After I found out about iGEM in Julyish 2024 (more about that in my other post), I ended up sending a message to my professors over the summer to find out if we could organize an iGEM team to represent our university (and therefore be allowed to use university equipment). I should have known better not to even bother sending a message during the summer since it’s a French university and NOBODY in France works if its break.
In the Meantime…
During my wait in the summer I ended up speaking with a bunch of former and current iGEM participants to get information. I even got to speak with Isaac Shure, a member of an iGEM team at a university that publishes research ive been following for awhile. Below is the full video interview. Overall i’m thankful for all the advice I got from the people is spoke with on how to start an iGEM team in university.
The First Step
Two months after I sent my message to the university and two weeks before the academic year started back up in september, I got a response pointing me towards the faculty member responsible for clubs.
A quick note on clubs at our university, we call them AOs (opening activities), and we are required to pick one to validate a credit which we need to graduate. Some clubs count towards credits and some dont. Some years (like my second year Life science degree) Have an obligatory option picked out for us, while other years dont even need the credit, but you can still join the club if you’d like. So you can imagine all the shenanigans that the manager of AOs has to deal with.
I presented the argument to the manager of AOs that we dont have any science AOs. We have dance, music, sports and even debate and engraving, but nothing for the geeks. I presented a competetive iGEM team as a perfect fit for this absence, and she was on board. She told me that it was very unlikely to be something we could implement in the first semester since AOs start in less than two weeks (if only someone had tried to make this work sooner right?). The AO manager told me that she would do everything in her power to try however, and so I waited in anticipation. I waited as the deadline to pick AOs got closer and closer and even a little bit past the deadline after everone had already picked thier AOs for the first semester. After checking my email for the millionth time that morning, I got a response from the AO manager that there was a secret Illuminati in the secret shadow department called the UFR. The UFR was responsible for voting in new AOs and initiatives. While the AO manager had fought with all her might to present my project, and the UFR was actually very interested in the initiative they only voted once a year AT THE END OF THE YEAR. French bureaucracy had struck again!
Back to the Meantime…
The manager of AOs told me that in the meantime I could flesh out the proposition by filling a few forms on information like club costs, schedule, management, etc.
During this time, I still had to pick an AO for credits. The AO I ended up choosing last minute (I was really holding out hope to join my own AO) was called “entreprend-toi” which I had understood from the description was a AO which would help you start your own business, which was partly true. What it actually was, was a psychologist asking us what we needed to fulfil ourselves and “reach serenity”. We would make projects based on filling our own needs or filling the needs of the community, which is an interesting concept for an AO to be fair. While the AO i chose wasn’t exactly what I wanted, I was able to spin “making a better AO than this one” in a positive light without offending the psychologist, and so that was my project for the AO. With one stone I was able to work on the AO for iGEM team and get work done for the AO I needed credits from. This helped alot since I was already working two jobs at the time.
I mention all that to say that the psychologist, trying to help me with my project, suggested I run a petition to see who was interested. I had already spoken with my freinds and peers to see who would be interested in working on an iGEM project. While I had freinds who were game, I didnt have enough. I had learned that 10 people was a basic group and we just didnt have those numbers. I figure the issue was in branding so I hatched a scheme to get people to join.
Rebrand !
Introducing the Club for scientific projects ! The refined club allows for students to make a science project in any domain instead of just biology, domains such as computer science, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Students convene each week with an instructor who can help guide and approve of projects until the end of the semester where the project is presented for a grade.
My plan is to start the club with high numbers and introduce people to iGEM to try and get them to bite. The higher numbers should come from the club being open to so many different fields, and the fact that it’s graded. Being graded will increase the chances of having someone join who just needs credits.
So, after asking a professor if i could do a 2 minute presentation before a lecture, I presented the new club model to my peers and passed around a petition. I got a surprising amount of signatures for people interested, so I consider the rebranding a resounding success.
Next I filled out all the paperwork that I was advised to with the new club model for students who watched alot of mythbusters growing up and like to make random contraptions thinly veiled as “applying our coursework”. I wont go into how I calculated costs and everything because its a massive snooze fest, but if you’re interested, I can share the document that it concerns.
What now?
After I did all that I sent the proposition with all the details and the petition to the manager of AOs to pass to the secret high preists of our university. That was around november, we’re now in the end of january, but I don’t expect to hear anything back until the end of the acedemic year in may.
So that’s it for part I. i’ll be sure to update for any juicy developments. In the meantime, have a good one!
Eason's Experiments 