A few items today.

PhD admit Jessica Kuskey will be visiting campus this week. The department has organized a graduate student lunch with her on Thursday 3/23. Please attend.

We need volunteers for our upcoming Negotiations panel. Now is the time for all of you first-years to get your feet wet in presenting your work! I can't tell you how beneficial getting feedback from within your department will be when you are preparing for conferences. Please contact me or Jon Senchyne if you're interested.

There will be an EGO Meeting on Friday, 3/24 in the English Library. The tentative agenda is as follows

1) GSO Funding Proposals for next year:

Your grad student activity fees go into GSO's coffers and are dispersed upon request. As far as I understand (Gina might enlighten us further) these funds can be requested at the end of the year for any organizational activities. I've heard through the grapevine that GSO is flush with cash right now, so we should take advantage.

That means if we want to bring in guest speakers, create our own publication, do a reading series, or even set up a small conference, we could request GSO funding to do so. The money is there, and it's ours for the taking--so let's take advantage of that.

2) Elections for next year.

If you are interested in any of the EGO positions, (PhD Facilitator, MA Facilitator, Agenda Committee, Undergrad Committee, Grad Committee, Faculty Development Sub-Committee, Webmaster, or Writing Program Lower Division Committee, we will discuss the responsibilities put upon each position and accept nominations.

3) Albany Conference

We need to formally submit our budget for the SUNY Albany Conference in April. I've talked to Gregg Lambert informally, and he has assured me that it will be funded in full, but I'd like to finalize that soon.

4) I'd like for us to discuss some of the developments in the department this year (Teaching Evaluation Changes, MLA funding for grads, etc)

5) We could also use a more comprehensive website. I can probably do it myself, but I'd like to hear people's suggestions.

6) We also have loads of congratulations to hand out. It's been a good year for us!

thanks everyone
Mike