|
|
Summary Description Faculty
in the department have created several working groups to facilitate
intellectual exchange between faculty and graduate students. The New
Modern British Studies Group, for example, has worked this past
academic year (2004-2005) towards developing a graduate arm of its
organization. The New Modern British Studies Group Graduate Supper Club
was formed as part of the department's work on CID. Graduate students
meet roughly once a month to discuss conference papers, dissertation
chapters, and works for potential publication. Twice a year, in the
fall and spring, the graduate students choose representatives to
present their work to the NMBS group as a whole. NMBS is only one
example of such faculty groups either in existence or in development.
Others include Discourse Studies, which recently elected a graduate
representative, Textual Studies, and the newly formed American Studies
Group.
Interest Groups in the English Department
There are several faculty and graduate student interest groups in our
department, such as the New Modern British Studies Group and the
Discourse Studies Group.
|
|
|
Tools and Resources During
its work on "Building Inclusive Intellectual Communities," the CID
Leadership Team developed a subcommittee dedicated to creating teaching
colloquia on various specializations. This subcommittee held four brown
bag colloquia during the 2004-2005 academic year on such
specializations as: American Studies, Discourse Studies, British
Literature, and Film as Argument.
Graduate Orientation Schedule August 2005
Our orientation this year emphasized building intellectual community and presentations focused on specific interest groups.
|
|
|
Reflection "As
a member of the CID team, I have seen firsthand the many ways in which
our department has sustained and, in many cases, increased a wide sense
of intellectual community between and amongst faculty and students.
Graduate students, for instance, have for some time been active members
of department interest groups; our Carnegie group furthered this
involvement by working to establish subgroups specifically for graduate
students in the field. These subgroups have been warmly welcomed by
faculty and serve to remind each of us of the importance-- both
personal and professional-- of intellectual community in a profession
that all too often is depicted by the lone individual at her solitary
desk." Meghan Gilbert, Ph.D. Student
|
|
|
|
Goals for the Community In
Fall 2005, we chose to focus our CID work on "Building Inclusive
Intellectual Communities" because we wanted to develop ways to foster
scholarly and pedagogical exchange between graduate students and
faculty. One of the most important ways to create intellectual
community is for teaching and learning to go on outside of the
classroom. We have been emphasizing the importance of participating in
the intellectual life of the institution, and of creating communities
through venues other than the typical student-student or
faculty-student groupings. We let all of our new graduate students know
that attending selected lectures and other events on campus is as
important to their education as attending classes. Building
community means two different things: 1) Enhancing the experience of
graduate students and faculty who work in our English department; and
2) Preparing our graduate students to enter and become active
participants in the broader community of the profession of English.
New Modern British Studies Graduate Student Supper Club
The NMBS Graduate Supper Club highlights and discusses research conducted by its members in both formal and informal settings.
|
|
|
Program Context Not
all education happens within the classroom. Within the department,
people have organized faculty working groups, teaching colloquia, and
department-wide discussions of what we do and why we do it. We are
working to offer service opportunities for our graduate students, which
creates community within the department as well as modeling what
happens in the profession at large. We believe that "Professionalizing"
graduate students means not only filling out the CV, but also
participating in larger conversations of interest to the discipline and
the profession. It also means learning to balance teaching, research,
and service.
|
|
|
Contact Information Victoria Rosner can be reached at vpr@tamu.edu Sally Robinson can be reached at sallyr@tamu.edu
|
|
|
|
How Do We Know? The
response to our call for participation in the CID leadership team was
overwhelmingly positive (approximately 30 people signed on), which
indicates that there is broad support for the project of creating and
fostering inclusive intellectual communities. Because we organized so
many different kinds of activities, and provided various occasions for
participation, a large proportion of the department was visibly
involved. Some people, of course, prefer not be involved, and it is
always possible that some people feel excluded. We are particularly
sensitive to the fact that many of our international students choose
not to participate; our not entirely satisfactory solution to this was
to organize a working group on international student issues. We're
an English Department, so we tend to shun tools in favor of lots of
language. Our best mode of evaluation is simply measuring the level of
participation, which has increased visibly. The graduate students
clearly feel empowered by efforts to include them in the governance of
the department. We had an excellent experience of having graduate
students participate in our job searches last year; while many
departments have been doing this for years, this was a big step forward
for this particular department.
The English Graduate Student Association
EGSA has chosen "Intellectual Communities" as its theme for the 2005-2006 academic year.
|
|
|
Unanswered Questions Questions
of participation always remain. How do we include the department as a
whole in specialized working groups? How do we inspire participation
for members of our community outside of their chosen specializations?
How do we work to include all graduate students in the department's
intellectual community?
Surviving Your First Year
EGSA's orientation schedule for new graduate student meeting, with
emphasis on building intellectual communities and graduate student
involvement.
|
|
|
Reflection "Our
department has sought to enrich and expand its intellectual community
over the past year by approaching the issue deliberately and on a
number of levels at once. We have created new spaces for communities to
gather by designating a departmental lounge and creating informal
discussion forums in the homes of faculty and students. We have tried
to expand the participation of different departmental constituencies in
all areas of our collective life: involving graduate students in issues
of departmental governance, for instance, and including more faculty in
departmental conversations about best practices in teaching.
Communities, we have found, must be nurtured and conscientiously
maintained, and often the smallest gestures -- including simply placing
intellectual community on the agenda! -- can yield results." Dr. Victoria Rosner
|
|
|
