Miscellaneous

There are a few other responsibilities that all grads share which don't fit nicely into the four categories above. They are listed below, in random order.

• Colloquium ``Privilege'': The department runs a weekly colloquium in the conference room on Mondays. At the beginning of each year, the grad rep (see Section 3) will make up a randomly ordered list of all the grads and post it on the grad bulletin board. This is the Colloquium ``Privilege'' list. Colloquium duty involves:²
  • Tidying up the conference room to make sure it is ready for the talk, including arranging the chairs nicely, pulling the screen down, turning on/off appropriate lights, erasing the chalkboard, and making sure the pointer is available.
  • Seek out the speaker for the day to determine whether they have any special media needs (e.g. slide projector or connection for a PowerPoint presentation).
  • Make sure the audio system is ready and help the speaker with the microphone.
  • After the talk, make sure all media items are put away and secured.

• Colloquia: Between NRAO and UVa, there are usually two Astronomy colloquia every week in Charlottesville. In addition, there are less formal TUNA talks at NRAO. Grad students are expected to attend the majority of the colloquia. You should at least attend all of the UVa colloquia that you can, and as many NRAO colloquia as possible. The faculty will notice if attendance is consistently poor at colloquia, and have been known to put questions taken directly from colloquia on the qualifiers if attendance is bad. TUNA talks are viewed as more optional, but still very useful. At first, you will probably have a hard time following these various talks. This is normal. Don't get discouraged. Keep going, and over time, you will absorb more and more of the material covered.

• Public Night: The first and third Friday of each month, there is a Public Night at McCormick Observatory, plus one Friday in October and one in April when the Fan Mountain Observatory is open to the public. In general, each grad student will have to work at one public night each semester. A schedule is created at the beginning of each semester, and you will be given the opportunity to request specific dates. The details about how public night works will be discussed elsewhere, probably in a meeting with Ed Murphy sometime early in the semester.

• All grads are required to submit progress reports at the end of each semester. These should detail your research progress, committee work, conferences attended, papers published, and anything else of note. Copies should go to the Chair, Grad advisor, your research adviser, your mentor adviser (first- and second-years), and each member of your committee (third-years and beyond). Also, give one copy to Jackie so she can put it in your department file. The grad rep should remind people about these as each semester comes to a close. As an example, take a look at a senior grad's progress report from a previous semester.