Please keep in mind when you plan on hosting a speaker:

• consult the seminar page for open dates
• consider the other titles to keep a reasonable balance of talks in ecology, neuroscience, and molecular biology
• arrange a date with the speaker and claim it with the seminar committee (the webpage is updated as soon as we receive this info)
• if needed, request funding from the seminar committee for travel expenses or costs for accommodations - aside from the usual reimbursement of car travel and honorarium
• forward title and an abstract to the seminar committee
• also obtain general information about the speaker (cv, biosketch) and representative reprints for the seminar bulletin board

Seminars are an invaluable resource for any department and even more so for a department with such a wide range of interests like ours. It undoubtedly is a great opportunity for us all to hear about and discuss the current state of thinking in diverse areas of the biological sciences. Also graduate and undergraduate students stand to gain a lot from this - they become familiar with advances in areas of research they may not have previously been exposed to, they see what makes for successful presentations, and they experience the thrill of colliding minds during professional discussions. Moreover, a good turnout at seminars reflects positively on us as a department as well.

Visiting researchers are a great resource for us all. When we bring in speakers we should thus make every attempt to allow for meetings with individual labs in the department.

The seminar committee has attempted to broaden the appeal further and enlarge the base of regular seminar participants. A bulletin board for seminar related issues has been placed next to the main office and a series of websites <http://www.bgsu.edu/academics/biology/seminar/> reflect the current state of scheduling of talks. From these places we can obtain a schedule for the semester, the announcement for the seminar of the week, some general information about the speaker (biosketch), an abstract of the seminar, representative reprints, and a schedule when the speaker is available to meet with individual groups and learn about work being done in our department. It is in the responsibility of the host to obtain this information from the speaker and thereby bring about a good turnout.

Please note that the seminar committee now has access to some travel funds and requests for such funds have to be directed at the chair of the seminar committee. The department routinely reimburses speakers for travel by car with 27c/mile and a $50.- honorarium - it is your responsibility to secure extra funds for any travel that includes air fare or hotels.

If you are hosting a speaker we should greatly appreciate if you could bring the following suggestions to the attention of the speaker. Please,

• remind the speaker that we have an audience broadly interested in the Biological Sciences. The speaker should assume that a large portion of the audience will not be intimately familiar with the details of the topic. A broadly framed introduction will be greatly appreciated
• encourage the speaker to be available for interactions with faculty and students. We appreciate a chance to interact with visitors about summaries of ongoing research, tours of labs, discussions with graduate students, or departmental socials.
• obtain and forward to the seminar committee for inclusion on the bulletin board:
• • seminar title
  • abstract
  • bioketch
  • representative reprints

Here are some Directions for driving to and parking at BGSU - Biology

If you intend to invite speakers for times other than the usual friday afternoon, please check with Scott or Deb for conflicts before scheduling.

Thanks for helping to make this yet another semester of stimulating seminars and discussions at BG - Biology.