Introduction and notes from Town Hall

Hello everyone, my name is Mateo. I am currently wrapping up my second year as an MA student in American Studies. My areas of concentration are Science, Technology & Society (STS) and Feminist Technoscience studies. My Master’s Thesis (which is slowly coming together) is on the political history of gerontology/ethnogerontology and Alzheimer’s disease. I will be graduating this spring with hundreds of other happy people.

Background:
I came to the University of Maryland after graduating from Oberlin College with a degree in chemistry and working in the Bay Area for several years. My first job after college was in the pharmaceutical industry as a medicinal chemist. I synthesized anti-retroviral drug candidates for HIV-1 and Hepatitis C. After a couple of years, I got sick of the industry, and started working at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) as a qualitative interviewer.

During this time I also worked with the California Prison Focus (CPF). My work focused on health care in men and women’s maximum-security prisons. I was responsible for acquiring information about the various anti-retroviral drugs inmates were being prescribed. While working with CPF, I visited several of the California prisons and conducted in-depth interviews with transgender and non-transgender men and women. I ran a monthly radio show with a local California radio station on various aspects of the California Department of Defense (CDC).

Notes from Town Hall: Friday 04.27.07 from 11.00-12.30

Last Friday a handful of American studies graduate students (GSAS), Professor Jo Paoletti , and Dr. Nancy Struna came together to discuss current departmental matter. The meeting provided a great opportunity to hear about departmental plans (for the future) and graduate student concerns.

Professor Nancy Struna discussed the department's new strategic plan. In general, the plan consists of the following four components:

1. Down Size

The department plans to reduce the number of graduate students admitted into the Ph. D program. The goal is to bring in five Ph. D students every year. This is part of a university wide effort to downsize the graduate student body and raise the quality.

2. Graduate Student Funding

Professor Nancy Struna has submitted a grant proposal to improve funding packages for American studies graduate students. The money will be used to provide an incoming graduate student with a fellowship and half time TA ship (similar to CRGE)

The department is also trying to raise the stipend for at least one of the existing fellowships offered to incoming graduate students.

Note on funding: The state of Maryland only gives the department enough money for two fellowships and 4.5 assistantships.

3. New Faculty
Next year we will have two new faculty members joining our department. Our new faculty members will have joint appointments in LGBT studies and Women Studies. The two new faculty members are Dr. Christina Hanhardt (Ph. D., American Studies, NYU) and Dr. Jeffrey McCune (Ph. D., Performance Studies, Northwestern University). For more details check out the American Studies website: http://www.amst.umd.edu/NewsEvents/newhiresrelease.htm.

4. Center for Leadership and Organizational Change

Priority has been given to developing a center for the study of everyday life. The center will be a resource for post docs., graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty members. The content focus will be on social justice issues within and outside of the University. At the moment, potential funding sources for the center are being researched.

Issues and Concerns

In addition to all of the exciting news, we also discussed graduate student concerns and issues. Here are some of the issues raised by graduate students at the meeting:

1. Student engagement and professionalization

-Why are graduate students not involved?
-How do we get people to initiate projects and increase a sense of community within the department?
-Why are AMST graduate students not doing more?

Popular Theories/Speculative answers to these questions

-graduate students in AMST are not “pro-active” enough
-a combination of internal and external factors (funding, personalities, multiple interests, work)
-people are too busy
-people are doing a bunch of stuff but most of us are scattered all across campus
-it is a departmental problem
-things have actually improved in the last two years, it is not fair to blame everything any single factor (especially overworked graduate students)

2. The need for a Graduate Student Handbook
-A very smart graduate student brought up the need for an American Studies graduate student handbook!

Why?
-students should know about insurance cost
-fellows should be informed of the need to pay taxes

In short, there is a lot of information that graduate students need to know, but don’t get until the last minute. The handbook would be a valuable resource for incoming and existing graduate students.

3. Seminar Series
-faculty and students would like to revamp the faculty student seminar series next year

4. Plans for the new center
-How will our center be unique, yet compatible with other existing research centers/programs (CRGE, Latino/Latina studies, LGBT, Driskell Center, Asian American Studies)?

Announcements

Professor Jo Paoletti has received a grant from the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) to create a writing rubric.

Congratulations Professor Paoletti!!!! This is really fantastic!

My comments…

I chose to make this my first entry because I think it is important to be informed about the resources available in our department. I left the meeting feeling a bit frustrated with the lack of communication among graduate students. I know of several people in the department who are doing some really great work. Surprisingly,there is a sense that American studies graduate students are “not doing enough.”

I think the main issue here is lack of communication among graduate students, not lack of motivation. It sometimes feels as though we all live in our own little worlds…and in many ways I guess we do. I am not sure this can change completely. We simply cannot attend every talk, meeting, movie screening, or cultural event on campus. We have to pick and choose carefully how we spend our time and energy. On the other hand, I think we can easily be more strategic about circulating information about the cool stuff we are doing.

I think it is important to have some sort of forum dedicated to ‘making public’ all of the great things American Studies graduate students are involved in. I hope that this new bog might provide a low-pressure environment to engage each other.