DataONE Internship Mentor Call
Tuesday Apr 26 2011

Attending: Amber, Paolo, Rebecca, Paul,  Kevin, Hilmar, Shawn

Agenda:
1) Feedback on Internship Recruitment
2) Next Steps; Letters, payment, timelines
3) First Meeting; timeline, logistics, outcomes, communication
4) AOB

1) Feedback:
Tight timing for evaluation turn-around.  Otherwise things were OK.  Would be valuable to have the opportunity to speak to the candidates; allow the time for this and let interns know in advance that it might happen.  Seemed like a clear improvement over last year, particularly the allowance for the interns to be co-located.  The google survey platform was better than last year.

2) Next Steps:
Formal letters have gone out, complete with a form that needs to be completed (SS number etc).  Non US-citizens need to be paid through their current University (so need appropriate contact info for the Uni).  Once this is complete, an account can be set up and then the expenses can be awarded for the face-to-face meeting.  Students will be paid midway through and at the end. Default start / stop dates are May 23rd to July 29th.  If they are working on different dates, this must be indicated on the form. 

3) First Meeting
F2F meeting should happen by end of the 2nd week of the program, should be a 2-3 day event max and travel must be domestic.  Funding is for the interns only and not mentors.  Travel can be organised through DataONE and Rebecca will update Mentors when paperwork gets received for setting up travel logistics.  F2F meeting will set up details of the project plan, expectations, communication expectations - template for this will be sent out in advance of F2F by Amber.  It will include information on an alternative contact person - e.g. ombudsperson.  This could be Amber, and Rebecca for logistics (Rebecca would also be ombudsperson for the project that Amber is listed as a mentor).
Interns will provide weekly emails to all interns and mentors as updates.  Offer a marratech call to all interns at beginning, middle and end of program.  There will be mentor calls in the same time frame to reflect the mid-term and final-term evaluations.

4) AOB:
Google group as an option for all projects?  This was used by Bertram and Paolo last year.  Is preferred for documenst to be shared via the dataone plone site for all materials at the end of the project.  Individual projects can coordinate as they see appropriate for their project.

Interns will be funded to attend the All Hands Meeting in October.  There will be a reception poster session for interns to highlight their work.

Will there be funds for interns to present at non-DataONE meetings?  Yes, there will be some funds available in the form of a travel grant to support this.