[Air-L] Voting Open & A Question for Candidates

[Anthony Hoffmann]

Hello, all!

Lots of good stuff here, so I'm mostly going to build on what's already been said with two proposals...

#1 - In my candidate statement, I also mentioned the need for formalized mentorship opportunities. It was noted here that we already have the doctoral colloquium, which is a great opportunity for graduate students - and this is true! However, it can also feel a bit hit-and-run (which has its value, of course). It would be great to compliment that sort of experience with opportunities for sustained collaboration between graduate students and faculty across different institutions. 

One way to go about this would be to establish a limited number of year long "fellowships" - the Association could sponsor a few student fellows and pair them with willing and interested faculty fellows and give them a year to work together on some sort of output (this can be more or less specific, depending on how the fellowship is ultimately framed), which can then be presented or showcased in some way at the annual conference. I had the opportunity to do something similar with the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology a few years back and I count the conversations that occurred with my faculty mentor among some of the most formative of my early graduate career. Not only was it valuable to carry out a sustained collaboration with someone outside of my institution, it was also great to show up to a conference having already established a working relationship with an established scholar in the field. So, in short, any sort of new mentorship opportunities should serve the Association and its graduate student members in ways that compliment or extend or achieve different goals - but do not step on - already established opportunities like the doctoral colloquium.

#2 - There has also been some discussion of different/more/cost-conscious social events at the conference. I'd like to add to this discussion, but take a bit of a risk...

So, here's my idea for an additional social event that could also serve to open up opportunities for conversation that young graduate students or AoIR n00bs might otherwise not have: a poster session. But not your usual poster session - which often serves as the first foray into conference life for graduate students everywhere. Instead, we reverse the roles. We ask active and respected faculty members from different institutions to prepare a poster (it could be about their work, about an ongoing project, a proposed project, something, anything - it could also feature as many lolcats as necessary!) and then - in usual poster session style - the selected faculty would have to stand by their poster! And graduate students or other scholars new to AoIR could approach them and ask them questions about their work! Rather than being a "formal" conference session, it could be framed as a social event that turns some traditional aspects of the conference format on its head - and, of course, it would create an opportunity for conversations that doesn't always exist at standard cocktail hours.

Anyway, those are two ideas (albeit ideas geared towards opening up new opportunities for mentorship and socializing for graduate students) to add to the pile.

-Anthony

On May 25, 2013, at 6:55 AM, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu> wrote:

> I was thinking that the structure for the meetups  would be less 'group' like, and more '100 word proposal' with one to two available every two month period, thus spreading it over the year and judged mostly on a first come first serve criteria for those two months.   
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