Every year the Physics Department holds elections for various committees.
Here's a list of roles and info from the 2025 Elections period.

The colloquium committee is responsible for selecting and contacting speakers to fill the department's annual colloquium schedule, hosting the colloquia, and managing the delivery of the talks. Since the pandemic, this has included organizing online and hybrid lectures. The committee does most of its work finding speakers during the summer, meeting a few times, and meets once or twice per semester after that. The graduate student representative on the committee represents graduate students' interests and can take part in finding speakers for topics relevant to graduate students' interest. Most recently this included organizing a colloquium from a Physics Education Research expert.

The committee typically meets a few times per semester, and the most important role of the student representatives is to add their perspectives and experiences to the discussion, or that of the students in general, so it would help if they are familiar and attentive to idea issues within the student body. In some cases we might ask them to reach out to the student body on the committee's behalf to gather information or opinions or things like that.

As the student representative in the graduate curriculum committee, you will sit with the committee during the meetings about the curriculum and provide a student perspective on the issues discussed. The meetings are usually about ways to improve the graduate student experience through the course work and general journey to a Masters degree or PhD. The committee meets a few times a year (twice this year so far).

The Library Committee member will contribute to the construction and organization of the new physics and astronomy library. Responsibilities involve monthly meetings with the library committee, and occasional discussions with the architects and higher university personnel.

The Physics Department Outreach Committee meets virtually once every month or so during the academic year to discuss all matters outreach-related. Our mandates are primarily to increase public awareness of what we do here in physics, and, secondly, to recruit future students. The graduate student committee member would be expected to try to attend most meetings, or at least review the slides. They would relay outreach opportunities and issues to the graduate student community in physics, and bring concerns and ideas from the graduate student community to the outreach committee.