Grad Minds Exec Meeting 4

Online through Zoom

Wednesday, September 30th, 2020

Attendees:
Jeffrey Lynham Co-Chair
Esther Silk Co-Chair
Samantha Chang Co-Event Team Lead
Curtis D’Hollander Co-Event Team Lead
Karthik Ganesan Community Liaison
Mao Thao Secretary
Vineeth Raveendran Treasurer/Sponsorship Manager
Lexi Ewing Mental Health Policy Advisor
Shraddha Khiwadkar Co-Lead Volunteer Coordinator
Audrey Kao Co-Lead Volunteer Coordinator

Regrets:
Tania Barrera Member-At-Large/Event Coordinator
Sandy Chu Marketing and Social Medial Manager
Roseanne Nguyen Communications Manager
Ian Fernandes Web Designer

Actionables for the Meeting:

• Esther will email three departments about our next workshop – potentially Social Work,
Biochemistry and a research-based department
• Esther will drop the Microaggression presentation into our Slack channel
• Sam will add onto the Eventbrite/Feedback Form a question asking for the attendee’s
department, so we can track to see if emailing departments has helped us gain online
participants
• Sandy will write the Event Write Up for our next workshop: Imposter syndrome.
• Everyone, for those of you who have not signed up to attend and do a write up about
the event, you can find this in the Workflow Tab located in our google document. Please
sign up to attend a workshop and do an Event Write Up afterwards. The Event Write Up
will consist of 200-400 words with key takeaways from the workshop and the biography
of the speaker. Each executive should sign up for one. Here is our google document:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pyazNbpIx0r__a77x1WQlVXETvR4v3WCxtH
MqKx9KKw/edit#gid=1045969446
• Curtis and Sam will brainstorm potential facilitators for our conference.
• Everyone, please share potential workshop facilitators in the Ideas Tab on our google
document. We can discuss these ideas in our next meeting.
 • Audrey will check with her classmate and give Karthik the name(s) of the Health and
Wellness staff her classmate is working with
• Audrey will send Jeffrey her list of mental health app list
• Karthik will share ideas on Slack about what he plans on doing with the list he’s
collected, a list consisting of organizations on campus related to mental health and
wellness
• Jeffrey will bring up at the UTGSU Orientation for Co-Chairs Meeting that because we do
not know our budget we have been unable to proceed forward with things such as
booking workshop facilitators

Meeting will be called to order at 5:37 PM.

1. Meeting Comes to order

a. Welcome to our two New Exec Members: Audrey & Shraddha
i. Ask everyone to do a brief introduction
b. Adoption of Agenda
c. Ratification of Minutes from September 16th Meeting

2. Financial Business
a. Budget Update (Jeffrey)
i. Nothing new to report, but will review the situation to fill in Audrey and
Shraddha
ii. Waiting for UTGSU to get our final budget numbers
iii. Not knowing the budget is hard for us, especially for our conference as
we’re looking for workshop and keynote facilitators. Jeffrey will bring this
up at the UTGSU Orientation for Co-chairs Meeting

3. Project / Event Updates

a. Recap of Microaggressions Workshop (Esther)
i. Ask about take home messages for those who couldn’t make it
ii. Not a large number, there’s a lack of participants on online platforms
iii. Big Takeaway – what people struggle with is how to be an ally - it’s our
responsibility to speak up for our BIPOC peers
b. Promoting emails (Esther)
i. Sent out department wide emails and people have been responsive
ii. Reached out to the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Information,
Department of Physiology, and Department of Computer Science
 iii. Sam will add onto the Eventbrite/Feedback Form attendees’ departments,
so we can track to see if emailing departments is helping us gain online
participants.
iv. Emailing them on Fridays
v. Going off the excel sheet that Jeffrey gave Esther – it’s from 2 years ago
vi. Next three departments to email: Social Work, Biochemistry and some
research-based department
vii. Esther will also drop the Microaggression presentation into the slack
c. Fall 2020 Workshop Series (Samantha / Curtis / Jeffrey)
i. Feedback on 5 Ways to Wellbeing Workshop
o Sam – 5 people filled out the feedback out of the 15 people who
attended
o Super positive feedback
o Facilitator Chad is very personable and can connect with
participants even online.
o May be low numbers because it’s been a workshop we offered in
the summer and Vineeth mentioned that his department has also
offered this workshop too.
ii. Promotions for Imposter Syndrome Workshop
o We already have ~50 participants signed up – we don’t need to do
much promotion, but Esther will still send email out to three
departments
o Sandy has signed up to do the Event Write Up for this workshop
o Please sign up to do an Event Write Up
o Side note – what’s the highest number of participants from last
year – 38 signed up and 23 people came
d. Vote on Conference Theme Title
i. We voted and settled on “Finding your Place in Virtual Space”
ii. Sam – looking for keynotes
iii. Curtis and Sam will brainstorm potential facilitators
iv. Please share ideas in Event ideas on the weblink if you think there’s a
facilitator we should bring in
e. Volunteer Projects (Jeffrey, Audrey, Shraddha)
i. Audrey – Share Circles + Peer Support Initiative
o Peer Support Initiative – may be a redundant service because the
Health and Wellness are launching a similar Peer Support
Initiative
o Karthik asked for Audrey to check and give him names from
Health and Wellness, he knows some people and may be able to
get a better idea of what’s going on.
ii. Shraddha – Advocacy Team + Online Activities
o Will be working with a group of volunteers on advocacy, currently
working on the PowerPoint about this
o Navi Tool – will be showing volunteers how to use this
f. COVID-19 Mental Health Resources & Infographics (Lexi)
i. Covid-19 Resources – there’s already one getting done by Tania
ii. Covid and Coping Infographics
o Would like to put together a list geared more towards coping
mechanisms, resources, and information for students who are
seeking to learn how to cope with the impact of covid.
o Will focus on more than just covid related resources and support
iii. How to give out this information – dismantling information
o Website, UTGSU Digest and Social media
iv. Past Project - Infographics
o There’s a lot of services and resources however, what do these
services look like when you’re using them. Wanted to make
infographics about what this would look like for students so
they’re well informed.
o These are the services that were outside of the University,
especially since there’s such a long waitlist to get into some of the
on-campus services
o This project is currently on hold
g. Updates to Grad Minds Webpage
i. Categorized Resource List (Tania) – Unfortunately not here so no update
ii. Mention that SGS and UTGSU never got back to me
o Website Accessibility Guidelines (Ian) – Unfortunately not here so
no update
iii. Currently have not changed the website
iv. Mental Health App List (Audrey)
o Audrey will send Jeffrey her list of mental health app list
h. Community Collaborations / Working Groups (Karthik)
i. Karthik has a collected list for SGS about groups associated with mental
health and wellness. We would like to create a community of mental
health across UofT with this list.
ii. What will this look like? Maybe sharing of how we function?
iii. Karthik will share some ideas on Slack about this. He’s thinking of starting
a slack group where organizations share ideas and advertise events, an
exchange of information
iv. Mao – Using Grad Minds as an umbrella group for other organizations
which can be smaller.
v. Vineeth – Avoid using the term umbrella because some organizations
might not want to be merged together.
vi. Lexi – Collaborating with other groups, shows a much stronger message
when we’re doing something together
o Google form – collaborative with us, gives us idea, and what do
these groups want, set some guidelines for this relationship
vii. Update on Agnus from Health and Wellness – have heard little from her
 4. Any other business
a. Reminder About Townhall Meeting Next Wednesday

5. Adjournment at 6:44 pm

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Mao Thao
Secretary