May 13, 2025, Global Connections (GC) Executive Committee (EC) Meeting Minutes
Meeting Date and Time: Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 7:00 PM
Location: Zoom
Officers Present
President: Bob Persiko
Vice President: Ciara Halloran
Public Relations Officer: Rose Sharp
Treasurer: Bruce Truitt
Secretary: Alexandra Persiko
Committee Chairs
Small Groups: Deb Leo
Membership: Anisha Mukherjee
Penn State Global Representative (Wenjie Fu)
Call To Order: 7:05 PM
April 8, 2025, EC meeting minutes were accepted as submitted.
Reports of Officers & Standing Committees
President – Bob Persiko
- Bob introduced Anisha Mukherjee who has volunteered to assume the membership chair position.
- He mentioned that he and Ciara will meet with Fatema from Fatema’s Kitchen about a cultural event in late June on a Persian/Afghan theme.
Vice President – Ciara Halloran
- Ciara reported that Centre Lifelink would prefer to be told early on if we need to cancel an event.
Treasurer – Bruce Truitt
- Bruce provided an update on the organization’s finances, mentioning a balance of $4,598 is in the checking account and $18,288 in the money market account.
- Bruce recommended taking the $2,412 distribution from the Global Connections Fund and leaving the $1,199 in the Global Connections Literacy Fund to pursue the goal of perpetuity. The motion was seconded and approved unanimously.
- Last year we took both contributions and turned them into scholarships. We are trying to fund four scholarships at $250 a piece per year.
- Centre Gives contributions will be invested towards semester scholarships and operating funds for GC.
- Rose reported that she received the information about Centre Gives donations and has an appeal message ready to be published. This will be a 36-hour window, May 14-16.
Secretary – Alexandra Persiko
- Nothing to report this month, but Alexandra is looking forward to discussing a potential combination of Wild Apricot and WordPress. This issue will be discussed in greater depth by Rose at the next EC meeting.
Public Relations – Rose Sharp
- Rose reported on a collaboration between Global Connections and Global Learning in Penn State Global. Rose and Wenjie are looking at ways to engage in the summer.
- Website: Due to time constraints at this meeting, a decision was made to call a special shorter meeting in June focused on this topic, including a presentation on prototypes.
Penn State Representative – Wenjie Fu
- Wenjie reported that she continues to receive conversation partner requests.
- She and Rose discussed a collaboration opportunity at the Strawberry Festival in Lemont on June 7th. The festival, now in its 43rd year, offers strawberry shortcakes, ice cream, live music, and family-friendly activities. Wenjie proposed using this event to thank volunteers from various programs, including Global Connections, by buying them tickets to enjoy a relaxing afternoon at the festival. The event would further provide for a community engagement opportunity.
- Wenjie also suggested organizing a summer picnic event for international students and scholars, similar to last year’s successful gathering. The event would likely be held in mid-July at Sunset Park, with Global Connections providing the liability insurance coverage and potentially renting the pavilion, and Community Engagement providing food.
- Bob requested that Wenjie send further details about the event in an email for Bruce to review. Rose explained the limitations of on-campus pavilions and the need for insurance for off-campus venues. Overall, the board expressed enthusiasm for the idea, noting its benefits for newcomers and families.
- The International speaker’s program will not take place in the summer and instead maybe in the fall.
Membership – Anisha Mukherjee
- Anisha introduced herself as a new member and membership chair. She is a bio tech major and pre-med student at Penn State.
- She voiced her interest in involving more students in Global Connections. For example, she mentioned the possibility of starting an on-campus club to attract more student members, with the application due in August. Rose suggested exploring existing opportunities with the Global Engagement Community instead.
Small Groups – Deb Leo
- The book groups are going well. At 11 members, the group is somewhat saturated. In the fall, she may be looking for additional book club members.
- Deb proposed holding an international music night at Webster’s and has already discussed this with Elaine. Elaine furthermore suggested holding an international fashion show in the fall, an event at which GC could collaborate.
- While these events are very successful, it does not appear that we gain new members.
- Deb and Rose plan on meeting to work on press releases and form letters in order to have a ready framework for events.
Discussion Group
- Bob said sessions will continue periodically during the summer around his vacation plans.
Special Orders – None
Unfinished Business – None
New Business
- We received a request from the Mid State Literacy Council (MSLC) to support an Iranian’s student’s $250 TOEFL exam fee.
- Bruce commented that this is a worthy cause but wants to ensure that we create guidelines and not set a precedent for routinely funding such requests.
- The consensus is that we should probably not accept this request, but that we create a process for evaluating future requests on a case-by-case basis, employing a questionnaire.
- Anisha offered to create a standard Google questionnaire form for future requests.
(Note: After the meeting, Linda Barton offered to provide the $250 fee for the Iranian applicant’s TOEFL test.)
Action Items
- Bob:
- Bob and Ciara will get together with Fatema, an Iranian chef, on Thursday re potentially hosting a cultural lunch event.
- To compose a message to Bridget from Mid-State Literacy Council regarding the decision on the TOEFL fee request.
- Keep the topic of supporting people threatened by world events on the agenda for future discussions.
- To propose a meeting for the first week in June to discuss website choices.
- Ciara:
- To convey to Centre Lifelink that Global Connections will pay for reserved spaces regardless of event cancellation.
- Anisha:
- To create a Google form for future funding requests.
- Rose:
- To send out a newsletter about Centre Gives to all members on the email list and include a shortened version for social media.
- To show prototypes of new websites (Wix and Squarespace) at the proposed special meeting in June.
- Wenjie:
- To summarize details about the proposed summer picnic event in an email and circulate it to the board.
Next Meeting: June 3, 2025 (Website Discussion)
Meeting adjournment: 8:06 PM
Submitted By: Alexandra Persiko Date of Submission: May 20, 2025