Elections and Prospectus Workshop

There will be an AEGS meeting this coming Monday, September 21st from 3:30-4:30 in the Figgins conference room (2-288 Wilson, our regular meeting space).

During this meeting, we will elect two first-year grad students to the positions of Secretary and Treasurer as per the AEGS by-laws. If you are in your first year and would like to serve, come on Monday prepared to nominate yourself.

Following the electoral portion of our Monday meeting, our faculty advisor Dr. Robert Bennett will give a workshop on prospectus writing and prospectus-related deadlines. This is an immediately relevant topic to those of us in our second year, but is also very useful for first years who want to get a jump on their thesis work!

Hopefully you will all be able to join us for this, our first full meeting of this academic year.

Welcome Back!

Hello, all!

As your new president for the 2009-2010 academic year, let me welcome both our returning members and our new faces! We hope to have another great year in AEGS!

Our first official meeting of the new year will be Monday September 14 from 3:30-4:00 in the small second-floor conference room in Wilson hall. This meeting will be a brief introduction to AEGS and to your fellow members.

Immediately following the meeting (from 4-5:30pm), there is a reception for all English graduate students and staff at The Habit restaurant in the quads. This reception is an excellent chance to meet the faculty, mingle with your fellow grad students, and generally have a pleasant time getting to know the people of the MSU English department.

I do hope all our members will join us for both the meeting and the reception!

Cheers, all, and welcome to a new year of AEGS!

- Aspen Hougen

A Note from Your Retiring President

Thank you all for your enthusiastic participation in AEGS this past year. You did indeed make my job amazingly easy to perform. I believe we accomplished some important professional goals and learned about our chosen career paths beyond our day-to-day academic lessons. Those are the kinds of accomplishments that AEGS intends to facilitate.

Additionally, and just as importantly, the community we have formed has been a blessing to us all. The camaraderie, support, encouragement, and insight that each person offered became the glue that held us tightly and happily together. I’ve never belonged to an organization that operated as smoothly as AEGS and without a trace of rancor. Personally, I will cherish the memories of these last two years, and all of you.

AEGS will move on into the 2009-2010 academic year, and I am confident that it will flourish with the second year students as leaders and the new talent coming in with the first year students. I’m sorry I won’t be closer, to watch the evolution, but I will be keeping tabs on the website. Thank you, all, again. God speed. Karen Henderson

UPenn Site Update

I thought that, since many of us use the UPenn “Calls for Papers” website, I’d let everyone know that UPenn has updated their site.

This update includes a new web address (URL), RSS feed options (you can be emailed updates), and a new layout that takes a bit of getting used to.

The AEGS link to their site has been updated; everyone may want to double check to make certain any personal links to the UPenn site are updated as well.

Another Workshop this Friday

We will meet again this Friday at 3:00 pm in the small conference room for a workshop on “How to Write Your Prospectus.”

Professor Bennett will facilitate. This, like the last workshop, is tailored specifically toward year students, since the second years have all done this already.

However, if any of the second year students would like to provide their prospectus as an example, that would be appreciated. You could give them to Karen or to Josh. Josh and Karen will provide theirs, too.

A Few Updates

We will not meet next week, which is the Friday before Spring Break. We won’t meet during Spring Break either!

The week after Spring Break, we could meet, but Josh would be in charge–since Karen will be presenting her paper at a conference. Let Josh know if there are any workshops or perhaps O-Negative Journal stuff to discuss.

Unless there are good reasons not to, we will meet on April 3rd for a business meeting–a meeting not to miss, since we should be holding elections for next year’s officers.  If you do miss, people might just vote you in, so beware!  Be thinking about who you’d like to see where in the organization.

Also, not to beat a dead horse, but I’d like to get any suggestions for improving our website/blog.  If there is something you see that you don’t like, or something you don’t see that you’d like to–let me know.

Workshop: CVs and Cover Letters

Date: Friday, 13 Feb 2009
Time: 3-4pm
Place: Small Conference Room

In this workshop, Prof. Downs will present on CVs and cover letters–and if it is like his last presentation, it should be worth seeing.

Workshop: Post Masters Degree Job-Hunting

Date:     Friday Feb. 2, 2009
Time:   3-4pm
Place:   Small Conference Room

Bill Wilke and Josef Verbanek have agreed to come speak to us about working in the real world with an MA. Bill has experience in journalism and now adjuncts here at MSU; Josef has a varied background with an MA in another area, but works full time as the computer lab person (should be a better title, thinks I) and teaching technical writing.

They both have experience and words of wisdom about adjuncting, and also about working outside academia.

Change in Meeting Times and the First Workshop of the Semester

Hello AEGS Members! There is a change of plan: we will move our regular meeting time to Fridays at 3:00 PM. That seems to accommodate the most people, and also Prof. Bennett can attend then too.

We WILL meet next week, despite the looming deadline for second year students, and we will hopefully have a quick meeting about deadlines and schedules, where we all should be right now and what we need to accomplish this semester (graduating, aside) . Please prepare your questions for Prof. Bennett, and let Karen or Josh know if you have any problems or conflicts with the time.

Call for Papers, RMMLA at Snowbird in 2009

For those of you interested in presenting a paper at a conference, the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA)  is holding their fall conference at Snowbird Utah on October 8-10 of 2009.

There are many, many panels.  This is the same conference many MSU graduate students went to last fall in Reno.

A link to the CFP follows: http://rmmla.wsu.edu/download/2009CFP.pdf