GEEBers,
The GEEB officers are requesting your help raising funds for outreach and ecolunch. Broader impacts (outreach) are an important part of graduate training and are now required at all levels of NSF and other funding. As a group GEEB has strived to stay ahead of the curve and provide outreach opportunities to our members. Over the last four years GEEB has developed relationships with the Urbana Free Library, the Central Illinois Girl Scouts, the Urbana Farmers Market, Orpheum, and local schools. We are creating a positive image of SIB and UIUC within our local community. However, providing these opportunities comes at a cost. Currently you and your fellow GEEBers are not only donating their time, they are covering costs of supplies and travel. We are raising funds to help with these expenses.
In addition attendance at EcoLunch is down. Hopefully you already know that we host a weekly seminar series. This community building creates lasting colleague relationships and provides excellent practice for job talks, presentations, and features the occasional workshop. However, as a group we are not taking advantage of this seminar. It is disheartening when presenters take the time to put together a 30 min talk and there are only 2-3 audience members to give feedback and provide insights. To help bribe y’all into attending we want to start providing doughnuts/treats and coffee. This also takes cash. So…
As per my previous email we are going to be putting out a calendar featuring GEEB members images. In addition we need images for the cover of the symposium program and we are planning to sell (aka collect donations) postcards of student images at the farmers market and at PEEC events. If you send me an image you are allowing me to use it in one of these ways. If you choose to share your images, please copy and paste the below “form” information into a reply email along with any images you are willing to share with GEEB for these purposes. If you would like to watermark etc. your image with your name please do so before sending them to me – otherwise they will be anonymous. Thank you everyone for your support and if you have any ideas for future fundraising efforts (besides t-shirts) please email Tyler Refsland (refslan2@illinois.edu).
Cheers,
Rhiannon