Subgroup Meetings

Everyone attends a weekly subgroup and gives an update of their research progress and goals and sometimes a fun presentation on non-research topics.

Meet: Weekly, always
Updates due: weekly in summer, biweekly in fall and spring
Note: Subgroup scheduling should have a priority level over conducting research/soft commitments

Format your updates as described here
Upload your updates to your subgroup’s folder **as a single PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation**
File Name (Fall): FA25_SubgroupName_yourfirstandlastname
File Name (Spring): SP26_SubgroupName_yourfirstandlastname
File Name (Summer): SU26_SubgroupName_yourfirstandlastname

What is subgroup?

Weekly 1-ish-hour meetings with peers and a Team SyBBURE member, your group selects the time and location. You will give regular updates of your research progress. Talk with your subgroup leader for more details.

Purpose

Encourage project progress

  1. Help students establish & achieve goals

  2. Presentation practice

  3. Provide an environment to develop a sense of community

  4. Support collaborative sparks

*You’re encouraged to message or meet with your subgroup leader if you need individual guidance!

Expectations

Pay attention to and respond on Slack

  • Show up (on time and for the entire time)

  • Need to miss? give leader 24 hour advance notice (or ASAP for emergencies)

  • Engage with the group

  • Give input on what your want your subgroup to be like

  • Focus during subgroup time instead of working on other things

  • Be respectful of other subgroup members (i.e., don’t show up late and expect everyone to listen to you and give you feedback when you weren’t there to do the same for them)

  • Stay off your phone and computer while people are talking

  • Make goal and update slides using the provided template (linked at the top of this page)

  • Follow the presentation schedule for your group

  • Present research updates every week in the summer, biweekly in the fall or spring

  • Save your update in your subgroup Box folder

  • Keep slides in 1 file with newest slides first

  • Name your file as described at the top of this page

  • Present in a way that encourages discussion and collaboration

  • Participate in discussion

  • Ask questions

  • Give [constructive] feedback

Information for Student Co-Leaders

Senior SyBBURites can gain leadership experience by opting to co-lead a subgroup. This is primarily for seniors, but juniors can let Team SyBBURE know if they want to be considered.

Subgroup Leader Tasks

Setup duties:

  1. picking a meeting time

  2. adding the time to the SyBBURE Google calendar

  3. booking a room

  4. creating a subgroup slack channel

  5. welcome message giving time, dates, and location

  6. making sure everyone responds that they can make the time

  7. message of what to prepare for the first subgroup meeting

  8. asking and tracking who wants a longer presentation or if anyone has a planned absence

  9. setting up a presentation schedule for the semester, asking if they want to give pop science presentations, journal article reviews…

  10. setting up the weekly attendance/evaluation sheet (this is a tab in a shared sheet with the rest of Team SyBBURE)

  11. presenting subgroup expectations slide deck at the first meeting

Weekly duties:

  1. messaging a few days in advance to remind who will present what

  2. running the meetings (keeping everyone on time and keeping the conversation going)

  3. bringing a laptop to connect to the projector

  4. taking attendance in the shared sheet

  5. taking notes on performance to refer to during evaluations in the shared sheet

  6. being point of contact for students when they will be late or absent or unprepared

  7. brief report to Team SyBBURE supervisor including concerns, praise, or information that needs to go to the rest of Team SyBBURE

Once-a-semester duties:

  1. hosting feedback discussion (at the last meeting of the term, to ask what they liked or disliked about subgroup and the SyBBURE program)

Communication Examples/Templates:

Welcome message from student subgroup leader to subgroup members:

Welcome to subgroup Tennessine! (our subgroup naming theme is elements but we definitely have the coolest name) I’ll be your subgroup leader this semester. @Katie Leaptrot will be supervising our group behind the scenes, but you should contact me directly with any questions or issues regarding subgroup. Please let me know if your calendars are at all inaccurate/have changed since registration so we can pick the best meeting time for us! Stay posted for that day and time.

Our first meeting will be in the third full week of classes (week of January 23). For our first subgroup, we will review the subgroup expectations and get to know each other. Please prepare the following 4 slides and expect to have the floor for ~10 minutes each (I will present my research as well):

1 slide with some fun pictures/words/whatever you want to introduce yourself,1 slide to introduce your research (visual abstract style would be great, just focus on explaining the high-level background/motivation of your project),1 slide research update (just to let us know what you’ve started working on this semester or your short term plans if you haven’t gotten the time to start anything yet),1 slide setting your goals for the term

At the end of the meeting, we’ll chat about what kind of presentations everyone wants to give/hear (we can even throw in a few off-topic / ‘fun’ ones if ya want).
Let me know if you have any questions or comments before our meeting next Tuesday. Excited to see a few people that I’ve met before, as well as meet those who I haven’t!

Information for Team SyBBURE Subgroup Leaders

Team SyBBURE has started utilizing some Team SyBBURE members as subgroup leader supervisors. This means that one Team SyBBURE member supervises two or more exceptional students as subgroup leaders. The information below includes duties and template communication for those Team SyBBURE supervisors.

Subgroup Supervisor Tasks

Setup duties:

  1. start a slack channel with your student subgroup leaders

  2. do or delegate the setup duties described above for student leaders. most likely a Team member will have to at minimum do these:

    • draft subgroup members

    • set up attendance sheets and share access with your student leaders

    • add the meeting time and location to the SyBBURE Google calendar

  3. communicate what you have done and what your leaders need to do, then follow up to make sure all tasks get done

Weekly duties:

  1. attend subgroup

  2. stay in open communication with subgroup leaders including

    • receive feedback from subgroup leaders and report it at the Team SyBBURE meetings

    • communicate information from Team SyBBURE to subgroup leaders, as needed

  3. keep an eye on subgroup slack channels

Once-a-semester duties:

  1. End-semester evaluation feedback

Communication Examples/Templates:

Welcome message from supervisor to student subgroup leaders:

Good morning, my exceptional subgroup leaders! Rather than leading one subgroup, I will be supervising 2 subgroups this semester. These subgroups will be led by the best of the best (that’s you)! This channel will be for just us to discuss how things are going in the subgroups. You can make the Slack channels for your subgroups and keep your members in line there. Below, I’ll share the task list that details everything a subgroup leader needs to take care of throughout the semester. This same task list and an example welcome message you can refer to are now on the SyBBURE wiki subgroup page.

*Add info regarding any setup duties that are already completed. Common things include drafted members, meeting time, booked room, link to attendance tracker.*

I will attend your subgroups, but YOU are the leaders. I will just listen and participate. 

Thank you for all the great work I know you’ll do this term!