Productive Meeting on Wednesday, March 11

Greeting EDAGS!ans!,

We had a productive meeting last Wednesday. It was brief, about 45 minutes, and I expect future meetings to run as efficiently.

Among the small business, we decided the following:

One Monthly Meeting: We’re going to have one meeting a month for both the business meeting and a speaker or presentation. We’ll have it generally on the second Wednesday of the month from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. The first half of the meeting will be the business meeting. Our next meeting is April 8th, and the speaker will be our own Dr. Javier Martinez, managing editor of Extrapolation, who will talk to us about editing and getting published in academic journals.

Cultural Events: We’re going to try and get together for one cultural event a month. This month we’ll be going to see Sandra Cisneros at UTPA at the end of the month. Crystal Olivo will be sending out the details shortly.

Journal: We’re going to start an online journal. Our initial commitment will be to do an annual journal, but may increase the frequency after we know what we’re getting ourselves into. Andrew Keese is running a journal committee to work out the requirements. Contact Andrew to help out.

Graduate Conference: We decided not to jump into running a conference this summer. Instead, we’re looking to do a party and UTB only English symposium this fall sometime as a baby step in the direction of running a conference. I’m putting together a preliminary project plan right now. Contact me if you want to help figure this thing out.

News: According to Jason Stern, Gary Soto will be speaking at Texas A&M Corpus Christi on May 31st and that there will be a screening of Hotel Rwanda at UTPA in April.

Great things are coming. I look forward to seeing you on the various committees and at the next meeting.