1" l a; I “i i : EEI campus@technewsiit.com TechNews I Tuesday, March 29th, 2016

Food Science Club aims to investigate, educate about our food

Rutuja Khadye and Shivanee
Chaudhary
TECH NEWS WRITERS

Luciano Pavarotti once said, “One
of very nicest things about life is the way we
must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing
and devote our attention to eating?’ But how
many times do we stop to wonder what it is
that we are eating exactly? Every 35 days your
skin replaces itself, every month your liver
replaces itself, your body makes these new cells
from the food you eat What you eat literally
becomes your Hence, understanding your food
is extremely important That’s exactly what the
Food Science Club aims to do With a diverse

Clubs find common ground at first

Soren Spicknall
TECH NEWS WRITER

At therequest of SGA president Rahul
Wadhwani, the Office of Student Affairs and
Office of Campus Life organized a luncheon for
student organization presidents, hosted inside
the MTCC Ballroom during regular lunch
hour on Thursday, March 10‘ With invitations
sent out to all 150+ currently active primary
contacts in Hakaink, the resulting event was
not intended to push any specific narrative
or announce any new policy, but was instead
simply a general gathering of student leaders
for the purpose of discussing shared priorities,
challenges, and strategies for the coming year
Most of OCL’s current advising staff attended
along with Dean of Students Katie Stetz and
others involved in coordinating the business
of student organizations, and about 40 student
organization heads joined those staff members
for the first of what is intended to be a series of

array of events and activities, we not just plan
on educating you about your food, but also
make sure you have fun while doing it

For all you food enthusiasts, this is a
great chance to enhance your knowledge about
processing offood products and get behind the
scenes of food pro duction Know what you eat

Food science, being a
multidisciplinary field, comprises of chemical
engineering, mathematics, industrial
engineering, management, biochemistry,
computer science, etc The diversity in this
field itself depicts the fact that Food Science
Club is open to the entire IIT Community

With the Food Science Club (FSC),
you get a chance to meet professionals from
various food companies, and learn about the

presidentefo cused gatherings

A few minutes after the official
start of the luncheon, Associate Vice Provost
for Campus Life, Ryan Miller, stood up to
introduce himself to the group and kick off
some collaborative discussion With some aid
from Dean Stetz, he outlined the purpose of
the event and posed a few general questions
about the challenges of student organization
promotion and planning After everybody
present introduced themselves and the
organization (s) they were representing,
discussion turned to collaborative work that
different groups on campus could engage in
to form corcurated events and take some of
the pressure off an individual organization to
plan and promote a large idea on their own
Many organizations have been discovering
the benefits of partnered events this year
(especially Bog events, for which Union Board
provides funding), and the participants in the
luncheon seemed eager to branch out to more
dualehosted events

ideas that inspired themi Get to know how a
product is being made and how innovation
happens in afoodindustry Under the charge of
faculty advisor, Dri Kathiravan Krishnamurthy,
assistant professor at IFSH, and the leadership
of Nikhil Mishra, who’s currently pursuing his
Masters in Food Safety & Technology, FSC
is the first of a kind student organization at
Illinois Tech from the department of Food
Safety and Nutrition

FSC will provide IIT students with
the opportunity to be a part of the Institute
of Food Technologists (IFT), which is a
global platform for food science enthusiasts,
and be eligible for various college bowls and
international events There’s also a lot of
scholarships to be won Along with various

51'qu- ‘

interesting events onrcampus, this student
organization will also organize a forum and an
industrial visit per semester, information on
which will be sent out to members on a regular
basis So, what are you waiting for? Come and
join Food Science Club today

For reaching out to students, both
members and nonrmembers, the Food Science
Club will have its first Bog event on March 31,
from 7 pimi , 9 pimi Food will be provided.

For more information contact us
at foodscienceclub@iitiedui You can also
join Food Science club on Hakaink, like
our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter
(@fscillinoistech), and Instagram (@
fscillinoistech) for more news and information

 

Photo cuurtay ufFuud Science Club

student org presidents luncheon

That conversation led to another,
more general topic: that of promotion and
member retentioni Vinesh Kannan, the
president of Illinois Tech CEO, posed a
question about recruiting board members
and active participants for a brand new
organization, a challenge that many in the
room had dealt with before The group openly
discussed different strategies they had used
for such challenging circumstances, and ideas
for how to get students to care about specific
topics that aren’t bounded by a single academic
major (like entrepreneurship, in the case of
CEO) At this point Subarno Saha, the VP
of Communications for SGA, presented the
idea of creating a Slack for every student org
president to join at will, with the intention
of collaborating and sharing strategies for
success While the specific makeup of that
Slack wasn’t set in stone, the general idea was
wellereceivedi

Near the end of the event, the
conversation turned toward more actively

negative aspects of student org business, such
as continual challenges with Finance Board
transparency SGA members who were part of
the presidents group were quick to point out
some initiatives being taken to improve the
resources available to student organizations
(including the allowance of external
individuals into Finance Board hearings, and
the formulation of a student orgefocused town
hall meeting for later this semester), but time
was running short, so the topic could not be as
thoroughly covered as some would have liked
OCL and Student Affairs plan to
host at least one more Presidents Luncheon
before the end of this academic year, with
plenty more to come next year This first event
was very broad in scope, and the conversation
within it was broad as well, but a precedent has
now been established for what could be a very
fruitful future of collab oration and collectivism
among student organization presidents

Undergraduate studies committee discusses pass/fail proposal, more at most recent meeting

Soren Spicknall
TECH NEWS WRITER

Every two weeks, a group of faculty
members from across Illinois Techs various
disciplines meet along with representatives
from the office of Undergraduate Academic
Affairs, University Faculty Council, and more
to discuss actions related to undergraduate
education issues here at the university That
group, the Undergraduate Studies Committee
(UGSC), is tasked with setting the core goals
of an Illinois Tech undergraduate education,
planning and implementing policy related to
expectations of faculty and student conduct,
and formulating new initiatives to evolve this
institution’s approach to education Beginning
with the March 22nd meeting of the UGSC,
TechNews was permitted to observe the
group’s proceedings for the purpose of student
access to the information discussed within

The UGSC is currently chaired by
UL Kathryn Spink of the Biology department,
who is tasked with organizing a conversation
that often veers into philosophical territory
Even when discussing the most specific
initiatives and plans, each representative
present brings with them a unique approach
to undergraduate education and a different
outlook on what would best ensure student

success at Illinois Tech and beyond. The
twenty voting members of the UGSC each
represent a different academic department,
with the exception of Gayatri Tawari, who
represents general student interests as SGA’s
VP of Academic Affairs Through the course of
fastrpaced, sometimes passionate discussion
during hourelong meetings and additional
ofietheeclock negotiations, the UGSC crafts
some of the most basic building blocks of this
university’s core programs

At the March 22nd meeting, there
were two important topics up for debate The
first, a proposal to introduce some pass/fail
course options into Illinois Techs free and
technical electives, was originally brought
forth by SGA, and is in its third iterationi
The most recent published version of the
proposal limited the number of such courses
taken to three (with no such restriction for
courses taken beyond degree requirements),
and stated that a pass/fail grade would only
impact a student’s GPA if they failed the
course in question During the course of the
discussion, as differing concerns were brought
forth by various departments, the language of
the policybecame greatly expanded to account
for the expectations of each stakeholderi The
representatives of one department, joined
by many others, supported a modification in
which the department offering each particular

course would need to approve that course
for pass/fail status before it would be offered
as such Additionally, most of those in the
room supported a compromise in which the
department of each student’s origin would also
have to allow certain courses to be pass/fail to
meet their degree requirements At the end of
debate, it was agreed upon that Greg Pulliam,
the Associate Chair of Lewis Department of
Humanities and the group’s Secretary, would
present an updated language of the proposal at
the next meeting which satisfied those points
of compromise

The second major topic for
discussion during the meeting was a student
petition calling for greater midterm feedback
from professors above the 200 level According
to those present, the University Faculty Council
had concerns about thepetition due to its lack of
regardfor classes with nontraditional structure,
such as IPROs or other projectebased courses
However, the present members of the UGSC
all reaffirmed their commitment to greater
midterm feedback, though the general sense
of the room was that formalizing that feedback
process beyond 200elevel courses would
cause more problems than improvements
A number of individuals present stated that
such a formalization could potentially even
be detrimental to student performance,
claiming that premature progress judgnents

from professors could cause students to drop
courses before actually knowing how they
might progress later in the semesteri It was also
unclear how widespread the problem is, and
to what degree students are missing progress
indications from their professors at the time
of midterms The members of UGSC appeared
to support the addition of clearer language
to both the student handbook and to faculty
training documents outlining expectations for
midterm feedback and providing resources for
students to directly address feedback issues
(such as reporting to their department chair),
but there was not enough time remaining in
the meeting to thoroughly discuss what shape

that language would take
In addition to those substantive
discussions, a few smaller items were

addressed Greg Welter, the Director of
Academic Compliance and International
Credentials for UGAA, reiterated to those
present that DegreeWorks was not an official
outlet for academic information, and was
meant only as a guide Additionally, Dri Spink
reminded present faculty to recruit members
of their department for the upcoming Camras
Quiz Bowl, in which Camras scholars face off
against their professors The next meeting of
the UGSC takes place on April 12th, and all
documents related to the organization can be
found at iitiedul~ugsci