Grad student activities

[George Fowler h(317)726-1482 o(812)855-2829]

Greetings to all!
     I was truly impressed by the litany of grad student activities listed in
Jeff Holdeman's message Saturday evening. It looks like the OSU grad students
are really pulling together, or trying to do so, which is half the battle. I am
circulating this message in our dept., and hope that it will spur some
increased efforts on the part of our own students, give them some fresh ideas,
etc. I am overwhelmed by the Library Day idea. If EVERYONE in our dept.
(perhaps 40+ people, including all grad students and faculty) would contribute
a Saturday to a similar effort, we could "read" the entire PG collection (in
the sense of library jargon, shelf-reading), and alleviate some crowding
problems at spots. That would be spectacular! 'Course subbotniki are out of
fashion nowadays...
     I would like to mention one activity we have been trying in our dept.,
which requires grad student participation, but was not initiated by students.
In mid-December, 1993 my colleague Steve Franks organized a Pre-AATSEEL
Workshop. The idea was that all grad students giving talks at AATSEEL in
Toronto would first give them to an audience drawn from our dept. Steve picked
a Saturday afternoon, if I recall correctly, and arranged to video-tape each
presentation. Each standard 20-minute talk was followed by content discussion,
and then by discussion of practical aspects of the presentation and
organization of the talk. Students could subsequently obtain a copy of the
video tape and review it with the idea of polishing their "performance". I
believe 5 students gave talks at this workshop. This was a WONDERFUL idea, and
Steve wanted to repeat it this year. However, as I understand it, the majority
of the students scheduled to give AATSEEL papers begged off, for a variety of
reasons (paper not ready enough, press of other end-of-semester
responsibilities, once is enough, etc.), and the workshop did not take place.
That's a shame, and I hope that our students will realize this December that
this is an excellent opportunity to make the most out of their AATSEEL
presentations. When students don't take advantage of this kind of program, it
is both baffling and a bit depressing to the faculty, and tends to make them
less anxious to do extracurricular pro-student things in the future.
     George Fowler
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George Fowler                       GFowler at Indiana.Edu [Email]
Dept. of Slavic Languages           1-812-855-2829 [office]
Ballantine 502                      1-317-726-1482 [home]
Indiana University                  1-812-855-2624/-2608/-9906 [dept.]
Bloomington, IN  47405  USA         1-812-855-2107 [dept. fax]
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