PLA and Alumni, Part 2

I've been giving more thought to the "alumni" question, and as someone who's fast approaching becoming an alumna myself, I'm really excited by some of the recent promotional developments in PLA and think it would be great if they could be extended to former members. My thoughts:

1) I really enjoyed the newsletter, and think alumni might also like to be contacted when new issues are available, so maybe we could set up some sort of e-mail campaign to let people know that the first issue exists and encourage them to submit their e-mail addresses for a list specifically designed just to go out with notification about new newsletters. People no longer at Purdue may not want to get every single e-mail about every weekly event by joining the list-serve, if it's even possible to join it with a non-Purdue address, but might still want to hear the highlights of what's going on a couple of times a year. Since I've been around a while (forever, it seems) and know quite a few of the older people, I'd be happy to send out feelers and ask who would be interested in getting continual updates. Then, from semester to semester, someone could just keep an eye on who's leaving the programme and send them an e-mail reminding them that if they want to stay in touch, they could get on this list.

2) It would also be really nice to have an alumni section of the website with contact information and brief profiles of former members (Name, E-mail, Link to Personal Website, Current Location, Current Job Title, Most Recent Presentation/Publication). The Hall of Fame was kind of intended to be that, although it is sort of nice to keep the "thank you for your service list" and the "here are people who have graduated and what they are doing now" areas of the website separate. If we follow through with idea #1, we could put a little note in the newsletter every May that says "Hey Alumni! Do you have any news to share? Visit the Alumni section of our website and send an e-mail if you have any information you'd like to update." That would save officers the burden of having to re-contact people periodically, and put the responsibility in alumni's hands.

3) I'm not a big fan of Engin's idea that alumni could continue to pay dues, just because I know that I wouldn't feel like I was getting a whole lot of return out of my money that way if I'm never around campus to participate in anything and don't get any particular benefits. I can't recall whether it's ever been suggested that idea #2 (inclusion on the website) could be a reward for alumni agreeing to pay dues, but I don't think that would work, because the networking benefits of having that info on the website would probably be much greater for students who have not yet graduated, not those who have already found jobs. What I am a big fan of is tangible cool swag, like the new hoodie. If PLA continued to come up with creative new merchandise on an annual basis, I might periodically continue to buy it. That kind of stuff could also be marketed through the newsletter, and would reach a wider audience if alumni were included as recipients. As an alternative to alumni dues, you could also try having annual "giving campaigns," especially if you want to raise money for a particular cause. I'd be much more inclined to donate money (for nothing) if it were for a particular purpose, like "we want to start a PLA travel grant fund, and would appreciate any contributions," rather than if I know my money's going to be absorbed into the general fund and I have no idea how it will particularly be spent.

Anyway, those are my three cents, which sort of amount to one cent by saying that I love the newsletter and hoodie ideas, and think we could really do a lot to maximise the potential of these new ideas if we get old members involved somehow. And I'd be glad to get that ball rolling.

The future lies in Australia

Hi all,

I hope you're enjoying your PLA activities! I saw that Elaine's CV workshop took place recently, which helped me a lot at the time. On the topic of job searching, I've talked to two outstanding researchers who are working or are about to move to (different) universities in Australia, and they both told me they were hiring there at all levels: PhD, post-doc, and junior tenure track. The working conditions sounded amazing, so if you are interested in any of the following topics, send me an email and I'll give you some more details: acquisition/language processing/phonology/phonetics/computational modeling.

Un abrazo enorme!

Alex

PLA and alumni

This is just a suggestion:

PLA might consider having PLA alumni as associate members -- as the constitution allows it.

Additionally, or in return, PLA might consider updating information about associate members. There could be some benefits:

- alumni might help 'current' PLA members for networking
- PLA community and belongingness might develop better
- associate members keep paying dues

engin

Up for Grabs

The following lonely journals don't want to lie forgotten in my office desk drawer anymore. If you'd like to free them from the prison of my neglect, they're yours for the taking.

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2008), no. 28, special issue on "Neurolinguistics and Cognitive Aspects of Language Processing"

Communication Monographs (2007), Vol. 74, no. 4
Communication Monographs (2008), Vol. 75, no. 1-4
Communication Monographs (2009), Vol. 76, no. 1

Language (2008), Vol. 84, no. 1-3

Otherwise they may end up in the recycling bin. Please save them from this miserable destiny.

on dissertation

i thought that we can use this blog to write our thoughts on writing dissertation. i also invite everybody to participate in and share their valuable experiences. in this way, i think, those, like me among many others, who are writing their dissertations are able to release some of their tensions :) and those, who will do it eventually, may benefit from the others' ups and downs.

Possible external speakers

Hello!
As mentioned over the last two meetings, we have to think about names of professors to invite as a guest speaker for next semester (we are too far into this fall semester to have someone over). So, why don't we think about one or two names of professors of our own field and from universities around here and post them in the blog? Can you come up with some names by next Wednesday? Then, we can select our top priorities and I will start contacting them...

Thanks!

j62 --> ling

at the kick-off, ronnie said that ling's code is now ling instead of j62. needs to be verified :)