Graduate Society of Nutritional Sciences (GSNS)

Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 10:30am in Campbell Hall 329

In attendance: Michelle Asp, Gina Casagrande, Rachel Kopec, Sagar Thakkar, Nancy
Baker, Emily Carlson, Sheryl Mims, Ashley Harris, Emily Brown, Yixing Sun, Shiva
Raghuvanshi, Amy Headings, Tonya Orchard

Chair of meeting: Gina Casagrande

• Gina opened the meeting by thanking all who participated in the Verizon Health Fair
and the Trick-or-Treat for cans events during the past month. We collected 464
pounds of food for Mid-Ohio Food Bank and people in the Upper Arlington area
around Gina’s house were generally very receptive to what we were doing. A
suggestion for next year’s Verizon Health Fair and for other events is that we should
have a sign saying who we are, i.e. OSU GSNS. Emily Carlson volunteered to work
on this.

• Leadership positions: Shiva volunteered to be a co-chair with Gina for the 5K race.
Several volunteered to have booths at the Health Fair for National Nutrition Month.
Tonya Orchard will be co-chair of the Russ Klein symposium with Rachel Kopec as
chair. Ashley Harris is community outreach chair.

• Community Outreach events: it was suggested to buy small gifts for Meals on Wheels
participants through LifeCare Alliance. To raise money for this event Emily C.
suggested volunteering at a local bookstore to wrap Christmas gifts for monetary
donations. Ashley will check into these things.

• 5K race updates: Race will be held on 4/25 with Premier Races at Fred Beekman
Park and will be co-sponsored with Columbus Dietetic Association. Gina did not get
Junior League Funding for the event, but we can expect between $300 and $500 from
CDA to help with costs. Emily Carlson will check on getting this event on OSU
event calendar, as Michelle thinks this helped bring in quite a few participants two
years ago.

• Health Fair for National Nutrition Month: Michelle Battista will look into securing a
date at the RPAC early in March for this event.

• GSNS blog: Thanks to Emily Carlson for creating this blog. The web address is
www.osugsns.blogspot.com. Visit for news, updates, pictures, etc. Rachel was asked
by Dr. Firkins if the link to this blog can go on the OSUN website so potential
students can see events that take place. We agreed this would be fine as we have not
seen any inappropriate posts thus far. We will collectively keep an eye on it to make
sure nothing questionable is posted.

• Journal club in the month of October was lead by Rachel Kopec and the topic was
melamine. The next journal club will be held on Friday 11/14 at 3pm in Parker 311
 and lead by Michelle Battista. Papers to be discussed were sent by email and also
posted on the blog. Afterwards we will be going to Happy Hour, location TBA.

• The Source – The Source is a resource for OSU student organizations and it is located
in the “Union” (i.e. stadium). We have 1500 “points” per quarter to make copies,
posters, advertisements, etc. However, they don’t carry over from the previous
quarter so use them or lose them! This quarter we could use some points to make a
sign for GSNS at events, as well as a big food guide pyramid for the health fair in
March. Also, if people have handouts ready for the health fair in the spring they can
make copies of them now. Emily C and Emily B volunteered to work on making a
giant food guide pyramid since we seem to have lost the one we were using before.

• Amy and Sagar are working on a “field trip” to Abbott sometime before the end of
the quarter. Date to be determined.

• Rachel mentioned two potential research funding sources for graduate students. One
is the SEEDS grants from OARDC. Proposals are due in Feb and will provide up to
$3000 for MS students and $6000 for PhD students. The ASN pre-doctoral
fellowship will provide up to $5000, although you need to become an ASN member
(fairly inexpensive for students) to apply. See Rachel for questions.

• Next GSNS meeting will be 12/3 at 10:30am. The first half beginning at 10:30 will
be for discussion of Russ Klien Symposium. We need to select a keynote speaker and
Rachel will send some potential candidates for this prior to the meeting so we can be
thinking about this. The second half of the meeting will be covering other GSNS
topics.

Respectfully submitted,

Michelle Asp
GSNS Secretary