AATSEEL 1997 Conference: Request for Comments

[David J Birnbaum]

Dear AATSEEL Members,

As many of you know, in response to member requests over the past several
years, the 1996 AATSEEL Conference introduced a number of organizational
modifications in the Linguistics and Pedagogy divisions. The basic goal of
these modifications was to raise the professional level of our annual
conference, which had previously been somewhat uneven, while continuing to
make participation in these conferences accessible to all members of the
association.

Now that this year's program is more or less complete, the Program
Committee and Executive Council are evaluating these modifications and
discussing whether they should be expanded to all divisions for 1997. We
are also reviewing those elements of the new system that did not work as
well as we had hoped, and discussing ways to improve them.

No final decision has been made yet for 1997, and the Program Committee,
in consultation with the President, felt that it would be extremely
helpful at this stage to ask the membership to comment on these issues.
With this in mind, the Program Committee has assembled a description of
the new system, and the rationale for the various changes, which I have
posted to the World Wide Web at:

        http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/aatseel/program_structure.html

If you do not have access to the World Wide Web, feel free to send me
email at djbpitt+ at pitt.edu and I will mail you a copy. I am not posting
the entire document to SEELANGS because it is long, and because many
SEELANGS readers will be able to read it on the Web.

Please post any comments or suggestions to SEELANGS, so that all
interested AATSEEL members can take part in the general discussion. This
is your professional association and your conference, the modifications
were developed in response to member comments about problems with the old
system, and we need your continued input if we are to produce an improved
conference, in which we can all be proud to participate.

With best wishes,

David

(Chair, AATSEEL Program Committee)
________________________________________________________________________

Professor David J. Birnbaum     email: djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
Department of Slavic Languages  url:   http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/
1417 Cathedral of Learning      voice: 1-412-624-5712
University of Pittsburgh        fax:   1-412-624-9714
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA