purchases useful.
  • [POST MEETING UPDATE by AV: Raised to JW, University rule that only one advance can be held at a time and thsi can't be got around. Physics will send an email at the start of next term to help people use the system, e.g. reminding you that you can ut multiple trips on a single travel plan and claim an advance for all, and reminder to claim any "pre-paid" things (e.g. air fare, conf fees, hotesl, car hire etc) before your trip to alleviate cost burden. The issue of late payments at Easter will be queried with Physics Admin/Finance]
• Careers
  • recent careers day
    • not attended by many present (only 1/4)
  • suggestion that list of "example" careers would be useful
  • more events favoured both with someone who is an astro/theory academic and someone who had to leave but didn't want to
• Computing
  • Current PD computing rep is Boris Haeussler
  • discussion on "opting out" as galzoo have done
  • possible 1/2 day course for admin (?)
  • Should add to intro pack what computing facilities are available
  • also get the IT masterclasses going again is people want them. Suggestions?