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The annual report of the American Nuclear Society Student Section at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. It includes information about the section management, operations, and financial planning. The report also lists the names of the executive officers, governors, and chairs. The document could be useful as study notes or a summary for students interested in nuclear energy and related topics.
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Lucas Mynsberge Jacob Sager Darius Lisowski Angela Weier Kalin Kiesling Ian Jentz Adam Reinicke Amanda Lang Andrea Jedele Matthew Jasica Paul Wilson
Throughout the 2012-2013 school year, the American Nuclear Society University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter (UW-ANS) has worked diligently to maintain its track record of planning, organizing, and executing a plethora of events in the areas of service to ANS, public outreach, professional development and community service.
After many years of success, the goal of this year's UW-ANS chapter was to continue that history of excellence and work hard to add to it. This was done by increasing our impact on the surrounding community and adding events and opportunities for our numerous members; all while maintaining excellent preparation and execution of previous years' activities.
As in previous years, UW-ANS continued to participate in such community service and public outreach activities as Adopt-A-Highway, the high school essay contest, Boy Scout Nuclear Science Merit Badge Days, Science Olympiad, and Science Nights for local schools. And as in previous years, these events were incredibly successful. Following the events at the Fukushima disaster, UW-ANS hosted a student-oriented open discussion forum to provide a detailed recap of the events and to answer questions about the event, and was a success with multiple students from multiple disciplines taking part in the discussion.
UW-ANS hosted a variety of professional development events that allowed students the opportunity to network with professionals and to learn more about the prospects available to them upon graduation. These events included general meetings in which professionals from the nuclear industry were invited as speakers, various UW- ANS national and student conferences, and career fairs put on by the College of Engineering in which UW-ANS helped facilitate. We also heavily encouraged students to present at the ANS conference, along with attending many workshops that were provided by other organizations with close ties to UW-ANS.
On the social front, UW-ANS continued with many of its time honored traditions. The bi-annual department picnic “Pic-Nuke” was hosted by UW-ANS, turning out around 150 attendees. UW-ANS members met throughout the year for social events that included movie nights and games nights, which had very strong turnouts this year.
Students networked with professors and amongst themselves at the coffee and donuts event every Wednesday morning. And as they have for over ten years, UW- ANS students, alumni, and professors showed up at Mickie’s Dairy Bar at 7 A.M. every Friday morning for breakfast. Students also occasionally met at the local bar for Friday after Class and card games
The Vice-President’s responsibilities are organizing the section’s social activities, tours and bookkeeping active membership status of students, acting as President in the President’s absence, and providing support for the President. This year, the vice president was Jacob Sager, and he helped prepare general meetings, coordinate Pic-Nuke and the other UW-ANS socials, and ordered new t-shirts. Next year the vice president will be Matthew Jasica--the current Boy Scout Coordinator.
The Public Information (PI) Officer’s duties were to develop, organize, schedule, and execute the section’s public outreach efforts as well as to appoint and oversee the work of the Boy Scouts Workshops, Science Olympiad, and Essay Contest. Included in this responsibility was proper inventorying public outreach supplies, writing and designing presentations to be used at public outreach events, coordinating with teachers and scout leaders to organize events such as Boy Scouts and the Essay Contest, and working earnestly throughout the summer to coordinate both Camp Badger and GPU. The PI for this year was Angela Weier, and next year will be Nathan Vogel, who was highly active and involved in outreach this year.
The Treasurer’s responsibilities included drafting budgets for each semester and for the entire year, keeping track of all transactions completed by the organization, writing grant proposals, acting as liaison between UW-ANS and the UW-Madison Student Leadership Center (an organization that oversees the donated funds of College of Engineering student organizations), and advising the other executive officers on how best to spend the section’s funds. In addition, the treasurer performed a complete refresh of the position by standardizing all budget-related processes. The treasurer this year was Darius Lisowski, and Ian Jentz, who served as Governor this semester, has been elected for next year.
The Communications Officers duties are to take minutes at executive committee meetings, to send out weekly announcements, advertise for upcoming events (usually by flyers, by chalking information on sidewalks, or via email), and to maintain and update the UW-ANS announcement mailing list. The importance of this position is to ensure that the members, students, and community are properly informed about the events going on within UW-ANS. Despite the one semester term, Kalin Kiesling was elected and re-elected to serve as Communications Officer throughout the entire year. Next semester’s Communications Officer will be Andrew Nigh.
The main purpose of the Governor position is to get acquainted with the workings and dealings of the UW-ANS executive committee and to develop their leadership skills. Because of this, Governors are preferred to be underclassmen or those just starting to get involved. Some of their responsibilities are planning and facilitating special events throughout the semester, such as Adopt-A-Highway and E-Week. There are two Governor positions, and like the Communications Officer position, are only one semester terms. The Governors in the fall semester were Amanda Lang and Andrea Jedele, and in the spring term were Ian Jentz and Adam Reinicke. Next semester’s Governors will be Kelsey Amundson and John Daugherty.
Chairs
The chairs of the UW-Madison ANS section are appointed by members of the Executive committee, and therefore are non-elected positions. As such, chairs are not required to attend executive committee meetings and are more committed to a more focused set of responsibilities. Some chairs are consistent, year-long events, while some appear on an as-needed basis.
The Boy Scouts Chair main responsibility is facilitating and organizing UW-ANS’s Boy Scouts Merit Badger Workshops, which helps ease the burden of placing too many duties on the Public Information officer. The Boy Scouts Chair should understand the basic operations behind Boy Scouts, the nuclear science merit badge, and the outreach and communication required in order to organize this event. The Scouts Chair this year was Matthew Jasica. The torch was progressively handed over to him from Chris Patterson. By executing a few workshops with joint coordination between Chris and Matt, the transition was performed much more smoothly than in previous transitions.
The Expo Chair was appointed by the President to oversee the successful execution of the Engineering Expo. This was a special position for this year, since Expo only occurs every other year and sees thousands of visitors to campus ranging from barely walking (or not walking at all!) to senior adults. The knowledge levels vary just as widely. Even already serving his time as the Vice-President officer, Jacob Sager accepted the duties as the Expo Chair this year, and helped create an Expo with such excellent record keeping that it will be used as a reference for years to come.
The Science Olympiad Chair is appointed by the Public Information officer, and is charged with coordinating UW-ANS members to coach students at Mount Horeb
Alice Cusentino, Angela Weier, Brian Cornille, Kalin Kiesling, Andrew Maile, Madelyn Wolter, John Daugherty, Nathan Vogel, and Nicoletta Farabullini.
In addition to the contributions of the executive committee and its general members, UW-ANS attributes its success to the administrative procedures and processes that kept it organized. Furthermore, these processes made it possible for turnover to be carried out with relative ease between last years executive committee and this years, and this years executive board is confident that the same success will be realized next year.
This year, UW-ANS hosted office hours in which members of the executive board were available at the UW-ANS office located in the Engineering Centers Building on UW-Madison campus. For ten hours every week, UW-ANS executives were available for questions, t-shirt sales, and even informal tutoring. One hour each week of these office hours included the weekly executive meetings in which the executive board discussed current issues, upcoming events and their logistics, and other items of interest regarding the section. Chairs, the Webmaster, the Polygon Representative, and general members were welcome and sometimes were present at these meetings to provide input for the executive board.
Active membership is a distinguished title that UW-ANS awards to members who demonstrate a strong commitment to the continuation and betterment of UW-ANS and its programs. To attain active membership status, members were required to acquire a certain number of active membership points in order to achieve this status.
These points were accomplished by attending meetings, workshops, outreach events, tours, etc. that UW-ANS hosted or encouraged. The intent of the Active Membership points were to encourage people to help out with UW-ANS and the Community, while also helping themselves develop professionally. Throughout both fall and spring semesters, benefits were realized for active members. In the fall, a laser tag social had a highly discounted price. In the spring, both a paintballing social and stipends for the ANS Student Conference were rewarded. For those members receiving the title of active membership, along with the current and appointed executive board, a catered banquet will be held during the last week of the semester.
Financial Planning
Spending money and obtaining funds is always a challenge for any student organization. UW-ANS applied principles that have worked in previous years in conjunction with lessons learned to allocate funds appropriately and ensure that sufficient funds would be available for next year’s administration. The student section has two spending accounts. We have a checking account with Associated Bank-Corp. and an account through the Student Leadership Center (SLC) in the College of Engineering. The SLC requires us to maintain an account with them to apply for certain grants. The account is used to pay for large events such as conferences. The checking account is used to reimburse members and smaller items due to the ease of use. All checks written must be signed by two members of authorized signers which include: the President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Faculty Advisor. This method ensures more responsibility when spending and has worked well.
Budget
As the school year commenced, each member of the executive board submitted a budget detailing the costs and earnings that their respective position could predict for the year. Some activities, such as supporting local Science Olympiad groups, earn money for our section, while some activities, such as food for unfunded meetings and supplies for outreach activities, entail a cost. These budgets were finalized at a designated executive meeting. This meeting enabled a discussion to inform the way in which the money could best be allocated and served to highlight distribution of events that each officer in our organization should prepare to focus on and take responsibility for. This year, the budget compiled from this meeting was made available in our Google Docs account. Thus, members of the executive board had access to the agreed-upon budgets for the events under their supervision and could make appropriate appeals if unexpected expenses arose. This year, our section stayed well within our budget, having generously predicted possible expenses for our events. The first semester we were significantly under budget and the second semester we were just slightly over breaking even.
This year the UW ANS section spent approximately $11,000. To balance our spending, we solicited donations from many companies and organizations in the nuclear field and associated with the University of Wisconsin. By relying on materials from past years and applying lessons learned, our spending this year was slightly lower than previous years' spending, but no events were cut.
Reimbursement
GMail were quickly adopted (and are still heavily used). Google Docs has officially become the primary communication tool for the UW-ANS organization. The word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software are all used to assemble, coordinate, and disseminate organizational activities and proceedings. A non-exhaustive list of these uses follows:
● Executive committee meeting agendas and minutes ● Expo planning committee and minutes ● Budgetary planning ● Membership rosters ● Active Membership Point Submission ● Conference tour and sign-ups ● General meeting introductions / presentation ● Guest speaker presentations ● Descriptive source inventory ● Chapter logo storage ● Collaborative editing / sharing
In addition to these "standard" document abilities, Google Docs also offers Forms. Forms is a simple tool that allows us to quickly create surveys or applications that can be embedded in a website. When filled out and submitted, the Form sends the information to a spreadsheet and creates summary statistics for all of the submissions. This service from Docs is an important part of the current website.
This year saw UW-ANS commit firmly to communication in the digital age through full utilization of the Google Apps suite of services. Building upon the previous years' careful trek into new ground, we now consider Google Apps as a natural and effective means for effective collaboration amongst current UW-ANS officers and members while providing a steady and promises base for the future.
Social Media: Facebook and Twitter The utilization of Social Networking sites has been taking off these last few years, and UW-ANS has utilized this opportunity to keep in touch with the community. With students checking their Facebook more often than their email, it is becoming the best way to quickly and readily relay information to a particular group, and can even be utilized to advertise to the general public for the proper times. While we had many individuals advertise these events through their own personal Facebook account, UW-ANS had an alias of “Captain Neutron”, who has 60 friends within UW- ANS. We have also recommended at all the members of UW-ANS become a fan of the UW - Madison Nuclear Engineering Facebook page, which was designed by one of the faculty members in the Engineering Physics Department. Several UW-ANS
executive members were given permission to edit the webpage, which has proven to be a useful tool in helping advertise events, meetings, and keeping others informed about the current events going on in UW-ANS.
Figure 1 The Facebook fan page of the UW - Madison Nuclear Engineering.
New this year was the addition of a Twitter account to keep members apprised of UW-ANS status. Our Twitter feed is found at UW_ANS and we tweet everything from upcoming events, to congratulatory remarks to reward recipients, as well as any nuclear related news. It has seen some success and we hope to increase its use and popularity to provide quick snapshots of current happenings.
semester were elected, and the second was on April 25th to elect the new executive committee for the next academic year.
General Meetings & Speakers
Table 1 Summary of all the general meetings, information sessions, and speakers that UW-ANS either hosted or helped advertise for.
Date Speaker Company
September 6th, 2012 ** No Speaker** ** Fall Kick-Off Meeting **
September 24th, 2012 Ryan Boscow NNSA Graduate Fellowship
September 24th, 2012 Eric Edwards KAPL/Bettis
October 25th, 2012 Scott Luchau, Brian Vitiello Dominion
November 6th, 2012 Ross Radel Phoenix Nuclear Labs
November 15th, 2012 Janaki K. CIA Simulation
December 6th, 2012 ** No Speaker** ** UW-ANS Elections Meeting **
January 28th, 2013 ** No Speaker** ** Spring Kick-Off Meeting **
February 6th, 2013 Amy Lapse Sandia National Laboratory
March 20th, 2013 Dr. Tsahi Gozani CEO and President of Rapiscan Systems Neutronics and Advanced Technologies Corporation
April 1st, 2013 Dr. Pete Lyons Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy (DOE)
April 23rd, 2013 Joseph Bisognano Synchrotron Radiation Center
May 6th, 2013 ** No Speaker** ** UW-ANS Elections Meeting **
Coordination with Student Organizations
UW-ANS especially strove to coordinate with other student organizations of UW- Madison this year. As in the past, UW-ANS coordinated events with the Women in Nuclear (WIN) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) chapters of UW-Madison. UW-ANS maintained close contact with The Hacker Within (THW) and the Engineering Physics Department, encouraging participation in their respective activities.
WIN and UW-ANS jointly hosted several events, including the games night social, the movie night, and Sandia National Laboratories. Last year, UW-ANS helped WIN start up their Girls Scout Workshops , and the cooperation between the two organizations for scouts workshops has strongly continued this year, with WIN strongly assisting UW-ANS members for Boy Scouts. Unfortunately, no girl scouts signed up for a workshop this year, so one was not held. In order to remedy this, WIN aims to offer a workshop to all girls/women in the area rather than scouts exclusively in order to increase nuclear awareness. They also combined forces for E-Week and the Engineering Expo. Because UW-ANS and WIN are within the same department and share members, cooperation between UW-ANS and WIN will undoubtedly continue next year.
The Engineering Mechanics/Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics (EM/EMA) program is within the same department (Engineering Physics) as the Nuclear Engineering program at UW-Madison. As such, the student organization associated with the EM/EMA degree, AIAA, and UW-ANS commonly coordinate events together, in a very similar manner as WIN.
Figure 3 AIAA pitches to ANS as we attempt to knock one out of the park.
Proposal. Two of these members from this group were ANS members: Mary Alice Cusentino and Amanda Lang.
The Spring Student Conference in Boston, MA, had a great turnout by UW-ANS members, in which 16 people attended from our chapter. UW-ANS coordinated the logistics for all the students who wished to drive to Boston. This helped reduce costs for concerned students, but also required giving up more time away from school. The trip was long, but exciting and those traveling together grew much closer. Through a grant from Polygon, the College of Engineering Student Council, and Excel Services, UW-ANS was able to fund the transportation costs of the trip for those who wished to drive, and 7 of the 16 attending people utilized this method. Without the ability to drive, many of those would not have been able to attend. This would not have been possible without help from the Department of Engineering Physics and the Department of Administration, which we would personally like to thank for helping out with this trip.
Figure 4 The group of members who attended MIT's student conference on the docks.
Many of the students attending utilized events such as the career fair and other resources and contacts to help benefit them in their career. We had two people give presentations: Amanda Lang and Angela Weier. Angela Weier was even fortunate enough to meet members of the company that her research had been contracted for!
For the last two years, UW-ANS, University of Illinois ANS, and Purdue University ANS have begun to rekindle our association and organize joint tours of various facilities across the Midwest. This year, about five students from each section met up in LaSalle, IL in order to tour the nuclear power plant there. Two presentations were given to us--one by Exelon regarding their fuel supply and parent company and one by one of the station workers. This was followed with an extensive tour of the BWR including the actual control room and finally a lunch. The day was beautiful and the different sections mixed nicely as new friends were made.'
