Graduate work
Time for some good news I haven’t had a chance to write about, all in the WIU graduate program.
April 28 our new graduate curriculum was approved. Getting it through graduate council was not too hard; we got a lot of good advice from the School of Graduate Studies beforehand, and so questions and changes were minimal. However, some of the questions made it apparent some GC members hadn’t read our rationale for revising the curriculum. That was a little disappointing. About a week after that, May 6, we had our thesis colloquium, where our nine students who wrote theses in the past year talked about their work. Good stuff. I’m obviously pleased with Joe’s scholarship and wish him well at Minnesota. And it was very nice to forget about Mt. Grademore during the very busy last weeks of school and listen to graduate students talk about their research.
Three graduate students from my fall Style course asked me to direct independent work this summer. I agreed and proposed we form a reading group instead of working alone. Things will be ramping up shortly. I’m looking forward to that.
As usual, one summer task is preparing for Fall, when I’ll teach our introduction to graduate studies in Macomb and the Quad Cities. I’m pretty excited about it, though a little intimidated as well, since it’s our only course requirement. What readings to include? What assignments? Shall we use the course to get faculty and graduate students to connect? To advance the process of professionalization? The impulse is to go wild and try to do everything in 16 weeks. There is much battle-picking to do. But there is much implied by the course description: “An introduction to graduate study in English with special emphasis on research and theory.”
