Another Advisor Training!

BSB Advisor Meeting 2/23/2011

1. Site To-Do’s – There are several things that all of your sites should have completed by now

a. Contact with host site to ensure that they know who the student site leaders are. While speaking with the host ensure that they are ready for your arrival and share with you their itinerary of service for you all during the week.

b. Draft of an itinerary that will happen throughout the week. I’ve stressed several times to our site leaders the importance of having this itinerary and sharing it with their teams to make decisions on areas that they’d like to visit for their excursion and meal plans. This saves much stress and debate later on in the trip of prepared beforehand.

c. A finalized roster with all participants. I know there are a few trips that are still recruiting participants and that’s ok. If someone was recently selected and brought on board they have until March 4th to make their complete payment to the program.

d. Payments – by this time both the initial deposit and the second payment should have been made by all members. Please check with your site leaders to ensure that everyone is paid up.



2. Site Budgets

a. Throughout the next two weeks I’ll be working with our travel representative upstairs (Quentin Miller) to pay out to one of the advisors on the trip the Gas/Food money. This will deposited into your personal account before you all depart on your trips. How you choose to spend this money (i.e. withdraw in cash, use your debit/credit card, etc…) you must keep a receipt for all transactions. At the end of the trip we’ll meet and I’ll collect and reconcile these receipts to ensure that they add up to what was paid to you. Please keep in mind that it’s in your team’s best interest to spend all of this money. Whatever is not used goes back to BSB – so feel free to use this money!



3. Transportation – There are three ways that our groups will be traveling this year. Vans, Bus, and Air. Please see the notes below for departure times and information:

a. Bus – For those groups leaving to Washington DC you will be traveling in a large charter bus. The bus will depart on Saturday March 12th at 7am from the front of the Marshall Center. Please make sure your team is ready to go and present by 630am! This is contract travel so they will be departing at 7am sharp! They’ll stop once on the way up to Washington DC for lunch and will drop you all off at your hotel (Howard Johnson).

b. Air – There are two trips that are going to NYC this year and both will be flying. Your itinerary is as follows:

i. Departure – March 12 from TPA at 11:46am to JFK arrive at 2:27pm

ii. Return – March 19 from JFK 6:50pm to TPA arrive at 10:01pm

c. Vans – The remaining groups will be traveling by Van. This year we have only (5) 12 passenger vans available and the rest will be (2) 8 Passenger vans per trip. The breakdown of who will be driving which vans are shown below:

i. 12 Passenger Vans: Honors College, School House Rocks, Family Matters, The Cool Kids

ii. 8 Passenger Vans: Remaining teams

iii. Safe Drivers Training: There will be a safety training course given to those groups who are driving the 12 passenger vans. It’s a whole different world trying to drive those vans! We’ll keep you posted with a date/time for that training.

4. Group Meetings

a. Advisors please make sure that your teams is meeting on a weekly basis. I’ve given them a document called “The Odyssey” It’s attached to this email. It walks them through facilitating an effective educational experience on the social issue that you all are serving. Please meet with them as well to support any “red flags” that may arise on the trip and let me know how I could be of assistance.

5. Payments

a. Just a friendly reminder if you have not already made your payment please do so at www.usf.edu/bsbpay

b. Final payments for all of our program will be due February 25th – please ensure your site leaders are speaking with their participants about this.



The most impressive news is that the budget can be used for ANYTHING! Now we only have $700, but still, that can go a fairly long way.