Preliminary Program Available: 1995 AATSEEL Annual Meeting

[David J Birnbaum]

Dear AATSEEL Members,

The Preliminary Program for the 1995 AATSEEL Annual Meeting is available
on the World Wide Web at http://www.pitt.edu/~djbpitt/aatseel.html. The
on-line Program will be updated regularly, and already contains more
information than will appear in the May AATSEEL Newsletter. It is too late
to make any changes in the program in the May Newsletter.

If you are planning to participate in the conference in any capacity,
please consult this program and verify the information about your panel or
paper. There are instructions on the web page for dealing with errors and
omissions.

By the end of the 15 April deadline, only 85 Panel Rosters had been
submitted for 131 declared panels, which is around a 65% response rate. A
few Panel Rosters have trickled in since then, and two panels have been
withdrawn by their chairs for lack of interest. I will try to accommodate
stragglers, but late submissions may lead to an inability to get
equipment, a bad time slot, or awkward scheduling conflicts. If you have
not yet submitted your Panel Roster, I strongly urge you to do so as soon
as possible. I sympathise with those who submitted their proposals to
chairs on time only to find that their chairs did not submit Panel Rosters
by the deadline, since I am personally in this same position, and my own
proposed paper also does not appear in the Preliminary Program.

Chairs who still have openings in a scheduled panel may still add
additional panelists, subject to the established AATSEEL rule that only
one paper by any member may be presented at the conference. You may also
add discussants, subject to the rule that a member may serve as discussant
for no more than one panel. Participation in a roundtable counts as
serving as a discussant.

If you are a chair and your panel is too small to be viable, please do not
feel that you need to round up papers you don't like or don't want just to
save the panel. The program committee will work with you to combine small
panels, so that panels can be consolidated, rather than cancelled, and no
accepted papers will be turned away because of changes in panel structure.
Panels that are cancelled or consolidated may be declared next year
without penalty, so there is no need to try to hang onto a slot that may
not be viable this year just to avoid losing it in the future.

There will be a cutoff date beyond which no additions or other changes
will be made to the program, and I am currently consulting with the
executive council and program committee to decide when this deadline
should be. This decision will be based primarily on production deadlines
involved in printing the final program. I strongly suggest that both
chairs and prospective panelists submit all necessary forms as soon as
possible.

This is the first year that AATSEEL has used SEELANGS, the Internet, and
especially the World Wide Web for general conference organization. I hope
that the early and constant access to up-to-date information has been
useful to members of the Association.

I look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

With best wishes,

David J. Birnbaum
Chair, AATSEEL Program Committee
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Professor David J. Birnbaum      djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
The Royal York Apartments, #802  http://www.pitt.edu/~djbpitt/
3955 Bigelow Boulevard           voice: 1-412-624-5712
Pittsburgh, PA  15213  USA       fax:   1-412-624-9714