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A. I-CAN B. The leadership C.
Activities
D. The membership
International graduate students association for Career development And Networking (I-CAN) is a new university-wide graduate student group registered through GPC and ProGradS at Washington University in St. Louis. It is designed to help international students improve communication skills, build networks, and learn leadership skills by working on group projects with other members in an English-speaking and multicultural environment, thereby enhancing individual member's professional development and job marketability. This group also welcomes English-speaking U.S. students who are interested in enhancing their international experience and sharing American cultural with international students. Learning how to develop careers and organize activities in an English-speaking and multicultural environment is a hard process. I-CAN will create a comfortable environment, provide more opportunities, and to make this learning process easy, creative and a lot of fun. Possible activities:
A3. What¡¯s our mission and impact? The primary mission of International graduate students association for Career development and Networking (I-CAN) is to help international graduate-professional students (especially those who finished their pre-undergraduate study outside the United States and are not familiar with American culture) improve their communication skills, build networks, and learn leadership skills by working on group projects with other members in an English-speaking and multicultural environment. Such efforts will enhance individual members¡¯ professional development and job marketability. American graduate-professional students interested in enhancing their contact with internationals and sharing American culture are also welcome to become I-CAN members. A4. Why should I join your group?
You can join the group by registering as a member in our group mail (if you just want to do registration without receiving email from us, check question D1). More detailed instruction is available here
B1. What leadership positions do you have in I-CAN? We have varied leadership positions in three levels. You may find one that can fit your time and interests. Level one is volunteers in an activity committee, which requires less time and reasonability. Level two is chairpersons of activity committees, which requires certain interests and commitment to a specific activity. Level three are officers in the Executive Board (President, Vice-president, Senators, additional executive officer), which requires more advanced managing and communication skills concerning the whole group. B2. How to become a student leader in I-CAN? Please check more details in the Guideline of Succession Plan B3. How will the election be organized? Detailed procedure may change, but a general outline can be found here. B4. Why there are so many senators in the leadership structure? Because this is a multicultural student group. The Executive Board needs to respect and really communicate with its members. We hope senators can represent and advocate the interests of I-CAN members more efficiently. B5. What's the time commitment of a senator? Any I-CAN member who expresses interest to serve as a senator will be included into the Executive Board directly without voting. However, a senator is expected to attend at least 50% of the regular Executive Board meetings and get involved in organizing activities (chair one activity or be a volunteer in three different activities) in that year. Failure to complete a senator¡¯s duty will be considered as automatic resign. If you are not sure whether you can make this commitment or not right now, you are still welcome to come to our meetings and activities. Once you complete the duty of a senator, we will recruit you as a senator later even though you didn't express the interest in public during the election. B6. How to become a senator outside election season? Senators are very important in our group. They represent the interests of members, participate in everyday business of I-CAN, and cast votes for important issues. Thus, we recommend you submit a brief introduction to the Board (ican@grad.wustl.edu), and come to our senate meetings.
C1. Can I attend your activities if I am not a registered member? Yes, you are welcome. But certain benefits may be limited to registered members. C2. Does every registered member have to organize an activity? No. Some members just want to receive information from us, or improve their communication skills, or get to know more friends. Some members may be more active and want to learn leadership. Individual member can decide whether he/she wants to involve and how much he/she wants to involve according to his/her time and interests. C3. If I want to organize an activity, what should I do? It is very easy to register an activity in I-CAN, please check more details in the Guideline of Succession Plan about ¡°the registration and recognition of an activity committee¡±. C4. What are the minimum requirements for a successful activity? The minimum requirements are decided by the Executive Board upon consultation with senators. Each administration may have varied settings. I-CAN member can make recommendation to senators, thereby influencing the detailed settings of the minimum requirements at that time. C5. If I organize an activity, can I get financial support from I-CAN? We usually prepare the budget proposal for the next academic year in the late spring semester for some popular activities. If you are interested in organizing some of them or if you have your own idea, you are invited to attend our board meeting. We can help you apply funding from possible sources as a group. Funding opportunity outside the budget proposal season is also possible. Another way to get financial support is collecting money from participants. Feel free to consult with the Executive Board for specific idea. C6. How can I get reimbursement after the activity? Before you buy anything, please contact the Treasurer. He/she will send you the most updated instruction about how to get reimbursement after the activity. C7. Where and how can I put the webpage of my activity on I-CAN website? The webpage of each upcoming activity is build and maintained by its Activity Committee, and its link will be placed on the webpage of I-CAN under ¡°Upcoming Activities¡±. The webpage of each past activity, which is made by its Activity Committee, will be added onto the webpage of I-CAN under ¡°Past Activities¡± C8. Are there any specific requirements for making flyer and a summary webpage of an activity? No specific requirement, it totally depends on how much time you want to spend on that. C9. Could the webmaster help me design a webpage? The webmaster can only upload the webpage, but not design a webpage for every activity. The main reason is the webmaster does not have enough time and creativity to do it. The routine update of I-CAN website is quite heavy (minutes, upcoming activity link, past activity webpage, new officers, FAQ, constitution & guidelines, election, and other technique problems). The creativity of the webmaster is also limited. It is hard to ask one person to keep coming out new designs for each activity. C10. How can I make a simple webpage? Since the webmaster can not help the design of the webpage, we don¡¯t ask members to make complicated webpage for their activities. And you can actually make a simple webpage with Word. Just open the Word and type in your summary and acknowledgement. Maybe insert a picture somewhere you like. Then save the file as ¡°html¡±, instead of ¡°doc¡±. If you have picture in your page, the word will generate a folder with the same name of your html file containing your picture. Then you need to send the html file and the corresponding folder to the webmaster. If you have a lot of pictures and want to make them into a slide show, you can use Windows Movie Maker, which is under All Program, Accessories. You can find instruction of how to use it in its ¡°Help¡± menu. If your computer doesn¡¯t have this software, you can send your pictures to the webmaster and tell him/her where you want to insert those pictures. The webmaster will make that for you. Google, Yahoo and other big websites also provide free
space and templates for their clients to make their own webpage without
pre-knowledge of webpage design. These free spaces are convenient for
upcoming coming activities, because we only upload the link of the upcoming
activities into our website. However, they are not convenient for the
past activities, because those big websites don¡¯t release their templates
and coding sources. A lot of their pictures and design scheme can not
be transferred into our website. If you still like their template, you
may have to copy the entire design as a picture and past it into your
webpage. Anyway, we do appreciate those who spend time to think and create
a beautiful design for their activities, that¡¯s why we set up ¡°Excellent
Webpage Design Award¡± for them. However, we also fully understand not
everyone knows how to make a webpage, so don¡¯t push yourself too hard.
Keep in mind: it is acceptable to just make a simple webpage by Word.
D1. I want to be a member of your group, but I don¡¯t want to receive email from your group. What should I do? You can choose ¡°No Email¡± in your membership setting. That means you can post your message to our group, but you won¡¯t receive any message from us unless you log in our group to read messages on the web. D2. I want to receive messages from your group, but I don¡¯t want to receive flooding of emails everyday. What should I do? The Google group mail also offers ¡°Abridged Email¡± (Get a summary of new activity each day) and ¡°Digest Email¡± (Get up to 25 full new messages bundled into a single email) as alternative choices, besides ¡°No Email¡± and ¡°Email¡±. Hopefully one of these choices is comfortable for you. D3. Why should I join your group mail when I can receive the advertisement of your group activity through GPC? We only advertise through GPC when the activity is attractive to both international and domestic students. If the activities is mainly designed for international students (shopping, cooking, learning English), we only advertise it through our group mail. And as an international student group, we may receive news and information that is specific for international students. For these news and information, we could only post them on our group mail, not on GPC calendar or ListServ. D4. How can I change my membership setting of receiving messages from the group? It is very easy, just log in our Google Group, click ¡°Edit my membership¡±, and then choose a comfortable way of accessing group messages. Or send email to ican@grad.wustl.edu, we will change it for you. D5. Can I post personal advertisements on the group mail? Yes, you can. D6. I am a registered member, and I can receive email from your group. But when I tried to post a message, it kept saying I don¡¯t have permission to post message on this group. What¡¯s wrong? Most likely, you haven¡¯t set up Google Account with the email you used for registration. Or contact our group mail manager to see how could we help you through. D7. Can I unsubscribe from the group mail and how? You can unsubscribe from the group mail at any time. No question will be asked. It is very easy, just log in our Google Group, click ¡°Edit my membership¡±, and then click ¡°unsubscribe¡±. Or send email to ican@grad.wustl.edu, we will do it for you. D8. Can I use non-Wash. U. email to subscribe the group mail? Yes, you can, but extra steps are need to confirm an affiliation of this non-Wash. U. email with a Wash. U. email account. The owner of this affiliated Wash. U. email account must be an I-CAN member or be yourself. We will forward your information to this Wash. U. email account for confirmation. A subscribtion from non-Wash. U. email account won't be approved until we receive a confirmation from the affiliated Wash. U. email account. D9. I want to raise some concerns and suggestions about I-CAN policy and management, but I don¡¯t want to expose my identity. What should I do? We have a guest account in the group mail, which can be used to raise concerns and suggestions anonymously. We are unable to track the identity of the person who sends messages through the guest account. To find the username and password of the guest account is very easy: just log in our Google Group, click ¡°File¡±, download and open ¡°guest account.doc¡±. D10. Can I use the group mail to expose the controversial issues of a specific activity? No. The Group Mail shall not be used for exposing controversial issues of an Activity Committee before or during the mediation. First, it will generate preconception of biased information for mediation. Second, most of the I-CAN officers are inexperienced volunteers. It is inevitable that some mistakes will be made during their activities. As part of the learning, it is more constructive to give these volunteers a chance to correct their mistakes in private than to expose their problems in public. D11. What are the right channels I can use, if I want to raise some of my concern about a specific activity? If any controversial issues arise, I-CAN encourages involved parties to first calmly communicate with one another. If discussion is ineffective, it is asked that interested parties communicate their concerns to the President. If the interested parties are not satisfied with the President mediation provided, matters will be appealed to the Executive Board. If the involved parties are dissatisfied after mediation by the Executive Board, they will be advised to consult the advisory committee. D12. How to handle different opinions? As our group is growing bigger and bigger, it is inevitable that We¡¯d like to present you a scenario of how a member *gets his voice
heard*and how a leader
*protects him from overloading of group work*. Both are winners. And the
strategy may be applied to similar case. The basic step is: "listen and For Example: In the above case, both the webmaster and the president do a good job. Although they disagree with this member¡¯s request, they don¡¯t pretend never receive the request, or drag the case for a long time hoping the member can forget it. In stead, they respond within one week with their explanation. This member also does a good job in contacting the right channels and articulating his request clearly in stead of leaving the group or picking the leaders over other trifles. We hope everyone can get a sense of how to handle different opinions in a professional way from above case. Sometimes it is really worth the time, because we want to build up friendship through the activity, not just organize the activity. Again, the basic step is: "listen and respect other people¡¯s opinion". The goal is: "seek a Win & Win solution for both sides". |
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